Creating a Highly Effective Personal Brand

03/15/2011 By Angela 5 Comments

Creating a Highly Effective Personal Brand

Creating a personal brand for yourself and your business is extremely important and of course you want that brand to be highly effective. So how do you do about creating a personal brand that is effective? Well I have a few suggestions on how to go about creating an effective personal brand, check it out.

Make sure everything you do is on brand- It is going to be hard to find yourself with an effective personal brand if you are not consistent and you are all over the place. The more you can keep everything you do consistent the better off you will be. If you have a certain brand color, design, theme carry it through on all your online and offline marketing.

Your personal brand should be unique. You want you brand to be unique so you stand out in a crowd. There are millions of businesses out there so what makes you unique and how can you make yourself stand out? I see so many people out there copying what other people are doing and that is not effective. I suggest seeing what other people are doing , learning from them but make sure to add your own flair and uniqueness to everything you do.

Brand yourself as someone who makes important contributions- If you can make important contributions and provide value through your brand you will find it easy to make big strides in your business. When you are out there giving great value people will be drawn to you.

Work to Be What You Want People To See- How do you want people to see you? Work to be the brand that you want to be seen for.

Make sure to nurture your network- Building a network of friends, customers and colleagues and working on those relationships is imperative. Those people in your network will have things to say about you and what they say will effect how others view your brand. So when you build and nurture great relationships people are going to share your brand and have positive things to say about you. I think this is one of the most important keys here because if you build good relationships with your customers you will get a lot of repeat business.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment and let me know what are some things I might have missed that you think are imperative for creating and effective brand?

Filed Under: Personal Branding Tagged With: personal brand, Personal Development

10 Ways to Create Your Best Personal Brand

08/09/2010 By Angela 43 Comments

10 Ways to Create Your Best Personal Brand

You are going to have the most success and create your best personal brand when you are genuine and true to yourself. When you work with your strengths and natural talents rather than work against them. When you go against the grain and fight to be someone your not or imitate someone else it is going to be much harder to create your best brand. As Judy Garland put it, “always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”

When you fully understand yourself and your strengths and put those on the table you are going to attract people who like you and like what you have to offer. As you reveal your true self you are attracting people who find common ground with you and want to work with you, buy from you and interact with you.

Here is my list for staying true to yourself and creating your best personal brand:

1. Be Genuine Being authentic and genuine is so important for your brand. People can see through an act and tell when you are not being authentic.

2. Stay Consistent Stay consistent with the tone and feel of your brand. When you are writing try to stay consistent with your style and try to write how you would speak. Work to keep a similar look or feel all across your social media sites. This will help with your brand recognition and make it easier for people to recognize your brand in multiple locations.

3. Give Value Give as much valuable information that you can. What things do you know that would be valuable to others? As part of your brand share what you know and share the things that have helped you out. You will build respect and build your brand when you are giving people value.

4. Keep it Simple You don’t have to over complicate things to create a killer brand. The old acronym K.I.S.S. or “keep it simple stupid” is a good way to look at creating your brand. Be clear, consise and to the point and you will be much more effective than being long winded.

5. Work with your strengths and not against them If you are good at certain things focus on those strengths and use them to your advantage in building your brand. Don’t try and fight your natural abilities to be something you think you, “should be.”

6. Distinguish yourself The more you can distinguish your brand the better off you are going to be. What makes you different than your peers? Spend time finding out what others are doing and figure out how you can bring something different to the table.

7. Educate Yourself One of the best ways to build your value is through continuing education. Working on your personal development and spending time learning daily will greatly increase your knowledge and therefore increase the value of your brand.

8. Network Networking is an important part of creating your brand. You have a great opportunity to meet a variety of people when you are out there networking. Building relationships through networking you have the ability to represent yourself in a positive and memorable way. When you are networking with people don’t make promises you can’t keep. Be true to your word and help people when you can. One thing I can’t stress enough is to not spam people or lead any networking opportunity with a sales pitch. This is a quick way to turn people off and detract from your personal brand.

9. Add Your Personality Be yourself, let your personality shine through. You are not going to be every ones cup of tea no matter what. You can work tirelessly to try and cater to everyone but will find you are spinning your wheels. Be yourself and you will attract people to your brand who like you and like what you have to offer.

10. Be Approachable Being friendly and approachable will help build your brand. One small way I think you can represent yourself as friendly online is to use a nice photo of yourself where you are smiling. You seem much more approachable and less intimidating when you are smiling and look friendly and warm.

Be true to YOU: your strengths, your values, and the unique things that only you can add. When you do so you will be well on your way to creating a strong brand. I would love to hear other things you think are important for building your personal brand.

I always appreciate you sharing my posts with your friends on social media.

Filed Under: Personal Branding, Personal Development Tagged With: How to build your personal brand, personal brand, Personal Branding

How To Make Your Personal Brand Shine

07/12/2010 By Angela 17 Comments

How To Make Your Personal Brand Shine

Learning to build your personal brand is an affective way to attract people to you to build your business. If your personal brand shines people are going to naturally gravitate to you and want to know what you are about.

Make sure you are doing what you are passionate about: When you are following your passion it will show in what you are doing. When you have enthusiasm it shines through and when you don’t it is easy to tell you are faking it.

Try to be consistent across your social media sites: When you are building your brand you want to people to know and recognize you. If you use the same photo and similar design across all your sites people will start to recognize your brand.

Be Yourself: When you are putting yourself out there you will find people who like and identify with you. If you try to be someone your not it is unnatural and it will seem forced. People will see right through that. You will find when you are genuine you will form a lot more connections and reach more people. If you are trying to figure out who you identify with think about your life. What are your hobbies and what you enjoy doing? Are you a parent, animal lover, gardener, traveler, etc? Add things about yourself and your life to your blog and social media.

Focus on what makes you unique and what you are good at: Build your brand around what you are good at and what makes you unique. What do you have to give that would make people want to pay attention to you or join your company? Remember there are a lot of people out there doing the same thing so you need to focus on things that make you stand out.

Give as much value as you can: In building your brand avoid spam at all costs and use the 3 E’s a much as possible to give value. Education, entertainment and enlightenment. Think about the things you needed when you were building your brand that you now know how to do. Share those things with people. You will start building a great brand when you are giving people valuable information that helps them out.

What it comes down to is people buy from people they like, know and trust. Give people what they want, make it easy for people to find you, be a magnet and instead of selling you will be Shining.

What do you do to make your personal brand shine? Leave a comment and share with me your tips and tricks.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you know your social media circle could benefit from this please feel free to share it with them. I would appreciate it!

Filed Under: Personal Branding, Personal Development Tagged With: branding, personal brand