The importance of having a personal brand

the importance of having a personal brand

Most people understand the importance of a strong brand when it comes to a business. The importance of a personal brand may be less obvious, however, and the idea can even feel a bit “icky”.

But the fact is that you already have a personal brand, whether you realise it or not: your personal brand is what people are thinking and saying about you when you’re not there. How do others perceive you? What are they saying about you as an individual and what are they saying about your work? What image are you portraying by your actions and behaviour in the real world and in the online space? That image exists whether you want it to or not, and you now have a choice as to whether you actively manage it – or leave it to chance.

This is not about lying or creating a fake persona and, in any case, you can never have 100% control – that’s the point! It’s about doing what you can to be who you want to be and portray that effectively both online and offline so that the perception people have of you is more or less in line with who you really are and how you want to be seen.

Building your personal brand intentionally will allow you to tell your story as you want it to be told, to establish yourself as an expert and leader in your field and to connect with your customers and clients beyond just your products and services.

What is branding anyway?

When you start a business, it’s easy to obsess over the name and finding a domain that’s actually available. Then you get caught up in the excitement of working on your website, getting a beautifully designed logo and ordering fancy business cards. After that, it’s all about posting pretty pictures and inspirational quotes on Facebook and Instagram. And, for most people, that’s what they think of when they hear the word “branding”.

In a way, they’re right, because “branding” does originate in the old Norse word “brandr”, which meant “to burn” and referred to branding livestock. You need only think about brands like Nike, Apple or McDonald’s and you’ll find that you immediately associate them with the famous “swoosh” sign, apple logo or golden arches. A logo can be a powerful symbol of a brand.

But branding is so much more than just a logo (and, when you’re starting out, no one will recognise your logo anyway!). Your brand is what that logo represents: the bigger mission of your company, its values, the kind of products and services it provides and, yes, all the graphic and design elements that are associated with it as well.

So where does personal branding fit in?

Let’s consider Richard Branson. He has a massive personal brand, far beyond the brands of his businesses – as his Twitter bio declares, he is a “tie-loathing adventurer, philanthropist & troublemaker, who believes in turning ideas into reality” – and he uses that personal brand to support his different ventures and to get people to buy into his companies.

He has more than 12 million followers on Twitter, dwarfing the Twitter accounts of his companies, for example, Virgin Atlantic (<592k), Virgin Galactic (216k) and Virgin Media (266k).

As an entrepreneur, you’re likely to start more than one business over the years. Your current business venture may fail (although hopefully not!) or you may simply decide to sell your shares and move on to your next project – but your personal brand lives on.

No, we can’t all be as big as Branson; but we don’t need to be. We don’t need to be known in the entire world but only in our own little world, where our business is operating.

Personal branding – who needs it?!

Just one third of consumers trust messages from a brand but as many as 90 per cent trust messages from someone they know (Source). Okay, so you can’t become bosom friends with every single prospect, but what you can do is allow people to get to know you a bit better, give them an idea of who you are and what you stand for, so that they can “know, like and trust” you enough to buy into your message – and your offer.

People are naturally interested in other people and their stories. They want to know why you set up your business in the first place, what you stand for and what skills and strengths you bring to the table. Cultivating a strong personal brand will give a face to your business and allow you to develop stronger relationships with your prospects. And especially if you’re in a service-based business, you, your style and your personality are absolutely core to what the business stands for and delivers.

Even if you don’t think of yourself as an entrepreneur but, say, a freelancer who works on a project-to-project basis, a personal brand is absolutely critical for you too. It will help people find out about you and what you do and build credibility and trust so that more clients seek out your services. Ultimately, a strong personal brand means that clients will come to you instead of you having to hustle to find them – saving you both time and money.

And, by the way, personal branding is important to you even if you’re still an employee! If you want to be top of mind for interesting assignments or promotions, you’ll need to build your personal brand internally within the company. As I was taught back in my corporate days, you want to consider the three pieces of the professional P.I.E.: Performance, Image and Exposure. Performance is fundamental – of course you have to deliver quality results in your day-to-day work – but unfortunately working away in a corner isn’t enough. Image is what other people think of you – it’s really your brand! And the final piece, Exposure, is about making sure that people actually know who you are and are seeing what you do.

If you’re looking to change jobs or careers, you’ll also want to be building your personal brand outside of the company. Having a reputation as someone who “knows your stuff” in the industry will serve you well when you go for a role in a company where no one knows you personally.

Okay, so how do I create my personal brand?

Great question! This is a big topic, and one that we’ll be spending quite some time on. Next week, we’ll be looking at how you can go about crafting the story that you want to tell – your “why”, your core values, your unique set of skills and strengths, as well as the evidence to back it all up.

If you want to explore this topic in more depth, we’ll also be running free training sessions over in the Facebook group. Join the group to get access >>

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You might also be interested in these articles

“Everything you’ve ever
wanted is one step outside
your comfort zone.”

Book a free consultation

Get on the phone with Anna to discuss your unique goals and situation to determine the best programme for you, so you can start taking action towards creating the business and lifestyle you desire.

Get a free assessment of your business

Download this scorecard to review where you are on each of the 5 pillars of building a life outside of the 9 to 5, and get clear action steps to help you fill the gaps.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Looking to grow your expert business?

Download this FREE Business Assessment to identify the gaps that are preventing your growth so that you can take actionable steps towards building a more successful and sustainable business.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Outside of the 9 to 5

Anna continues the journey in her new book, where she details what’s needed to sustain your initial escape from the 9 to 5 in a guide to designing and building a profitable business that gives you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how One Step Outside uses and protects any information that you give One Step Outside when you use this website (https://onestepoutside.com/).

One Step Outside is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

One Step Outside may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

What information we collect and why

We only ever collect the information that we need in order to serve you.

Generally, this just means collecting your first name and email address that you enter, for example, when you request a resource, register for a webinar, or submit a message via a contact form.

If you are a paying customer, we also collect your billing information including your last name and your postal address.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

We use Gravity Forms to allow you to contact us via the website. We will use the information you submit for the sole purpose of that specific form and will explicitly ask you to provide your consent to allow us to do so.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Advertising and Analytics

Google

We use Google Analytics to track and optimise performance on this site as well as embedding video content from YouTube, and this means that your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See their Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes, and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.

Facebook

We use the conversion tracking and custom audiences via the Facebook pixel on our website. This allows user behaviour to be tracked after they have been redirected to our website by clicking on a Facebook ad and enables us to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ads. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, who may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes. You can revoke your permission directly on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. For more guidance on opting out you can also consult http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Who we share your data with

We use a number of third parties to provide us with services which are necessary to run our business or to assist us with running our business and who process your information for us on our behalf. These include a hosting and email provider (Siteground), mailing list provider (GetResponse), and a payment provider (Stripe).

Your information will be shared with these service providers only where necessary to enable us to run our business.

How long we maintain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

The main reason for collecting this information is to be able to send you resources, updates and, sometimes, information and products and services, as well as for internal record keeping.

The rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that lets you access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. Initially created on 18th November 2016, it was last updated on 23rd May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns related to your privacy, you can get in touch here >>