Personal Branding

Seven Necessary Tips for Effective Personal Branding

The contemporary world has seen personal branding transcending business as usual, of having a simple business card or a designed contact form, to a more encompassing engagement. With globalization’s heralding and mainstreaming of technology and consequently social media, it is imperative to look beyond mere business to self-investment for the purpose of branding.

There is no gainsaying that personal branding builds your business, and your business reflects you. Personal branding is now more of an assessment of an individual's personality from various dimensions. It is a perception maintained by a person other than you, that describes the total experience of having a relationship with you. 

These seven tips will help you shape your personality and build a desirable brand.

 1. Identify your NEED: What do you Necessarily Expect from Every Direction (NEED)? If you do not know what you really need, you will always need what you really don't know. It’s quite frustrating to need something but not be able to identify what it is that you need. The rudiment of branding yourself is identifying your need; discovering your purpose.

Indeed, that which you really need is a true reflection of your purpose. To achieve your purpose therefore, you must be able to identify what you really need. Once you have gotten this, you are well on your way to creating an impressive brand for yourself.

2. Have a vision and set goals to achieve it: Having identified your need then, you have a vision. To have a vision is not a more complex task than achieving it. You cannot achieve your vision without setting smart goals. Goal setting plays a vital role in attaining your vision. The kind of goals you set determines the results you will get. If you have a vision to become the greatest entrepreneur in the world, your goals must be tailored towards it. In addition, make sure your goals are focused, realistic and achievable, while at the same time, avoiding distractions and a copycat attitude.

3. Invest in yourself: You cannot give what you do not have. Branding yourself implies preparing yourself to the point where you have something to give, especially to solve the problems of those who are in need of that thing that you have. Your choice is to make what you have to give, either valuable or worthless. It is unequivocal that a valuable thing attracts valuable people, and a worthless thing attracts worthless people. The result of self-investment is a self-image that reveals both the inside and the outside contents of yourself, which is why you have to invest quality and valuable resources in yourself to build a quality self-image and attract valuable people. Importantly, you have to do a critical assessment of yourself to determine your worth. By the degree of your self-investment you shall know your worth, and knowing your worth goes a long way in influencing people's conception and view of you.

4. Define your clients: People get attracted to a particular thing due to its ability to provide sustainable solutions to their problems. That said, everyone cannot be attracted to the same thing. The knowledge that people's choices differ stands as a clue to brand yourself in line with the choices and needs of the particular people that you are willing to or actually engage with either business or otherwise. Who are my potential clients? To what do they need a solution? How best would they prefer to receive the solution (e.g. your product) to their needs? These are some of the questions you must answer in defining your clients.

5. Manage your online identity effectively: This is rather an essential must-do thing if you want an impressive brand for yourself, especially considering that a bulk of information is gotten from the internet. The internet poses as an effective medium of communication and must be accorded optimum and strategic use. In the course of spreading over the internet, be sure to get rid of discrepancies in the information you provide on the different social media platform that you belong to. Similarly, you have to ensure that the information about you, obtainable on the internet is in concord with the one directly gotten from you without a third party. 

6. Be consistent: Bear in mind that you cannot afford to be a chameleon in your personal branding venture. You should not be known by your clients today as Zuckerberg, and tomorrow as Bill Gates, except you're into a multi-personality branding venture, which is cumbersome and creates anxiety and distrust for your clients. Your various social media contents and signatures like your mission statement and vision should not be different from one another so as not to create contrary impressions to the people visiting your social media pages.

7. Be courteous and diplomatic: Because personal branding is not bound to the internet, you may often have to interact in person with the people you come across on a daily basis. Be mindful of your choice of words, your deed and action. It is easier to ascertain a person's reputation during a physical meeting; hence, your personality should be coated with courtesy and this must conform with your brand at all levels.

If people do not have problems, then there might be no need for personal branding since it entails building oneself to such an extent that one could be well trusted to proffer a solution to a person's problems. Do not forget to be a positive thinker with a great sense of optimism because what you can conceive, you can achieve. In fact, you are a product of your thoughts.

About the Author.

Michael Afolami is a freelance sociopreneur, who currently volunteers at FHI 360. He is a digital marketing strategist, foreign languages enthusiast and youth advocate. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations from Obafemi Awolowo University.