Today there is a really thin line between losing and gaining your reputation. And just because professional personal branding is the key to your good image, it’s important to analyze if you do everything right.
HOW IT COMES THAT PERSONAL BRANDING IS SO IMPORTANT FOR EVERYBODY?
Every person today is social. Everybody has its own unique appearance, opinion and other aspects which can be shown to the world. And if many years ago people proved their reputation mostly with their significant work, today people have more channels and opportunities to do it.
Just because everybody usually likes attention and wants to be recognised or respected, there is a relevance to improve how a person represents itself to others. Of course, there is no chance that everybody will like you no matter what, but if you represent yourself as you really are or you think what you are, you can find your audience who will worship you. So self-representing equals personal branding. Personal branding is like storytelling for others about yourself in a unique way in order to get an expected reaction to you and your work. Usually people tend to expect the positive reaction, but if they represent themselves recklessly - their reputation will be doomed.
PERSONAL BRANDING FOUNDATION
First of all, personal branding comes from yourself. Usually it’s related to your values and knowledge. Without having a strong foundation in understanding who you are, you can’t represent yourself.
Branding comes from something that is well known and can be shown without any doubts. If you don’t know who you really are, you should understand yourself first and only then try to think about purposeful personal branding. It’s worth mentioning that usually personal branding fails when it comes to situations when people don’t have a strong opinion, nor about themselves, nor about what they are doing. It just shows that people don’t care that much.
If you want to understand better yourself in what you are doing, you should ask yourself first:
- What is your greatest passion?
- What do you understand and value the most?
- What is your favorite topic to talk or read about?
- What problem could you or want to solve?
- What could you do all your life even without making money?
When you answer all those questions, you can see what you really are and what’s your personality foundation.
After this, you can start your personal branding process, which comes from inside to outside. By saying „outside“ I mean channels which can help you spread your message about yourself.
PERSONAL BRANDING CHANNEL NUMBER 1 TODAY - SOCIAL MEDIA
Even though personal branding is a much more complicated process which includes your behaviour in the everyday environment, social media today is really important too. Social media is that channel which can help you with at least everything today, including the personal branding process. You can transfer your thoughts and appearance to social media as your traces about yourself which someone will try to follow if you are lucky.
That’s why everyday you can see people posting various photos, videos, texts and other information about themselves. Even the smallest changes in people's lives are posted on social media. It’s like one big book about people's achievements.
HOW TO PROMOTE YOURSELF ON SOCIAL MEDIA?
You can promote yourself on social media by doing everything you were always doing - posting content. But it’s important that the content you are posting would be representative and thoughtful.
There is no right answer how to promote yourself right, because it depends on you. But there are some tips which can help you look better for your audience, no matter what you are doing in your life, writing blog, freelancing, working as manager or just posting your selfies:
Be unique as much as you are. Some people are afraid of how they look or what they are thinking, so they hide behind others. Of course, some people don’t want that much attention, but if you are craving it, you shouldn’t be hiding. Personal branding is about showing off, and your uniqueness can be the key to your reputation by showing that you love yourself or know what you think, so it can be an example for others. Every little post about your understanding, your own truth can be useful not only for your value but also for others who follow you. Furthermore, it can help you to stand out from others.
Don’t cross boundaries. Of course, showing your own values and known things is very important, but you should remember, that you can’t cross the lines. I mean it’s very important to be respectful to others. Never be rude to others while creating content or commentating. You shouldn’t also be spreading racist, homophobic and other similar vibes which can offent others. If you want your personal brand to be successful, you should be more open minded and positive about the environment and its diversity.
Don’t be fake. People say - fake it till you make it. But it’s really unhealthy for personal branding. Faking is something that sooner or later will be suspected and there were no situations when it helped to gain respect. You better be not right about something, but never faking.
Post high-quality content. Even though it depends only on you, I think you can agree with me that people with high quality photos or people who can write correctly usually seem to be more representative. And for me, personally, it’s one of the biggest rules, because in real life people wear nice clothes to impress people and on social media people are posting high quality photos and texts in order to impress others too.
WHERE TO PROMOTE YOURSELF?
On the internet you can find the biggest diversity of the social media channels where you can promote yourself. You just need to choose wisely, which social media channel would be perfect for you.
This platform is perfect for all professionals in different fields. There you can optimize your profile as your living resume for current and future dream jobs. It helps to sell yourself, so you should post everything that can help you look as professional as you need to be to create trust and a representative image of yourself.
If you don’t have an account on this social media channel, you should think about it as one of the biggest opportunities, because it’s created to connect people with professional work intentions.
LinkedIn user guide: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-beginner-all-star-8-easy-steps-clifford-wessel/
This social media platform is mostly helpful for US markets. In Europe it’s not that popular. But if you have short messages about your thoughts, related to recent events or something that’s trending now, it could be also one of the ways to promote yourself.
Furthermore, just because on Twitter you can post only short messages, it’s usually used as a CTA (call to action) platform, where you can post links, questions that require feedback. You can also tweet pictures, reply to other people's tweets, retweet other people's posts.
This platform has no boundaries mostly, so it can be used by everybody that sees the promoting potential, according to target audience activity on this platform.
Twitter user guide: https://help.twitter.com/en/twitter-guide
This platform is not only one of the most popular, but also one of the easiest to use social media channels for everybody. But even though there you can very easily reach your target audience, it's best to use Facebook for those who are selling something or have a lot of information to say about their personal brand (for example: bloggers, small or big businesses, public persons). Facebook usually requires unique content that could be useful for the target audience.
Facebook user guide: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-facebook
Compared with Facebook, this social media channel is also very helpful for personal branding, but it should be used for very artsy and specific industries, which have a lot of visual content. If you are usually posting written posts and have no time for visuals, because you practically don’t need it, you can still use it, but it’s not your first choice to promote yourself. Instagram is usually used by photographers, video makers, graphic designers, models, e-shops etc.
Instagram user guide: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-instagram
All in all, personal branding should be considered as one of the most important things for today's people. Representative and thoughtful content can be your key to a success and you shouldn’t miss a chance to represent yourself right.
I hope it was relevant and interesting. Good luck!