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What Is Personal Branding And How To Use It For Business In 2023?

If you believe that personal branding just helps you, you are incorrect. It's a plan with far-reaching implications. To understand why to let us first define personal branding and then look at how a personal brand may help our business.

Mar 17, 202317.4K Shares311.7K ViewsWritten By: Alastair Martin
Jump to
  1. What Is Personal Branding?
  2. Why Personal Branding Is Important?
  3. Types Of Personal Branding
  4. What Impact Does Your Personal Brand Have On Your Business?
  5. Personal Branding's Essential Functions
  6. Tips On How To Improve Your Personal Branding
  7. Personal Branding's Advantages And Disadvantages
  8. How Does Your Personal Brand Contribute To Your Business?
  9. Is A Personal Brand Necessary?
  10. What All Things Can Be Branded?

If you believe that personal brandingjust helps you, you are incorrect. It's a plan with far-reaching implications. To understand why to let us first define personal brandingand then look at how a personal brand may help our business.

In this post, we'll give a strong definition of personal branding as well as practical ways your personal brand may benefit your businessbrand. Then, to round things up, we'll look at some personal branding examples of people who have rocked their personal brand and utilized it to grow their business.

But first, we must address the question, "What exactly is personal branding?"

What Is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is the process of building a brand around an individual rather than a company. Personal branding is used to further people's careers by portraying them as industry experts.

A person may improve their social following and so obtain a better job, sell more items in their business, and expand their careerpossibilities by creating a personal brand.

Building a personal brand does not happen quickly; it might take months of preparation and hard effort to see results, and you may need to improve your personal brand after getting feedback.

This is also known as self-branding, and the terms will be used interchangeably in this article to indicate the same thing.

You may create a personal brand statement to help you develop your own personal brand. A personal brand statement defines your target audience, the value you intend to provide to them, and why they should follow you (your USP).

While developing your personal brand, you should use this 1-2 phrase statement to guarantee that you stay true to it.

Personal Branding - why is it important?

Why Personal Branding Is Important?

Personal branding is essential because it lends credibility to a person. It has never been more difficult to get new work or earn a paycheck.

With more people developing personal brands, you must put yourself out there in order to get recognized. Personal branding may make it easier for employers to locate specialists like you, especially if you've been blogging for a while.

If you're applying for a higher-level position at a new business, you may highlight essential statistics such as the number of followers you have, the amount of traffic your website receives, or other important metrics that will offer you a competitive advantage over other applicants.

Consider it something like an online portfolio about yourself. Branding yourself allows more people to learn about who you are and what you offer to the table.

It can also help you land new chances, like commercial agreements or marketing collaborations, that you would not have otherwise, particularly if you are a person of influence.

Self-branding builds trust and confidence in your expertise and talents, so businesses know that collaborating with you will increase brand recognition.

Authentically branding yourself by displaying your personality is a fantastic approach to differentiate yourself from others in your profession and create your personal brand. We'll go through this further later.

Types Of Personal Branding
Types Of Personal Branding

Types Of Personal Branding

According to a New York Times report, there are six basic forms of personal brands:

  • Altruists. These people have been honored for their efforts to serve others and to devote their time to charitable causes. Angelina Jolie, Dolly Parton, and Bill Gates are examples of this.
  • Careerists. These businesses prioritize accomplishment over anything else. This brand is well-known for giving knowledge and being thought leaders in their respective sectors. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Simon Sinek all fall under this group.
  • Hipsters. These brands frequently mix charity with careerism, although they are more concerned with knowledge exchange than action. Look to this brand for fresh and stylish items.
  • Boomerangs. Boomerang companies post stuff in order to stir up controversy. They may not agree with the information they are disseminating, but they like being controversial. This includes your favorite meme accounts as well as news reporters.
  • Connectors.These folks like bringing people together and take delight in creating communities. They are frequently innovative and love the approval of others. Consider your favorite Instagram influencersor celebs.
  • Selectives.Selective brands only share information with a limited number of people. They are resourceful and take the effort to curate material for their audience.

The first step in enhancing your personal brand is to understand what it is and how it operates.

What Impact Does Your Personal Brand Have On Your Business?

What exactly is a business? It's the logo, isn't it? Is it the structure that houses it? We would all, of course, say no emphatically.

We understand that it is the people behind the name that makes a company what it is. Furthermore, before engaging with a company, modern consumers want to get to know the people behind the scenes, particularly the CEO and senior executives.

And what they discover might be the difference between sticking with one brand and going on to another.

What do your potential customers want to see in your personal brand? They want to know what makes you unique – your sense of humor, your interests, your ideas.

Of course, the focus would be on your company and sector, but by including personal facts and experiences, you would give a relevant, human touch.

To summarize, the more your audience sees your personal side, the more likely they are to connect with and trust you.

This is why a personal branding strategy has the ability to affect the financial line of your company.

But how can you create a personal brand that effectively connects with your target audience and generates results for your company? Let's take a look at five methods you may start using right away.

Personal Branding's Essential Functions
Personal Branding's Essential Functions

Personal Branding's Essential Functions

Businesses, first and foremost, seek financial benefit while engaging in any type of marketing activity; nevertheless, aside from producing money, personal branding serves a variety of other vital roles. Here are some examples of what personal branding can accomplish for your company:

Build Credibility

People trust people more than they trust brands. The primary goal of a personal brand is to increase trust and strengthen the relationship between the business and the client.

Showcase Your Expertise

It might be challenging to build your expert profile or business brand image. After all, unless they are developed with a compelling humanized brand personality, corporate brands are faceless entities, but individuals are hard-wired to seek authoritative counsel from actual people.

A business brand does not have a résumé or a narrative to communicate unless it was developed with one as part of the codification process.

Building a business brand reputationalso takes time. On the other hand, no matter where you are in your path, you most likely already have a unique talent that you can share with the world as part of your own brand.

Connect With Your Target Audience

While corporate brands inspire people to aspire to a specific image or promise of a better future, a personal brand allows customers to connect with the brand in the here and now.

It is also utilized to strengthen your engagement and connectedness with important stakeholders, mentors, influencers, and decision-makers both within and internationally.

Support A Corporate Brand

A personal brand may be utilized to humanize a corporate brand since it becomes the voice behind the corporate brand when carefully championed.

It also highlights the distinctiveness of a company brand. Because corporate brands typically take a homogeneous approach, it is often more difficult to identify one from another, particularly in the professional services and financial industries.

Stronger codification and brand humanization, on the other hand, would achieve clearer market differentiation and stand out that resonated with its primary customers across all key brand-building ingredients such as brand positioning, purpose, vision, personality, mission, values, story, and archetypes.

Personal branding is unique. It is widely acknowledged that each person is an individual with their own set of objectives, aspirations, values, and morals. Personal branding, in essence, leverages the societal notion of each person's individuality to improve the distinctiveness of a business brand.

Tips On How To Improve Your Personal Branding
Tips On How To Improve Your Personal Branding

Tips On How To Improve Your Personal Branding

It may be tough to determine whether you have achieved success in your activities if you do not have a personal branding statement.

Receiving comments and ensuring that your self-brand fits your personal branding can assist you in furthering your growth. Personal branding has been extremely beneficial for many people, but there is no true development without a personal brand statement.

To strengthen your personal brand, follow these steps.

  • Research and develop your personal branding statement. At this point, define your audience and assess any competitors that may exist for you.
  • Build a personal branding strategy. Plan how you will connect with your target audience and define your success after two months, nine months, and two years.
  • Monitor your personal brand engagement. Encourage positive involvement and have a plan of action in place for negative comments.
  • Develop your personal brand. Share your personal brand via social media, networking, outreach, and speaking opportunities. Consider blogging, vlogging, podcasts, and other methods of promoting your personal brand that will allow your audience to digest the information rapidly.
  • Have a communication plan. Controlling your internet presence may be time-consuming, so this strategy will help you deal with the negative backlash and offer information to partners with whom you will collaborate in the future.
  • Measure your success on a regular basis. Set some KPIs for personal brand success so you know you're on the right track. Celebrate even minor victories to stay inspired to accomplish more.

So, after all of this, how can you know whether you've been successful in developing your own brand? Among the useful KPIs are:

  • When a sale converts through your blog
  • When you are asked to speak at an event or on a podcast
  • When someone refers you to a potential client
  • When a publication reaches out to invite you to guest blog
  • When people start mentioning you online, on social media, their blog, or other important media
Personal Branding's Advantages And Disadvantages
Personal Branding's Advantages And Disadvantages

Personal Branding's Advantages And Disadvantages

Personal branding and business branding should go hand in hand in an ideal world since one promotes the other through harmonic alignment.

However, every organization and business is unique, such as how a corporate brand entitymay be extremely personal in its personification, eliminating the need for the amplification of a personal brand behind it.

Another situation is when a business owner chooses not to develop a corporate brand because they believe it will compete with their existing successful personal brand.

Before you make a final choice on the ideal brand strategy for your company, consider the advantages and disadvantages of each branding strategy method.

Personal Branding Has Three Advantages

Below are the advantages of personal branding:

  • Flexibility. A customized brand allows the company to be as flexible as possible. Your personal brand remains consistent regardless of the product or service you sell. While relying on a personal brand, it is easier to modify the business offering or even enter a new market.
  • More Trust. Prospects will not buy if they do not have trust. Individuals trust other people more than brands, as we've previously proven. The active presence of a personal brand on social media also allows you to demonstrate to your consumers that the business exists and is engaged in the market.
  • Wider Application. With a business brand, you must be more strategic, if not cautious, in your communication channels. The bounds of a personal brand may lack the same definition or concentration unless the scatter-gun random approach is hurting your brand. Because consumers generally perceive a personal brand and a business brand as distinct entities, you have greater leeway to experiment with different marketing and communication channels and tactics without negatively impacting the company brand.

However, if the personal brand is highly developed, linked with the corporate brand, and high profile with a significant following, a more deliberate approach is required to prevent damaging the corporate brand.

For example, because a corporate brand is inextricably linked to business, even if you actively engage in corporate social responsibility and give back to society at large, you can't claim to be rescuing mankind with true honesty because a corporation's main objective is to profit.

However, as a personal brand, you may demonstrate to your audience that you are concerned about bigger societal concerns.

As a result, the scope of what you may accomplish as a personal brand is usually less constrained. When the two are united and properly aligned, they form an extremely powerful force.

Personal Branding Has Three Disadvantages

Below are the disadvantages of personal branding:

  • Revolves Around One Person. When you are successful as a person, your personal brand grows. However, making a mistake, or worse, failing, may have a bad impact on your personal brand and damage your business. If you become ill or your reputation suffers a setback, you cannot replace yourself since you are the basis of your personal brand.
  • Hard to Sell a Business Built on a Personal Brand. You may not be planning to sell your firm right now, but it is an important aspect to consider in the future. If you base your whole business on your personal brand, you will become a strategic asset to the firm. Selling a personal brand-based business introduces a slew of problems since you, as an individual, are eventually leaving the corporate entity, and when you leave, the firm loses part of its perceived worth. It is typically the cause of SME/SMB firms being devalued and selling for less than an identical business with a strong independent corporate brand asset.
  • Risk to Override a Corporate Brand. People have more ways to express themselves than corporate branding. They can also participate in non-business activities. This poses a danger for a business organization since it is often bound by a set of behavioral brand rules and norms that may be undercut by a personal brand.
Google Questions
Google Questions

How Does Your Personal Brand Contribute To Your Business?

Personal branding is used to further people's careers by showing them as experts in their fields. By developing a personal brand, a person may increase their social following and therefore acquire a better job, sell more goods in their business, and extend their professional opportunities.

Is A Personal Brand Necessary?

A personal brand identity enables a professional to demonstrate to the world what he or she stands for as an individual employee. Building a personal brand may demonstrate a person's abilities and traits, identifying what makes them unique or significant.

What All Things Can Be Branded?

Many different types of items may become brands. Individual goods, product lines, services, companies, individual individuals, groups, events, geographic locations, private label brands, media, and e-brands are all examples of brands.

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