Personal Branding, Everything You Need To Know

The ways to achieve professional success are divided into “offline” and online paths. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking for your first job or digitally planning your work activity; you need to know that personal branding can help you differentiate yourself in the market. But what is it, and what to do exactly? What should you pay attention to? And again: does personal branding work?

What Is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is a practice that has been talked about a lot lately, but it is very old. Like corporate branding activities, which marketing has been dealing with for decades now, personal branding is the practice of creating a positioning of oneself – in one’s professional environment – of image, skills and experience. Personal branding is built through a triad: knowing how to do things and making it known. 

Those who build their brand only on communication, appearance, and being there at all costs and need better skills in their field of action sooner or later will be unmasked. Consequently, all competent and experienced people must also learn to communicate online. Otherwise, they risk remaining in the shadows and not being recognizable despite their competence.

Who Can Do Personal Branding?

No categories are excluded from personal branding: everyone should undertake this activity. Businessmen and women, professionals, those who work in institutions… but also those who want to make a career, those looking for new customers, those who want to find the best collaborators. Your influence increases as your visibility increases. Being present on all social networks with a personal profile is optional.

Once you have identified the sector and the area for which you want to become “influential” with your skills, owning a site is one of the first steps to take. Then, you have to evaluate the time available and, based on that, choose the channels to monitor. Generally, it is always better to have a few online profiles, but always keep them updated rather than being present everywhere with old and abandoned accounts.

Personal Branding Strategies And Techniques

Silvia continues: “first of all you need to identify your talents, skills and your distinctiveness compared to the competition, what in marketing is called UVP, or Unique Value Proposition”. Here too, a triad comes into play on which to build your narrative: talent/skills, passion and reference market. If you want to be effective, you have to analyze yourself, find your strengths, talents and skills, and choose those on which you feel strongest, for which you spend your time with the most passion. 

This work will help you be more impactful and believable when you speak and create your content. Lastly, you must choose a market for your talent, or rather a gap, a niche in the market: a need, a problem that your talent can solve, to which you must associate an economic value. An example? Are you a photographer and particularly passionate about wedding or ceremonial photography? Do you have extensive experience in the field, and are you familiar with the concerns and needs of people looking for a photographer for their events? 

Once you’ve identified your talent and audience, you can finally start building a site or blog that meets the needs of your target audience. You will do this by highlighting your skills. You will also need to draw up an editorial plan: careful planning of content organized by topics. But social media will also be useful. Participating in discussions on channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn will be useful in making your opinion more authoritative. You will thus begin to build your branding on different channels.

The Benefits Of Personal Branding

In short, as you may have guessed, personal branding is a very powerful tool. Imagine, at this point, taking a stool and wearing a red dress. Here, from the moment you get on the stool with that dress and start talking, something magical happens there: people will immediately notify you and listen to you”. This is the point of a good personal branding strategy: to have a better chance to be noticed and heard.

In Summary

Today, without a doubt, personal branding is a fundamental strategy for obtaining “that something extra” that others may not have. A well-kept site and positioning on digital channels are two activities that you can easily implement and that will help you achieve the success you deserve.

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