If you were are a product, would people buy you? What does your personal brand say about you?
Your personal brand is how you project yourself and what people think about you, your work, and your contributions. Everything about your personal brand should be about how you bring value to yourself, your peers, your clients, your supervisors, and your friends and family.
Regardless of how you define your personal brand, and what career and personal goals you set for yourself, here are 6 points to give you control over your personal brand and help you achieve your professional and personal goals.
Become the authority.
Find that thing that makes you unique within your organization, group, industry, or market. Develop yourself into the subject matter expert and be ready to use and share your knowledge. The goal behind you becoming the authority is for other people to think of you as the go-to person for your particular subject. Incorporate your expertise into your brand.
Find your style.
People deal with people. Your personality will give that special touch you need to project your brand. Do not copy others. Find the good traits you have and make the most out of them. Be authentic to who you are and how you interact with others, while still following industry and company protocols and rules. Embrace your style and leverage it into what you offer.
Gain visibility.
Your brand is all about showing yourself to the world and how others perceive you. Find ways to share what you have to offer and take your knowledge outside of your desk. Create a blog, prepare videos, share presentations, write white papers, and share with your network, both online through social media, or offline while you are at work in the office or face to face with peers, clients, and your managers. Out there are people who need you and want to meet you, so make yourself and your brand visible to them.
Stay positive and motivated.
Nobody wants to be around a negative and undriven person. While staying realistic, and with your feet on the ground, be positive about continuously looking for solutions and improvements. Be motivated about what you have to offer, bringing value to others and solving new challenges.
Inspire people.
You want to project that working with you brings value and that listening to your words will lead to new ideas and ways of solving problems. Your brand is about what people think and feel about you. Include within your brand to inspire others to do great work, whether it is because of guidance you share with them, or because you lead by example in situations when you either reach success or when you encounter learning opportunities.
Trust yourself.
If you don’t have confidence in your abilities, neither will others. Your team, your clients, and your peers will feel any self doubt, and this will not help you meet your goals and bring your projects to completion. Your brand is all about who you are and what value you bring to others. Have confidence in yourself, your skills, and your aptitudes, and make sure to constantly develop them to continuously project trust and confidence on to others.
Take control of your personal brand. Incorporate these 6 things in sharing with the world how you add value, and remember, your future career depends on your actions today.