Your personal brand is the most powerful yet underestimated asset you have as a professional. This is very true, especially in this connected world era.
What is a personal brand?
Your personal brand is how people perceive you. The combination of the main keywords comes to people’s minds when your name is mentioned in your absence. In other words, your personal brand is your core values that people see when they interact with you.
It is the same when people see you online, especially on social media. How does your network perceive your posts? Do they think of you as someone who is motivational? Enthusiastic? Stubborn? Negative? or debating? Remember that what you post on social media directly reflects your personal brand.
How do you build an influential personal brand online?
Building a professional personal brand online is not a one-time task. It is an ongoing process. The best way to achieve that is to have a “system” in place. To have a good system, you should start with a good plan. We always say, “If you fail to plan, it’s plan to fail”.
Next would be executing this plan and having an execution “system” in place.
How do you plan to establish a powerful personal brand online?
The first step in planning is defining your own Unique Value Proposition. You can do this by ansaewring what I call the “three specifics” questions:
1- Who is your specific target audience?
We always say, “if you are talking to everyone, you are talking to no one”! So, who do you want to talk to? Who do you want to help? Fresh graduates, middle management professionals, entrepreneurs, moms selling food online, etc?
2- For this specific audience, what is their specific problem that you can solve?
Can you help fresh graduates land their dream jobs? Middle management to advance their careers? Entrepreneurs to scale their startups? Can you help moms to sell more of their stuff online?
3- For this specific problem, what is your specific solution?
Here it is important to niche down as much as possible. It differs from saying: “I help entrepreneurs to grow their business,” versus, “I help tech entrepreneurs to increase their sales by building a credible personal brand on Linkedin”!
Think about the impact of your solution on your audience’s lives! People buy things for one of two reasons. Either moving away from fears and challenges. Or getting closer to needs, wants, and desires. Place your solution into one of these two categories and your audiences’ “buying-in”!
After planning, how do you install a system in place?
Based on those questions, you will understand your target audience and the best platforms to choose for your presence. My preference in social media is LinkedIn. It is the platform where my target audience exists.
Next is the 6Cs process.
First C: Character:
Your character on social media (like Linkedin) is your profile. What is the first message you want to convey to someone visiting your profile? This can be reflected in your cover image and headline, where you can share your UVP.
Second & third Cs: Consistent Content:
Building a personal brand is about sharing “relevant and relatable” content consistently. I call it RR! Impactful online content falls under one of three types: Educational, motivational, or entertaining. Depending on your character and target audience, you can decide the frequency and type of content. Choosing 2 or 3 topics and creating content about them is crucial.
Remember that your content should be solving your audience’s problem. You are sharing content to ”help them,” not to “talk about you.”
Fourth C: Conversations
The goal of consistent content is to initiate conversations. Relatable and relevant content creates conversations. This can be engagement on your posts, direct messages, or even turning those DMs into WhatsApp or phone calls. The more you “talk” to your audience, the more they will remember you.
Fifth C: Connections:
When your content is useful and creates conversations, other people outside of your network will be interested in joining. When you find connection requests from people you do not know personally, your personal brand is growing!
Finally, Sixth C: Conversions
When people talk to you, they will trust you. Trust is the most valuable currency over the internet today! Your audience will start tagging you in their posts and mentioning you in their comments on other people’s posts.
Here is where conversion happens. Conversion can be any action your audience is taking toward you. It can be new job opportunities, freelancing, consultancy, media exposure, etc. Moreover, if you offer a product or service, people are happy (& proud) to buy from you.
Now, I recommend you start building your personal brand online immediately!
