Nothing is done out of thin air. Everything takes ample amount of time and patience – especially when you are carving out your personal branding plan.

 

Personal branding is not just personal packaging and promoting yourself online and off. While this is what eventually needs to take place but first comes a proper structure and layout of what your brand entails, and what you stand for.

 

Here are 3 crucial building blocks that will take your brand off to the next level.

 

– Define your vision statement. Defining your overarching vision needs a lot of drive and hunger – something you want to constantly chase – that totally engulfs you and your purpose. When you keep your vision statement lucid and sharp, you know you are working toward the right direction. – chasing your dream north star. This implicitly includes your passion purpose that fuels you to get up in the morning and realize your vision – which is, though, a bit idealistic, but worth the chase, so that you can keep raising your bar of excellence to get close to the fire and feel the intensity of your purpose (metaphorically put).

 

– Carve your value statement. Write down what impact you want to have on your audience through your value-packed brand. Examples could vary from a marketing coach to a career carrier or a Financier – whatever is your field, write (pathetically clearly) your value that you provide to your circle of influence. Whether your brand has products or services, articulate your USP ‘differently’ – and make it crystal clear on all your customer touch points to get more traction. You see, adding value to all your talks, written materials, speaking at conferences, or simply even tweeting with value in mind for your audience instantly wins you mini incremental points to elevate your brand. A very clear example would be of Neil Patel – that I will show you how to increase your traffic and revenue– and rest assured, you know your business is in safe hands.

 

– Flesh out your personal brand’s communication’s approach. As rightly mentioned by William Arruda, here, you need to have a plan of action in the form of thoughtfully written self-marketing material. Your role here is to pen down your brand’s WIP (aka Work in progress) approach for at least a year. This calls for some clarity and understanding of your business realm/ niche and enunciating how will go about creating your visibility around that niche through a sought out communications plan.

 

For example: If you are a career coach [providing services], you need to:

 

  1. Effectively write for career forums – say a monthly article that is circulated in the career professionals’ ecosystem
  2. Prepare your speaking bio and a small talk – say a keynote/ presentation for aspiring job candidates at career-centric conferences and events
  3. Research your top forums and platforms where you will speak and write
  4. Start your own blog and Web site where you will share your personal narrative with the public about what values, vision, and mission your brand stands for.
  5. Work on your content calendar on career (for example) – and the topics you’d like to focus on in the first 6 months of your plan alongside the frequency of publishing content; to see what works and what doesn’t – and then recalibrate
  6. Write a small e-book or a research paper on the role of new age career trends that are impacting the workforce
  7. Target social media channels that you’d like to target for amplification and engagement to reach maximum professionals
  8. Identify your top clients with whom you’d like to work with.
  9. Find out your most effective networking platforms/ conferences/ events where you can leverage the world of mouth marketing at its hilt [this is different from the events where you will speak]
  10. List of related books that you would need to read to stay competitive.

 

Lastly, don’t reach at an impasse after making your plan – that’s the first step. Then comes focused execution. Have the same drive to execute your plan consistently as per your set out benchmarks and vision – and keep working hard. Eventually, your brand will start getting noticed and acknowledged for its very building blocks – vision, purpose, value, and a killer plan.

 

What is your approach to developing your personal branding plan?