Personal branding is not just for branding experts and marketing folks; it is for anyone who can positively influence a set of audience with strikingly clear and authentic content narrative around his/her area of expertise. But very few people succeed at it. Not because you are not good; well, you just got to be great and nothing short of it. With almost every business professional branding – intentionally or unintentionally – you’ve got to keep strong tabs on what kind of branding is working in this digital age.
The lines between personal branding and business success are morphing into a holistic self-marketing strategy that only guarantees serious business results in the form of attracting loyal customers, forging business partnerships, hiring talented people, and building thought leadership not just for your company but also for yourself.
So how do you build yours when there is already so much of personal branding taking every inch of the online marketing space?
Let’s examine a few misses you are making in not coping up with establishing your brand’s presence – and then put a solution to it that positively offsets your inadequacies.
- You are not content-driven with no solid brand purpose. Solution: Almost anyone can launch a Web site with pleasing visuals and some commentary about yourself, but you have to go steps further to advance with your personal branding goals. You need a foundational branding strategy and a deep purpose to make an impact on your audience via writing pieces about the inner trenches of your expertise. Your brand needs a constant flow of content that becomes a source of gleaning answers to your audience’s questions. It goes without saying that you need to have your founding and lasting purpose in mind before you lay out a content strategy in place. Align your passionate purpose with your brand narrative – and see your brand grow.
- There is no longevity in your thought leadership. Solution: You can’t become an expert overnight with some content commentary bubble that suddenly bursts when your audience doesn’t see value in your blogs, articles, audio, video, or any kind of content. Why your need longevity when it comes to building thought leadership is because consistency in adding value is the real king and not an occasional affair with respect to marketing your brand’s content. You need to know your audience’s destination which your thought leadership can solve – and not yet-another-rant about what you think generally. Go deep – and add value. People will remember you for the long-haul with this mind-set.
- You are not making meaningful connections. Solution: Perhaps in the quest to make many connections – just because you are of the assumption that more is merrier in professional life – you miss out the quality of intelligent connections you make over a period of time. Every relationship – be it personal or professional – takes time. You need to put in the work to understand your network and each relationship to deduce any synergies that are win-win. Even if you don’t quite notice any business opportunities arising out of your connections, it’s always great to be helping them in advancing towards their business goals. We live in an age where we all need each other at some point, so why not start helping today? You will reap the benefits in the long-term with this gesture. Remember: every connection counts.
Are these signs familiar to you? How are you coping up with this struggle?
Let’s have a conversation.
