In today’s 24/7 communications-technology-driven world, every person can build a public profile.
But building a personal brand is different.
In this edition, we briefly explore what personal branding is and how it can enhance your reputation.
Building a personal brand is one of the most empowering and effective ways to stand out and communicate your value to others.
Personal branding is about defining, expressing and strategically leveraging an authentic self-identity and professional value proposition that shapes the way you want to be perceived; your reputation.
It’s also about thinking, speaking and acting in alignment with your highest values, consistently.
Your personal brand is all-encompassing, embodying your identity, passions, values, beliefs, purpose, vision and expertise, which are invisible to the outside world.
Together, these intrinsic elements influence your language, behaviour, stories, visual elements of your brand, public profile and performance results, which are visible to the outside world.
The below iceberg graphic illustrates the interplay between the invisible and visible elements of a personal brand.
Your personal brand is a bridge to your desired reputation.
There are myriad benefits from building a strong personal brand; one of them being it closes the gap between your actual reputation and your desired reputation.
Everyone has a reputation, but most people don’t have a strong personal brand. It’s a critical distinction to understand.
We form an opinion about someone whether we know them well or not. This opinion is based on our collective experiences of a person, gained for example, by interacting with them directly, reading about them in a magazine, watching an interview on television, listening to a podcast, sitting in on a webinar or, vicariously, through what we’ve heard others say about them.
In the absence of a strong personal brand, the opinions people have about someone will vary. In effect, the reputation of people without a strong personal brand is fragmented.
People with a strong personal brand, on the other hand, build a reputation by design rather than default.
Their reputation precedes them because they are known within their workplace or industry through the projection of a clear, aligned and consistent personal brand over time, in all places and on all platforms.
By doing so, they set themselves apart, for example, when:
So, if you want to shape a great reputation, build a strong personal brand. It’s the bridge to take you from your current (possibly fragmented) reputation to your desired (cohesive) reputation.
May 2024 be the year you build a strong personal brand and enhance your rep-U-tation!
©Ros Weadman 2024
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