Why Personal Branding is Important?
We live in a world where “you,” as an individual, are as a formidable brand as any organization is. But if the brand “you” are not visible to your target audience, then building your business, establishing your career path, and expanding your network would be quite a challenging task in today’s world. This whole concept of bringing yourself into the limelight is what personal branding is all about. Chris Ducker, the world-renowned business mentor, termed an entrepreneur pursuing personal branding as “youpreneur.” Quite an interesting terminology indeed!
While most of the entrepreneurs invest extensively in marketing their entrepreneurial venture, many of them shy away from investing in personal branding. But in today’s world your audience should know you, and not just your entrepreneurial venture. So, let’s look at what “youpreneurship” or personal branding is all about. How you can benefit from this trending
The Fundamental Approach of Youpreneurship
Personal branding is all about highlighting yourself – your persona, expertise, and experience. It helps you connect with your target audience easily and build a community of trusted followers who will also connect with your entrepreneurial initiatives.
The best example of personal branding is Jeff Bezos, the face of brand Amazon. It’s not just Amazon that Jeff Bezos focuses on, he equally promotes his personal branding. He shares his thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and inspirations with his followers so they trust him to spearhead disruptive innovations through Amazon too. There are many more examples we can look up to – Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson.
What’s common between all their styles of personal branding is their commitment to connect consistently with their audience. It’s all about empowering their audience with inspiring thoughts and examples.
Advantages of Personal Branding
- Personal branding not just for entrepreneurs, it is a great tool for individual growth too. For example, targeted social media interaction, with comments, posts, and articles on your area of expertise, can increase your visibility with organizations looking for talent in the specific area.
- Beyond highlighting your persona, personal branding can do a world of good to your company’s brand. Look at the names we took in the earlier section – Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk. All their companies’ brand values skyrocketed thanks to the value of their personal branding!
- The more expansive your network of connections, the more powerful your personal branding is. But most important, the better your visibility will be. When in this position, you can be an influencer, a mentor, a brand ambassador, and yes, an online celebrity!
- Personal branding definitely gives you the opportunity to interact with many more people than you would otherwise. This opportunity opens up immense potential for exchange of ideas. And every idea is a catalyst for a possibly disruptive innovation
Personal Branding - Nurture With Care
In today’s world of digital marketing services and products, marketing your own selves has become equally important. But the path is not as easy as many of us may think. If done casually and thoughtlessly, you may very well be paving your way toward disaster. You could land up painting a completely negative personal image of yourself, which will definitely damage your professional prospects too.
So, personal branding is not just filling space with content from you and about you. It’s about investing time, energy, and focus on connecting with your target audience and genuinely sharing your inspirations, ideas, and goals with them. The goal is definitely not to brag about how great you are but definitely to build credibility around who you are, what your persona is, what your goals are, and what your professional or personal philosophy is. This requires a lot of effort and focus, but the results are definitely worth the effort
So, when are you embarking on your personal branding journey?