Ever wonder how successful marketing professionals manage to keep pace with the industry while also maintaining a personal life? How they continue to inspire you to be your best self even when you’re feeling a bit down?
If so, then this course is for you. In order to master your personal brand, you’ll need to understand what it means to have a unique set of skills, characteristics, and hobbies that make you distinctly different from everyone else.
We’ll dive into how to develop your personal brand and how to use it to your advantage in today’s job market. But first, let’s explore the various roles that a personal brand can play in your life and what makes them special.
Why Should You Have A Personal Brand?
Branding is all about creating a unique identity that will resonate with your audience. If you can successfully do this, they’ll associate you with trust and quality. This, in turn, will enable you to succeed in your career. If you want to excel in your chosen field, develop a focused, expert personal brand that will make you recognizable as an authoritative voice in your industry.
While you might worry that having a branded identity will make you less approachable and less human, that couldn’t be further from the truth. People who know and trust you will be much more likely to want to work with you because they feel your values and beliefs align with their own. In other words, you’ll be approachable because people know what you stand for; you won’t be approachable because you have a branded identity.
As a business owner, hiring manager, or career changer, you’ll be responsible for generating new leads and converting these leads into paying customers. One of the best ways to do this is by setting yourself apart from other candidates through your personal brand. If someone is reading your personal brand and instantly feels like you’re the person they want to work with, you’ve successfully set yourself apart and increased the likelihood that they’ll feel confident enough to apply for the job.
Of course, your personal brand also serves as a great way to define yourself as an individual. Your hobbies, your likes and dislikes, your interests and passions – these are all part of your personal brand and represent you perfectly as an individual. You may decide that you want to work in a certain industry, but until then, your hobbies and interests can serve as the perfect platform to showcase your unique skills and qualities.
What Should Your Personal Brand Reflect?
As we’ve established, developing a personal brand means creating an identity that will make you stand out in a sea of competitors. To do this, you must consider what your brand will and won’t include. For example, you might want to include your hobbies in your brand development because you feel these are things that make you uniquely qualified for the job. You should also include your strengths and the characteristics that you feel will make you stand out among your peers. This could be describing you as a fast-paced, driven person who always stays ahead of the game. Or it could be that you’re the go-to person for your industry because you’ve mastered certain technologies or approaches that others find challenging or even impossible to implement.
In creating your personal brand, you must also decide what it is you want the brand to stand for. It’s important to note here that your personal brand is not necessarily a slogan or a brand motto. Instead, it is the set of values and beliefs that you want to instill in your audience. These values and beliefs will then be reflected in your brand’s material – the things that you choose to represent yourself (e.g., your hobbies, your style, etc.) As an example, you might want to create a brand that stands for integrity, professionalism, and hard work. Your brand’s tagline or motto could then be: “We’re busy. We’re smart. And we strive for excellence.”
What’s great about this is that as soon as you’ve established what your personal brand is going to stand for, it’s much easier to determine the specific attributes that you want to include in your brand development. You can then begin to think about the traits that you feel will bring you success in your chosen field. Your brand’s design, colors, and fonts should all be consistent with and support this identity. Once you’ve got this solid foundation in place, it’s much easier to take your brand and grow it organically.
How Can You Use Your Personal Brand In Your Job Search?
So you want to know how to effectively utilize your personal brand in your job search. Let’s dive into that. First, you need to consider where you might look for a job. When it comes to your job search, there are a variety of platforms and communities that you might use to connect with potential employers. These include social media, networking groups, job boards, and newspapers. Each of these has its perks and its drawbacks. Let’s discuss the various platforms and how you can best use each one.
Social Media
If you’ve been on the job hunt for a while, you’ll know that social media is an essential tool in your arsenal. It’s a great place to connect with potential employers, look for jobs, and express yourself creatively. When it comes to your personal brand, you can use social media to show the world your hobbies, your interests, and your talents.
There are a variety of platforms that you might use when it comes to social media. The most popular ones are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn is the classic professional network that you should always consider using. It’s completely free, and you can quickly and easily set yourself up with a professional-looking profile. Once you’ve got your profile built, you can begin to look for jobs that interest you.
On the subject of jobs, LinkedIn is a great platform to search for specific types of positions (e.g., marketing, sales, etc.) This is because LinkedIn allows you to search for jobs based on specific skills, experience, and education. If you’ve got a certain skill or expertise that would be beneficial for a specific job, you can tailor your LinkedIn search to include only those positions that match your skill set. This is a great way to ensure you only see relevant results when you conduct your search.
In addition to LinkedIn, you can also use Facebook to build and grow your personal brand. This is mainly because Facebook allows you to attach a personal description to your brand. This description will then show up beneath your profile picture when other people search for you. When someone finds your profile, they’ll know immediately what you stand for and, therefore, what to expect from you.
Finally, let’s not forget about Twitter. Twitter is the modern-day, 24-hour news network. It’s always evolving, changing, and adapting to the times we live in. If you’ve got a relevant and engaging presence on this platform, you can be sure that people will find you when they’re looking for information on your chosen subject matter.
So, as you can see, there are a variety of places that you can build and grow your personal brand. When doing your research, be sure to consider the benefits and the drawbacks of each platform.
Professional Networks
While social media is an excellent place to build and grow your personal brand, it’s not the only place. You can also join professional networks where you can meet other professionals, gain access to helpful resources, and show off your personal brand.
There are dozens of networks that you can join for free. Some of these networks are industry-specific (e.g., AB Testing, or SEO), while others are more general (e.g., BizEaze, or Digital Marketing). Once you’ve joined a network, you can begin to search for jobs that interest you. Once you located a job that you think might be a good fit, you can then contact the employer directly through the network. This is a great way to skip the tedious job-searching process and jump right to the meat of the matter – talking to a real person who can actually provide you with an answer!
If you’ve got a social media account, you can also use these platforms to join networks and look for jobs. Doing this through social media will likely get you in touch with a live person who can provide you with immediate and relevant feedback on your personal brand and how you’re using it in your job search.