Why is building your personal brand so valuable in today’s market? Is it something you should be looking more into or is it relevant only for specific industries and professions?
To understand the importance of your personal brand in today’s digital world, go on Google now and google yourself.
What comes up on Google, represents your personal brand.
And whether you like it or not, more than 95% of people today will google your name and search for your social media profiles before they even meet you in person or right after they meet you. This could be employers, potential clients, business associates, and anyone who is interested to know more about you.
WHAT IS A PERSONAL BRAND?
Your Personal Brand represents what is unique about you, what value you bring to the world, how you communicate your value to others, what people say about you, how they perceive you and what image they have of you.
Personal Branding is a powerful tool. People who know how to use it skilfully, build great influence in their market in any industry or profession.
Personal branding today plays a central role in your business and career growth. The reason for this is that personal brand represents your online reputation in today’s market. In particular, it shows how people and companies perceive you and how much they value your knowledge, your skills, your services, and your potential.
Strong personal brands in any industry attract the best opportunities, higher payment, better clients, better job offers. We also consider them as the go-to authorities and influencers in their niche.
The benefits of good personal branding are endless nowadays when we all live in a global economy and are part of a global culture. When we are all connected online and the opportunities we meet are not only local but also global.
DO I HAVE A PERSONAL BRAND?
If you have any social media profile or online presence, you already are a personal brand.
And if you don’t have any social media profiles or websites, chances are that people who search for you online can still find something on the internet that someone else posted about you. And this not always represents how you want to be perceived today as a professional.
So in today’s online world, it’s wise to educate yourself and have control over the information people find online about you. You can do it by taking care of your online presence, your image, and your digital footprint.
And you can take it a step further and build great leverage and power out of these unlimited opportunities that the social media platforms are offering to people who can use them skillfully.
So here are
5 REASONS WHY HAVING A PERSONAL BRAND TODAY IS ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR SUCCESS
REASON #1. PEOPLE WILL GOOGLE YOU ANYWAY
Whether you are applying for a job, going to a business meeting or looking to get more clients for your services and products, most people will search for you online before they make a decision to cooperate. Also, your existing business partners, clients, associates, and employer, are also influenced by your online presence. They pay close attention to what you post, how you interact with people online and what image you give out.
REASON #2. BE VISIBLE IN YOUR MARKET NICHE
If you are invisible online, potential clients or employers cannot find you when they are searching for what you have to offer. There are so many people with amazing knowledge, skills, and potential but unfortunately nobody knows about them. These people often don’t get paid what they are worth because they don’t know how to take care of their online presence and promote themselves and their skills, products, and services.
REASON #3. HAVE BETTER CLIENTS, OPPORTUNITIES AND HIGHER PAYMENT
By building a respected personal brand, you attract better clients, better opportunities, and higher payment. The right people find you and ask to work with you, instead of you going after clients, jobs, associates, and opportunities. It makes your professional life so much easier and allows your business to grow faster. A personal brand gives you the power of choosing who you want to work with and how much you want to charge. This happens because everyone wants to cooperate with the person who is perceived as the top authority in their market niche. Think about how you are easily willing to pay a lot more to go to the best hairstylist, the best doctor, the best lawyer, and the best consultant if you can afford their services.
REASON #4. SEIZE THE UNLIMITED GLOBAL OPPORTUNITIES
We live in a new global economy of unlimited opportunities. A few years ago, to get any exposure, you had to pay a lot of money to the media moguls, who used to monopolize information in each country. Now everyone can build their own online ‘media’ channel on LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook or any other social media platform. Everyone nowadays can unlock a world of opportunities, locally or globally. Online there are no restrictions. If people like you, they will follow, ask to work with you and buy from you. It’s up to you to get the knowledge on how to use this power of the social media networks to gain massive leverage in this global economy.
REASON #5. BENEFIT FROM BECOMING AN INFLUENCER AND CELEBRITY
You can choose to take your personal branding a step further and become an influencer and celebrity in your market and industry. You can achieve this by using social media to build your brand skilfully with consistency and patience. Building influencer and celebrity status can have great benefits on your income, your professional, and business growth. There’s a lot of talk about ‘online influencers’ today. Influencer status is not about how many followers you have. It’s about knowing how to use the social media tools the right way to create an impact in your market through your work and through giving value.
PERSONAL BRANDING – SECRETS TO SUCCESS
Are there any secrets that people who build big respected personal brands know and use to stand out? What are the strategies that truly work and bring results?
The tools are available to everyone today, wherever you are in the world. However, you need to have access to the right information, the right strategies and formulas that work today and implement consistently over a period of time. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Building your personal brand will take patience. At the same time, without having the right services or products that you offer through your brand, your personal brand can do very little with regards to bringing you more income. So it’s a combination of steps that you need to take.
I know that building a personal brand can sound like a challenging task, especially if you are just getting started. And the truth is that it’s not easy but its worth it.
There are many mistakes that people make when promoting themselves online that can have a negative effect on their image and business. Online if you make a wrong move, it can backfire, so you need to take careful and educated steps. There are two sides of every coin, and we see everything in today’s online world when everyone is trying to stand out.
MY FREE RESOURCES TO HELP YOU BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
To help you build your personal brand the right way, become a top authority in your niche and grow your business, I’ve been creating free video series, blog posts and actionable tips that you can find on my Youtube channel and my pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I would love to connect with you there and learn about your personal branding journey!
Are you building your personal brand or considering doing so? Why is personal branding important particularly to you? Let me know in the comments below!
Originally published at www.pavlinapapalouka.com