Starting out: 5 top tips to build your personal brand

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Starting out: 5 top tips to build your personal brand

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][dt_gap height=”20″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Author and marketing guru Seth Godin highlights that in an increasingly competitive global economy, doing good work is just not enough. He argues that professionals need to make themselves indispensable by being willing to stand apart and voice their unexpected insights.

Personal branding focuses on your uniqueness or your USP (unique selling proposition), how you position yourself relative to colleagues and competitors and how you are able to ‘package’ yourself in an authentic and noticeable way that makes you stand out.

Once you’ve conceptualised your personal brand, best you test it out. If there are gaps between how you are currently perceived and how you want to be perceived, you need to make adjustments before you actively go out and market your brand.

Here are five top tips to build your brand:

  1. Get feedback from others about how they perceive your brand.
  2. Really understand your uniqueness and what makes you an asset to your business or organisation – play on this; build on it and communicate it consistently.
  3. Determine whether you are memorable and what you can do to become more memorable. Make sure everything you do has a ‘unique’ touch. Take it a step further: understand what the unique aspects are of what you do that people will talk about.
  4. Develop a story about yourself and how you got to where you are today. Ensure it is compelling and evokes an emotional reaction from others. This doesn’t mean being untruthful, it simply means learning which information to highlight and which unnecessary details to cut out.
  5. Assess and develop your ‘online’ branding. Start off by Googling yourself and assessing the results. If you’re on facebook, ‘clean’ up – take off any unflattering or compromising pictures. Get active on LinkedIn, especially as it’s the largest professional social network available. Use the digital space to increase your visibility.

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