Strategic personal branding: A roadmap to high visibility

There are a lot of professionals with strong personalities and great potentials for succeeding in their career. They however encounter difficulties in creating a good reputation, social networking, and positive outcomes about themselves in their organisation due to the lack of knowledge of their strengths and how to highlight these strengths. It is important for professionals to understand how to position themselves better in their work environment.

Personal branding can be a vital element for high visibility. Personal branding is a combination of your skills and expertise, how you behave and appear to others, and the values that underpin your actions and choices. A well sculpt personal brand is clearly and meaningfully differentiated from others.

Every individual possesses intrinsic personal branding as a result of personality qualities, past experience and development, and communication with others—whether they know it or not. In this sense, every person already has a personal brand of some kind. The challenge is to manage that brand strategically. “Everyone you meet has an impression of you, It doesn’t matter if you interacted with them on LinkedIn, over email, in person, or a combination. They have a specific impression of who you are.” That impression can be characterized as an individual’s current personal brand. A current brand is a starting point—an opportunity to develop an intentional, specific personal brand.

According to Lauren Young Durbin Esq. in her linkedin article titled 10 Reasons Why personal Branding is essential when Changing Careers, a personal brand helps to establish credibility and trust. It communicates your experience and value, establishes you as an expert. it provides clarity, and boost self – confidence. Building network is online and face to face can become easier. Building a personal brand can be an excellent way to increase visibility, and enhance control and flexibility in career. Personal brand provides a sense of purpose.

Personal Branding is an intentional, strategic practice in which you craft and express your own value proposition, and it involves seven steps:

– Define your purpose by exploring your mission, passion, and strengths, and thinking about whom you want to make a difference to and how.

– Audit your personal brand equity by cataloging your credentials, doing a self-assessment, and researching how other people view you.

– Construct your personal narrative by identifying memorable, resonant stories that will best convey your brand.

– Embody your brand by paying attention to the message you are sending in every social interaction.

– Communicate your brand through speeches, social media, the press, and other channels.

– Socialize your brand by getting influential people to share your stories.

– Re-evaluate and adjust your brand by doing an annual audit to find deficits to fix and strengths to build on.

– It is important to note that building your personal brand is a long – term and on-going project. The process of doing so, starts with self – analysis.

It is recommended for effective personal branding to:
– Balance respect-building and relationship-building

– Bolster personal branding with organizational supports.
– Embrace flexibility.
Measure, assess, and adapt brands over time.

The effectiveness of Personal Brand can be measured by:

Tangibles
How quickly customers return your phone calls

How easy it is to get appointments with prospects

On LinkedIn, whether you are trending up or down