Personal Branding that Connects and Drives Us Towards Success.
As businesses and their audiences increasingly shift their presence online, personal branding is now a reflection of who we, and our businesses, are both online and offline as the boundaries between the two begin to blur. Ash Jones, Personal Brand Strategist, explains how mastering the art of getting this right, and showcasing what we do, has the potential to unlock new opportunities, and connect us with communities that can propel us towards success.
“If you don’t have a clear idea of the identity you’re trying to build, then your actions will come off as unclear and confused, and people won’t be entirely sure of who you are or what you do. But if you have clarity around all of these points, it means that people can build a clear picture of your skillset and the community you’re seeking out.”
"Personal branding" has increasingly gained popularity in recent years. Essentially, it involves making a deliberate effort to shape how you are perceived by others, by positioning yourself in a certain way to create opportunities that can benefit your career or personal ventures.
This means that you are taking the time to make a conscious and intentional effort to ask yourself, “Who do I want to be in the world? Who do I need to be in the world? And what do I want people to think of me?” Then you can ask yourself, “What outcomes am I looking to generate from putting in the time to showing up publicly?
The crux of this is, why should you bother? Well, because the payoff to doing this really well is unrivalled in the pursuit of a successful career. People who have achieved this to a high standard attain an immensely superior advantage in their careers compared to those who haven’t done so. They earn more money, they open infinite more doors, they unlock seemingly inaccessible opportunities and the value they are given in return is significantly weighted in their favour.
That is the power of influence in your professional career. People at all levels of the career ladder are now leveraging this idea and moving their careers and subsequent opportunities faster than anyone else.
Sounds Great… But How Can We Achieve This?
Creating social media and content is a place to start. The most obvious platform to help achieve this is LinkedIn, which is primarily a professional social media platform, but over the last few years has seen users acting a lot more like they would on other non-professional social media platforms. Now people are using LinkedIn to create thought leadership, share stories, experiences, debates, professional and personal updates and behind the scenes of their working lives.
This is where the concept of Personal Branding has come to life. Understanding what your professional identity needs to be and creating content that displays that is the way to create a advantage in your career in 2024 and beyond.
Where to Start
The first place to start is knowing who you are trying to be on the platform and how to show up. Who do I want the world to see me or my business as? How do I want to position myself or my business? What do I want people to think of me when they see me or my branding? These are all the crucial questions to ask yourself when you start thinking of building a personal brand.
If you don’t have a clear idea of the identity you’re trying to build, then your actions will come off as unclear and confused, and people won’t be entirely sure of who you are or what you do. But if you have clarity around all of these points, it means that people can build a clear picture of your skillset and the community you’re seeking out. And more importantly, if they have a relevant opportunity, you are the person who will come to mind to present that opportunity to.
Once you have a clear picture of how you’re trying to present to the world, you then need to ask yourself what opportunities you are looking to attract and what goals you have for building your personal brand. Is it new business leads? Is it public speaking opportunities? Do you simply want to build your network and connect with more people in your industry and help them get to know you better?
Having a clear idea of the opportunities you’re looking to create means that you can almost reverse engineer the process of what you need to be posting about to make that happen. Once you know who you’re trying to be in the world and you know what opportunities you’re looking to create, it’s time to start thinking about what to post.
Picking Your Content Pillars
The smartest way to approach this is to pick 2-3 core pillars that you can speak about. The easiest things here might be the industry that you’re in and the business you’re part of. So maybe you’re in the marketing industry and you work at a marketing agency. So the things you will post about are things around the marketing industry as a whole and things to do with your agency.
Once you have your 2-3 core pillars, it’s a good idea to list out all the potential things you could speak about within each. Using the previous example, things you could post about within the marketing industry could be the latest brand campaigns, it could be collecting ideas on marketing from thought leaders, and on the other pillar example, the agency you work in, you could post about the work that you’ve done, the culture of the agency or the learnings you’ve gained working there, there’s a wide range of things you could do and you need to go through the process of identifying a list of them and then picking the ones that you feel suit you best.
After this exercise, you should have four things: a clear identity of who you’re trying to be in the world; a clear idea of the opportunities you’re looking to attract; 2-3 core pillars that you could post about, and a list of ideas of topics within those core pillars.
Now… You’re Ready to Post
At this point, it would be wise to create a routine to work within. Make time to sit down and identify what you could post about. Research ideas and write out your posts. All these things would be best served by committing time in your calendar to creating the right routine to enable you to have the preparation done for your posts.
Then it’s simply a case of posting and seeing what people resonate with and what they don’t, taking that learning and sharpening your sword. The most important thing is sticking to your plan, turning up and being consistent, and learning from your activity. If you commit to the above for a period of 6-12 months, there’s no doubt that you will create the advantage you’re looking for in your career.
Author: Ash Jones, Personal Brand Strategist & Founder at Great Influence.
Ash has spent the last 10 years helping industry-leading Founders, CEOs, Entrepreneurs, and Investors to build their personal brand - leading the personal brand strategy, social, and content for some of the best in business, including: Steven Bartlett, Gary Neville, Matthew Syed. Ash began his career as Marketing Director at Social Chain, where he was part of the Founding Team.