Personal branding is the art of communicating how you want to be seen by the world.
It’s the deliberate effort to craft a visible narrative that defines who you are. While people will have opinions about you, your personal brand is your opinions about yourself, shared publicly. It’s what you believe in mixed with what you bring to the table.
In a world where hard work is hardly a differentiator, we need some way to filter people.
By branding yourself, showcasing your skills and values, you help people decide if you are someone they want to work with. For better or for worse. Without that branding, you may be left to a fate worse than rejection.
People may overlook you because they have no idea who you are despite everything you’ve done.
Reputation is how others brand you
You may have done some incredible things to earn a good reputation.
Or you may have treated people foul and now you have a bad one.
Your reputation is the result of your past actions. Everything you do will impact your reputation. While you can always behave differently in the future, reputation is a passive thing. You are letting others define your reality based on what they know.
And often they don’t know anything other than what you’ve shown them.
Many of us get lost in the work and lose sight of the finer parts of corporate culture. Things like how 5 a 7’s are really about vetting personality. Even missing social work functions sends a signal about who you are, to your colleagues.
Reputation is impacted by the logical and the irrational.
Someone may hate your laugh and it sullies your reputation with them. Other people may have heard some dirt through the skinny and boom some more reputational damage. The inverse is true, your positive actions also come with influence.
The problem with relying on reputation alone is that it leaves everything to the imagination of others.
Personal branding is about controlling your narrative
It’s frustrating when people don’t see us in the way we’d like.
This is where your personal branding efforts come in. It’s your opportunity to put a spin on your reputation.
Professionally speaking this may be the expertise you bring. Not just what you’ve done at work, but the motivations behind why you do it. It’s a chance to really explain the essence of what drives you.
My writing isn’t just about being a writer.
When I was younger I struggled to understand the nuances of life. Most of the time when I write I’m trying to explain things I wish someone had taken the time to tell me. Or at least stuff I wish I’d listened to sooner.
I want to create edutainment that motivates people to be better. In a lot of ways I’m just battling my demons on paper and creating accountability through public testament.
That being said, knowing what I’m trying to do personally is a big step in building a personal brand.
Your personal brand is about the why, not the what
Regardless of what you do in life, there are a lot of equally skilled people doing just that.
This is more transparent in creative passions like music. Where talent will only take you so far. Your ability to construct a brand around your art is the differentiator between great and good.
The problem is with all the resources around us, anyone can get good at most things.
Greatness requires vision. The brand you create to support you needs to communicate that vision to your audience. Then people who align with your goals will ride the wave with you.
Your personal brand is the same thing.
The first step is to look beyond what you do, that part is kind of boring.
The basic expectation with art is that the artist is good at making art. For most people, that isn’t that impressive. Especially when 15 of their homies make music. To be great you need to represent something and then do something so creative with it that it resonates with others. That is a lot harder than being good at making art.
The same line of thinking holds true to every position you could hold in life.
Your personal brand is the main differentiator between you and your peers.
Know thyself and then make sure everyone else knows too
If you really want to understand what this process is all about, bust open your CV.
Look at that summary at the top and think of the arduous process it was to come up with a tight paragraph before ChatGPT. You’d need to dig into your soul and try and write something that communicates why you are more special than others. It’d need to be based in reality but also relatable to the job.
In order to swap that paragraph seamlessly between jobs you need to actually know what you are good at.
You need to think about your values. Consider your motivations. This can go as far as what charities you support and why. If you’re environmentally friendly, let the world know. If you don’t care about the planet, tell them anyway. But be yourself authentically.
Then you need to worry about what you are good at. Take the time to consider what you are willing to get good at. Then you want to tie those skills into your belief system.
You want to create a profile that concisely explains what you bring to the table, why you are at the table and how you being at the table will benefit those already seated. Once you’ve been real reflective, it’s on you to forcibly let people know, otherwise they may never care.
This should be communicated in clear, simple language.
Use profile headings to explain who you are, concisely
There are too many ways to spread your gospel for one article, so let’s stick with an easy one.
A lot of branding specialists will tell you to leverage your profiles on social media to communicate who you are.
On LinkedIn my current blurb is, Growing communities and leveraging content to retain more and boost ROI. That kind of sucks now that I think about it. It’s vague and sounds like keyword stuffing.
I should probably use something like, I Use Content To Explain Pointlessly Boring Things In Insightful Ways
Even that is weak sauce, but at least you get a flair for my personality.
A lot of what I do, even with these articles, is capture boring ideas and try to put some flavour into it. Find examples to tackle something differently so it becomes stickier.
At the very least you either like my use of “Pointless boring” or you don’t.
The more you understand who you are and why you do things, the more concise you can explain your motivations. Over the next few weeks I will undertake a personal branding exercize so I can make my headlines better.
Then I can explain to you what I did and more importantly, why.
In the meantime we all have some reflecting to do.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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