1. What Is A Personal Brand?
The concept of personal branding arises from the need to stand out. Stand out within the professional environment of our competitors as a brand to differentiate ourselves from the rest. My Personal Brand In 2020
It will become a firm reflection of ourselves and will become our best presentation card. A powerful differentiating object that will allow us to achieve greater success in the world of work.
Therefore we could consider that when creating our personal brand, it will not only help us stand out among an endless list of similar candidates, but it will also allow us to be recognized and selected.
Amazon founder says that our Personal Brand is what they say about us when we’re not around.
Jeff Bezos
2. Benefits of Creating Our Personal Brand
As we have seen before, building our own personal brand is no longer an option. But, has become a necessity. So it is essential that we know all the benefits and advantages it can offer us.
- Allow us to be a reference in our sector and the ones chosen from several options.
- Generate confidence when it comes to being recognized and chosen by our target audience.
- It says more about us than our own Curriculum Vitae.
- It consolidates our image in terms of credibility and prestige.
3. How are we going to create our personal brand?
Establishing our personal brand is not a one-day job. It requires effort and perseverance to gradually build up our brand. To do this we will carry out a series of steps:
3.1. Create and build your identity
In this first phase a good tactic we can use is to perform a SWOT analysis of ourselves, to know our strengths and weaknesses.
Once we know those aspects that we should strengthen and those that we should improve, it is important to set and define our objectives and goals, to establish a strategy and to be able to achieve our purposes.
In short, we have to show what we want to convey, what actions you will take to achieve it and what audience we will address.
3.2 Take care of your profile photo and bio
It is essential that you always use the same photography in your Social Networks and that it reflects your essence and shows your most professional appearance.
Another aspect that you should take care of is your biography, here you should reflect in a few characters how you are and highlight your strongest points.
3.3 Create a Professional Blog
Share valuable content on your social networks to reach as many people as possible and make your brand more visible and consistent.
It is highly recommended that you create a blog in which you can share your knowledge in your Social Networks with the help of a publication calendar. This will not only help many people but also help you to demonstrate in a tangible way that you know how to do.
Your blog will be the most important positioning weapon when it comes to creating your personal brand
3.4 Follow companies in your sector
One of the steps I recommend is that you follow the main companies in your sector, so that you can have access to their main news and any of their job offers in order to apply for them.
3.5 Watch what they say about you
It is essential that we know what other users are saying about us on the Internet and that we take care of our online reputation.
To do this try searching for your full name on the Internet, or use Google Alert or Social Mention, both tools will help you know when someone mentions or talks about you.
3.6 Imitate your references
Imitate the references of your sector (be careful, don’t copy) these will serve as a stimulus and will give you the clues of what you have to do and what you don’t have to do to promote your brand even more.
3.7 Networking
Don’t forget how important it is to work online as well as offline. A fundamental point in your favor will be to attend talks on topics related to your sector, there you can meet people from your same profession and establish professional relationships.
And although it seems that it is no longer so fashionable to give business cards, I recommend that you take some to your talks, do not expect to learn all your social networks by heart, right?
So leave them a good memory of you and prepare cool business cards to hand out to the event attendees.
3.8 Take care of your Social Networks
There are many social networks, but is it necessary to have a presence in all of them? The answer is NO, it is important that you select only those in which your target is found.
If we have many Social Networks, it is very likely that we will end up neglecting them due to lack of time, which will seriously harm us when it comes to consolidating our personal brand.
4. What Strategy Should I Follow In Every Social Network?
Now, when we are preparing the strategy that we are going to carry out to promote our personal brand in Social Networks, we will have to remember that each one of them works in a different way, so we will have to personalize our strategies and actions.
4.1 LinkedIn
It is the largest and most important social network of professionals and companies in the world, it allows us to exchange knowledge and promote networking, which facilitates access to new job opportunities.
How can I optimize my LinkedIn profile?
- Take care of your profile image and header.
- Extract, create a good summary of yourself.
- Edit and customize your unnumbered URL to make it easier to reach you.
- Work and academic record (university degrees, languages, courses…)
- Ask for recommendations.
- Join groups in your sector and follow companies of your interest.
- Add skills to your profile and validate those of other members of your network.
- Publish every week 2 or 4 times.
- Connect with at least 501 contacts on LinkedIn, since from that number we cannot know if you have 501 or 4,000 and you will increase your number of views.
4.2 Twitter
It is the Social Network of microblogging and direct bridge to enhance our Personal Brand, because it allows us to share information of various kinds in a fast, simple and free way.
What should I do to stand out as a Personal Brand on Twitter?
- Include a good profile photo and header.
- Add your Blog URL in your biography and use keywords that define you.
- Create and follow lists of other relevant users within your sector.
- Mention and tag your users if you upload photos of them.
- Generate and share quality content for other accounts to follow
- Constantly post at least 5 tweets a day.
- Use hashtags to increase your followers
If you want to know how to use hashtags in your posts correctly I advise you to read our guide on the effective use of hashtags in social networks.
4.3 Facebook
It is one of the most important social networks, it works by algorithms with interaction statistics and helps us to boost referral marketing.
If you are a company, it is important that you create a Fan Page for your brand to expand its presence on the Internet and make it known.
What strategy do we have to follow on Facebook?
- Take care of your photo, cover and BIO.
- Humanize your brand, remember that the main objective of this network is to entertain.
- Do not try to sell directly or Facebook will penalize you.
- Include visual and participatory content.
- Interact with your community to generate more engagement.
- Publish content once or twice a week.
4.4 Instagram
It is the Social Network of the moment and it is mainly destined to offer us entertainment content through its publications and stories.
What strategies should I follow in this Social Network?
- Share quality images.
- Share me among your contacts and other users, to attract new profiles to your account.
- Use hashtags properly.
- Humanize your brand by sharing short videos.
- Share 1 or 2 posts a day.
5. Conclusion
I hope this guide will help you to create or strengthen your Personal Brand. What Social Networks are you going to use to create your Personal Brand, are you already strengthening your brand, do you know any different strategy to position yourself as a brand?