Building Your Personal Brand

By Hammad Motiwala, iBBA 2019                   

PersonalBranding is the means by which people remember you.A Personal Brand reflects who you are and the person you aspire to be. Itincludes the impression you want to present to potential recruiters, businessprofessionals and any other target markets of interest to you. Today, buildingyour Personal Brand is as important as building your business’ brand. Yourpotential network needs to know you in-depth and wants to connect with you onan emotional level. Thus, developing a Personal Brand can help you attract moreopportunities in your path towards success.

A Personal Brand is a brand in itself.Hence, it has to speak for itself after it has been set up effectively. Now,there is no clear-cut way to set up your Personal Brand but it is only due tothe fact that your personal brand reflects your uniqueness and what you bringto the corporate table. Hence, the following passages will be generalguidelines enabling everyone a flexibility in setting up their own unique andcreative Personal Brand.

Buildyour Presence

Extinct are the times where just having abusiness card on your person was all it took to ensure exploitation ofpotential opportunities. In a highly individualized world, one has to ensurevarious means to building presence—both physical and virtual. First, you haveto make sure you are visible and accessible at all times. By this, I do notmean to reduce your sleep to 2 hours a day. However, hiding away behind yourtextbooks and desks, away from civilization, most hours of your school dayswill not help you build any brand. Attending networking sessions andinformation sessions is a great way of spreading your presence into thebusiness world. Moreover, it is very important to have an online presence intoday’s tech era. Having social media profiles on platforms such as Facebook,LinkedIn, Instagram is a gateway to attracting more followers towards yourpersonal brand. Going beyond your virtual presence, your physicalcharacteristics also convey your personal brand. This means that you should makesure to attend any meetings or social gatherings with a positive andprofessional approach. This kind of physical manner will ensure that yourappearance is keeping up with your brand.

Buildyour Value Proposition

The approach to building one’s valueproposition begins with identifying and working on areas of strengths aka areasof uniqueness. This comes from knowing your industry inside and out. Thinkdeeply of what you bring to the table and master these characteristics. Thiscould be an area in which you recognize yourself as proficient. This could bean area which brings you recognition and respect from fellow peers. This couldbe could be a set of strengths and accomplishments you have built in yourprofessional experience. Recognizing these strengths ensures that you havesomething to contribute towards when entering a new market or employmentopportunity. Another way of building your value proposition, aside fromidentifying and working on your skills, is to give back to the community. Essentially,sharing your knowledge.

GiveBack

Aside from the nice tingling sensation thatgiving back brings, giving back to the community can help build your brand.Sharing your knowledge and experience can reimburse you in various ways and candeem to be very fruitful in the long run. It is not enough to learn things orgather knowledge, but imparting that experiential knowledge can be very helpfulto your brand. Renowned author and creative director, Paul Arden, believes thatyou should ‘give everything you know, and more will come back to you.” Hebelieves that coveting your ideas eventually leads to “living off yourreserves, eventually you’ll become stale.” People remember selfless acts somake sure to start off with good intentions (easier said than done). You canshow your support towards causes that are important to you. Make sure to shareyour knowledge and experiences through videos, social media, writing bothonline and offline. Your website will work great wonders for you for this partof the Personal Brand development process.

BeYourself

According to the Chinese classic text ofTao Te Ching, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” This stage isup to the creativity of the unique personal brander him or herself. Thisenables individuals to find their own personal style, values and priorities inlife. For those of you who are born to stand out, stop trying to fit in becausethere are other paths besides the ones the crowds are embarking on. Believe inyourself and trust yourself enough to follow your own instincts towards theroad less travelled (in some cases). Identifying your style and stick to it,because you will be carrying this wherever you go. Identify your personal andprofessional goals–both short term and long term. Carry these goals with youwhen you embark on projects with your own unique compass (comprising of valuesand priorities) guiding you along the way.

GetCrafting!

This involves building your Personal Brandpersona. Things such as identifying your emotional appeal, your personality,your specialties, among other things come here. When crafting your brand’scharacteristics and persona, you can talk about reasons why people enjoyworking with you, what are your key personality traits (e.g your sense of humorand cooperative skills). You can also discuss why people keep in touch with you(i.e why people are attracted to you). You can also discuss your specialty inthe sense of what you can give to people and/or clients.

KeepTrack

After all this, when your Personal Brand isup and running, make sure to keep tabs of the contacts you have make along thiswonderful journey. Moreover, make sure you are working via a 2-way networkingapproach (i.e you are not just expecting things from others but helping otherstoo). A lot of people just focus on their own needs, benefits and goalscompletely while ignoring other people’s side and how they will benefit fromthe relationship. You don’t want to be among them!

Finding and utilizing your personal brandwill bring you many advantages in the business world. Using these key points asa guideline, you will become one step closer to mastering your personal brand!