While broadening awareness of your business and services is essential, the reality is that these days entrepreneurs also need to be conscious of how they are promoting their personal brand. Your personal brand centers around your overall image - the means of how you present yourself online and offline to potential clients and customers, how people remember you and your reputation. Of course, it’s important for your business to be well-recognized, but your personal brand can significantly impact how your company is perceived, how it operates and eventually how it evolves in today’s market.
Why invest the time?
Investing in optimizing your personal brand is one of the most profitable investments you can make. Research dictates that your personal brand impacts a perception that positively, or negatively, effects how consumers see your company and its product(s). Done effectively, you can impact positive purchase decisions and separate yourself from the competition, clearly reflect what you stand for and in turn facilitate trust with perspective customers.
How to get started?
Developing a great personal brand doesn’t happen overnight, but carefully crafting and curating your digital presence will get you on course to showcase your skills, achievements, interests and business model. You have one opportunity to make a first impression and the narrative of your online reputation is one you can leverage to put your best foot forward. Online searches, websites, professional pages, and social media are all essential in building your personal brand recognition. A recent survey shows that 53% percent of vendors have lost business based on information found or not found about them online. (Source: Kredible).
Keep up the momentum
Through clever creation of well-articulated content and valuable insight, customers will eventually grow to value and trust your opinions. Have a professional website, a digital presence, engage on all social media platforms that make sense for your business and join relevant groups to share informative, attractive articles, tips and thoughts people will be inclined to share.
Personal branding is free marketing. However, it is recommended to work with seasoned marketing experts to get a strategic plan in place and brand messaging on point to ensure your efforts will be effective in meeting your goals.
“Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking chords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination.” – Richard Branson