What is personal branding?

Branding is critical to building a successful business, but what about building a personal brand for yourself as an individual? Personal branding can be just as powerful as business branding in terms of attracting people to your company. 

This guide will answer the following questions:

• What is a personal brand?
• Why is personal branding important?
• How can I create a personal brand?
• How can Countingup help free up time to work on your personal branding?

As the name suggests, your personal brand is how you promote yourself as a business person. Your personal brand is the unique combination of your experience, skills, personality, etc., that you want people to see. Creating a personal brand gives you a way to tell your story and explain how it reflects your work. 

Creating a strong personal brand is necessary if you want to become an influential voice in your industry. Personal branding is probably the most effective way to establish yourself as an expert in your space. 

If you create a strong personal brand, you also get the chance to share your knowledge and beliefs at different networking events and webinars. Public speaking is an excellent way to prove that you know your stuff and attract new people to your business. 

The more people know about you –– the person behind the business –– the more likely they are to buy from you. This is because personal branding creates a sense of trust and community that you share with your followers. In turn, this bond can lead to better customer relationships, more repeat business, and more revenue and profit. 

Creating a personal brand is similar to creating a business brand, but with a few differences. The main difference is that you’ll focus mainly on yourself as a professional rather than your business. Here’s what you need to do to create a strong personal brand:

The first step to creating a personal brand is to determine which type you are. In 2010, the New York Times identified six main types of personal brands, which still apply today:

• Altruists: this type of personal brand is built on doing social good and helping others by doing charity work and donating money to help others.
• Careerists: personal brands of this kind are known for being thought leaders in their industries and sharing information others need.
• Hipsters: these brands are similar to altruists and careerists but focus more on sharing information than taking action. 
• Boomerangs: these brands share controversial content to spark a reaction and may include your favourite meme accounts or news reporters.
• Connectors: these brands build communities and bring people together, and love the validation they get from doing so, such as influencers or social media stars.
• Selectives: these people only share information with specific audiences and spend time curating information for their viewers. Think researchers and scientists.

Once you know which type you want to create, you can start forming your personal brand to align with it.

Your unique selling point (or USP) is the thing that makes you different and better than other professionals in your industry. It’s your USP that attracts people to your brand and encourages them to engage with you. 

Think about what you’ve excelled at in the past and what talents you can bring to the market. If you’re unsure yourself, you can ask people you know what they deem to be your talents. 

Determining what you can do better than anyone else and leveraging those differences is critical to building a strong personal brand. 

To create a trusted and reputable personal brand, you need to choose a focus that will allow you to shine. Think about who would benefit from what you’re offering and focus on targeting these people: your target audience

Make sure your personal focus aligns with your business niche, perhaps by focusing on a specific area of your work. 

The key to successful personal branding is to post content that is helpful and insightful. Your goal is to make people see you as a trusted authority in your space. To do this, you need a plan for when you’ll post content and which topics to cover. 

Even the simplest content strategy will help you stay on track and ensure everything you publish has value.

You can start by researching what topics generate a buzz in your industry and sharing your thoughts on them. Tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends can help you uncover what’s trending. Once you know what people talk about, you can join the conversation.

It’s good to cover different types of content to appeal to a wider demographic. Only posting video or text content can get stale quickly. Conversely, sharing a variety of content across multiple platforms increases your visibility and helps you build your personal brand more quickly.

One of the most powerful ways to build a personal brand is to create a community where people can talk to you and each other. Whether you want to generate more sales or simply want your name out there to further your career, building a community helps you do that.

You can build a community by creating Facebook or LinkedIn groups where people can communicate and chime in with your thoughts to spark conversations. If you want, you can then organise face-to-face meetups with people from your community. You can meet people one-on-one or host large gatherings for people to come together to share and learn.

Finally, webinars are excellent for gathering people online for a shared learning experience. Hosting webinars allows you to meet your audience, share your expertise, and develop your skills. You can learn more about how to build a brand for your business here.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 
Find out more here.