A strong, personal brand allows you to infuse your personality into your brand and establish an emotional connection with your audience. Personal branding for businesses is a way for you to differentiate yourself by communicating your vision, your values, and your passions to the world. As discussed in a preview blog, these are the three components that make you unique and will help you establish an authentic connection and relationship with your future clients (audience).
So who needs a personal brand? My short answer is basically everyone! In this digital age, and especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, so many small businesses and entrepreneurs have been forced to build and grow an online presence. However, today we are going to look at four specific groups who would strongly benefit from a solid personal brand.
Entrepreneurs.
The most obvious group to benefit from having a strong personal brand are professionals, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. As a small business, you are the face of your business! A personal branding strategy will help you develop a personal brand that will allow your business to stand out in a saturated market and build authentic connections with your ideal clients.
As a small business that is taking the time to develop a personal brand, you begin to establish the know like, and trust factor. This is done over time by bringing your vision, your values, and your passions into your message. You will naturally begin to build relationships and connections with your audience or future clients. This group can include a wide and vast range of professionals including authors, speakers, coaches, doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, and basically anyone who’s trying to monetize their expertise.
Corporate Professionals and Industry Leaders.
A second group that would benefit from developing a strong personal brand is a business professional and industry thought leader. This is not something that is done overnight and will take time to develop. The journey of developing a personal brand is a lifetime commitment. As you grow and develop within your industry and your career, taking the time to develop a personal brand allows you to differentiate yourself from the pack by highlighting your personal vision, your values, and your passions related to your area of expertise.
It is a place to show others what projects you have been working on, unique perspectives gained from your experience, and ideas that you bring to the table. Growing and maintaining your strong personal brand on LinkedIn, Twitter, a portfolio website or blog will uniquely position you for professional interviews, promotions, consulting gigs, or as an expert to speak at the next industry conference.
Are you up for promotion? Are you thinking about interviewing or changing companies? Do you want to elevate or position yourself as a thought leader in, or expert in your industry or become an educator within your industry? Those are just some of the reasons that you could benefit from a personal brand.
Students
As a student, you will definitely benefit from a strong, personal brand! Developing your personal brand at such an early stage will allow students to highlight their vision, values, and passions to the admissions committee. Students can share unique projects, experiences, and perspectives that they can bring into a classroom setting. In my past life, I worked as an MBA admissions officer for two different universities. I can personally tell you how important it is to stand out among the crowd! It is key to getting into any program top-rated program.
Learning how to use your unique voice to effectively communicate your vision, values, and passions will put students and the younger generation on a trajectory of establishing a strong personal brand. This personal brand will evolve and develop over their lifetime.
Volunteers and Community Leaders.
The fourth and final group that would strongly benefit from a personal brand are volunteers and community leaders. As a community leader, it is essential for you to have a personal brand to communicate to your audience the values you are able to consistently deliver while serving.
Community leaders/volunteers can display a role model mentality in their personal brand by showing up to hear their audience, serve others, and solve problems. Community leaders and their personal brands will allow people to learn how they can depend on their leaders to faithfully execute their positions.
I hope these four areas have shown you the benefit of developing and establishing a personal brand for almost anyone! I hope it has encouraged you to start the journey of developing your personal brand regardless of what stage in life you are in! If you have any key takeaways for tips I would love to know in the comments below.
That’s a wrap for this week! I am so grateful that you have stopped by my little corner of the internet to learn more about personal branding. Have we connected on social media yet? If not, what are you waiting for? You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you and know more about you as well! I hope you will send me a DM so we can continue the conversion offline!
Shelly Niehaus Photography is a Boise, ID-based branding and headshot photographer. Shelly specializes in professional headshot photography, personal branding photography, and lifestyle photography. Shelly serves the greater Treasure Valley area including Boise, Meridian, Eagle, and Nampa.
[…] The second step to defining your personal brand and creating your message is to infuse your values into your brand messaging and content; sharing your values allows your audience and future clients to connect with you on a very personal level. And they start to develop that emotional trust factor. This is the platform or place to infuse your personal and professional values. But who needs a personal brand? Before we dive into the important equation, check if your business suits you best with personal branding. […]