Putting the Personal Back into Personal Branding

There’s no denying the importance of personal branding. After all, branding is largely responsible for the message your name (and face) transmits to the world. Because of this, it’s vital that your brand is built on authenticity and engagement, rather than half-heartedness and complacency.

For many up-and-coming entrepreneurs, consciously making an effort to build a personal brand takes a backseat to other items on their never-ending to-do lists. In their minds, personal branding will take care of itself.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth.  You need to know that everything you do, both intentionally and not, contributes to the way others are perceiving your personal brand.

Whether through social media, influencer marketing or some sort of media outreach strategy, personal branding is an active endeavor. Still need some convincing? Below you’ll find four hard-hitting reasons to give your personal brand some time and attention.

1. Sales is a human-to-human endeavor.

There’s no greater tool in a salesperson’s arsenal than trust, especially if your business makes its money on the internet. How does an entrepreneur go about building that trust? Personal branding.

It’s imperative to understand that sales is a human-to-human affair. Though there are tools out there that help automate important sales processes, you must present your most genuine self to connect with people on an emotional level.

Whether you're connecting eye-to-eye, voice-to-voice or merely message-to-message, peel back the curtain ever so slightly. It might not provide an immediate marketing return, but it will get other people to help you build your brand.

2. You are the media.

Thanks to blogs, podcasts and social networks, you don’t have the option to sit idly by and wait for others to mention your brand in the media. Yes, PR still matters, but many companies today are media companies first and money-making entities second.

Branding certainly works on a macro level, but it works on a micro level, too. Your personal brand matters. To strengthen it, recognize that you -- not just that team of interns you recently hired -- must provide value as an active media member to make people remember your name.

3. There’s too much noise to be conservative.

Thanks to the internet's sheer volume of content, it’s easy to get lost in the noise. That's why you have to make a good first impression, whether trying to get an Instagram user to stop scrolling past your content or convince a search algorithm that you’re a uniquely valuable resource. 

With social media, people and businesses are constantly talking over one another.  Your potential customers have to resonate with something you post and want to learn more.  If you don’t have the right messaging, the right tactic and the right timing, your attempt to ‘jump into’ the conversation will fall on deaf ears.

4. You're always branding yourself.

In today’s day and age, you no longer have a choice about personal branding.  The world is far too connected for you not to be transmitting some kind of personal message with your actions.

If you decide not to actively participate, people will take notice, and their professional opinions of you aren’t likely to be favorable. Without control of your personal brand, your image stands on shaky ground.

Invest in your brand. That way, you not only invest in yourself, but also in the people you lead and the organization you represent.  Don’t expect business to just come to you or that people will stumble upon your website and decide to do business with you.

You are the best PR, marketing and sales person for your business.  While the digital age definitely consumes us, there is something to be said about the old-school, hand-shake, meet and greet.  Get to know your potential customers.  Let them get to know you.  If you are authentic and true to the brand that you want to promote, you will leave them wanting more.

If you or your business need help developing your personal and professional brand, contact SK Consulting today!

What’s Your Branding Story? (Part 1)

Developing Your Branding Story

When we think about the important aspects of building our brand, most people focus on Name, Logo, Identity, Colors, Marketing and Strategy. While those along with your product and services are important components to your business success it’s amazing how important the story is too. People want to buy from those that they know, like and trust, and your story is how they first feel something.

A lot of businesses under estimate how important their “about us” page is, or how important the story of their why is.

To develop your story answer the questions, “How did you get started, why do you do what you do and where are you going?”

Many people think about branding in terms of logos, pictures and other graphics that are on our letterhead, business cards and websites. But today, it’s so much more than a picture. Branding is about an attitude. It’s feeling that is conveyed by the story you tell consumers about your business, eliciting enough feelings of trust from the buyer that they happily open their wallet and spend money on your product or service.

To properly brand your business you need to answer the following questions:

• How did you get started?

• Why did you get started?

• Who is your target audience?

• What is your product or service?

• What makes your offerings unique?

• Where do you see your business going?

Sure, you do need to choose your logo, general colors of your marketing collateral, website graphics and so forth. But, it’s more important to answer the above questions ensuring that you accurately represent your answers with the themes you choose.  Any marketing that you do should further the ideas that the answers provided. By being consistent through all your marketing efforts you will expand your brand.

What’s Your Mission?

Once you answer the questions, you can then use your answers to assist you in creating a mission statement and an appropriate tag line. Your mission statement and tag line can help you define yourself even further in terms of expressing to your future customers or clients who you are, what you stand for, and what you do. Not only will the answers, and the resulting mission statement and tag line help your clients understand you, they will help you stick to your goals.

Knowing your mission, your reason for being, will help spread awareness about your brand to your target audience. A mission statement provides focus for every area of your business from A to Z. You have to remember that branding is a process that evolves and develops over time and consistency and persistence is an imperative component to that process. Knowing your why enough to create an effective mission statement will take your business to the next level.

Branding is about getting clear concerning your business so that you and your entire staff can be laser focused on every aspect of your company from ensuring you are marketing to your ideal client, creating products and services for your ideal client, and expressing what your business stands for to clients, contractors and employees. The mission statement is an expression of your brand, written in a clear and concise way that helps not only your customers understand your business focus but you and your business partners too.

You should be living your mission statement every single day, which will in effect promote your brand. Live your mission on social media. Live your mission on your website. Live your mission in all your marketing collateral, products and services. Yes, part of that is knowing which graphics to include that expresses your brand, but as you see branding is so much more than a picture.

The next part in Your Branding Story is TELLING it.