How To Jumpstart Building Your Personal Brand This Year

"One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth.” - Abraham Maslow

If you’re still thinking about a change to make for this new decade, don’t think twice about jumpstarting your Personal Brand. It’s definitely worth the discomfort that is often a companion of change and growth.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Self-assess

You will need to ask yourself:
 

What are you passionate about?
What industry or topics are you deeply interested in?
What are you really good at, and what do others say you are good at?

What skills have you acquired over the years? What training, awards, or credentials do you have regarding this topic matter? (In fact, you can have none at the moment, and still have a successful Personal Brand later on. This is why you have to love what you’re doing!)
What values and beliefs do you uphold? Are they in sync with what you want to do?

2. Craft your career story

Gone are the days when a career that is linear gets to the top.

Today, you can weave your unique set of experiences into something that you can leverage in a new job or industry. Crafting a career story means putting together your strengths, interests, and past experiences and translating them into skills and perspectives that can be much needed in a new role or can solve problems for an audience.

It is also the refining of what it is exactly you do so your niche can find you easier, and a network can refer you better.

3. Know Your Audience by Heart

Speaking of niches— its where the riches are, they say. It is definitely easier and smarter to have a particular set of audience to cater to, rather than to try and reach every single person — which is both impossible and wasteful of your resources.

What is your audience’s problem that you have a solution for?

 To have a strong Personal Brand, you have to be able to influence and impart value to the right people. Know that not everyone will be interested in what you have to offer, but that’s why you need to zoom in and focus and on the people who will be.

You also need to be able to be where they are. What are your audience’s demographics? Are you trying to reach people in one particular city, two, or an entire state? What are their ages? Can they relate to the way you word your thoughts?

Are these people going to be interested in the events you speak in? Do they have struggles, and can they relate to your content? What do they desire to achieve? What do they aspire to? What emotional triggers will they have in order for them to come to you?

4. Start Documenting 

People need to know they can trust you and what you say you are, so it’s time to put the work in.

Whether it be in the form of content, testimonial, or speaking engagements, anything you put out there can be used and repurposed, so document it all. It’s a lot less about being seen that matters, but more about sharing the value 

 Credibility as a brand can be earned when real people can vouch for you and say something about what you did. Document feedback and results, or ask for them. These are very important.

In speaking engagements, keep the script of your speech. You can use all these later on on your website and on social media.

Did you take part in conferences? Take photos and talk about it the next day on social media. Better yet, write takeaways or a full article on your learnings.

Did you write a book? Amazing, document the process and talk about your excitement and struggles online.

5. Ultimately, you will win using soft skills

It’s not just a trend. More and more studies claim the importance of upskilling and reskilling for workforces across all industries in order to thrive in the environment the future of work has and is continually creating.

Behavioural skills, like communication, adaptability, and empathy, are what will set you apart in the competitive labor market as companies start to put more weight on these more than hard skills or experience.

And it makes sense. Having agility and resilience will help you navigate through complex and ambiguous work environments, and acquiring future-of-work-ready leadership skills will allow you to manage a variety of workforce kinds (offshore, multi-cultural, multi-generational), making you a more suitable candidate for any role.

Starting to building your Personal Brand could feel overwhelming, and at times you might even think you’re going slow. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Remember that the beginning is always the hardest, but it is also the most impaccctful.