Building a Professional Brand, West Virginia
It takes time for a brand to gain widespread recognition and success. The teams behind Nike, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Apple worked relentlessly to establish their names in the public consciousness. Similar to how businesses can develop a name for themselves, individuals can do the same. Creating a name for yourself in the business world will open doors you never thought imaginable. Here are 7 suggestions to help you establish your identity in the marketplace. Alright, so let’s get going!
Defining a “personal brand” before delving into the best ways to create one is essential. An individual’s reputation is comprised of their character, beliefs, and the way they act in the world. Your personal brand should assist convey your ideals to others much as a company’s brand does for its customers. Your objective should be to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate your worth to prospective employers or customers.
Your personal brand can be defined as “your story.” And that narrative is crucial to launching or advancing your professional career. In fact, eighty-five percent of recruiters say that candidates’ personal brands were a factor in the choice to hire them. Check that your personal brand is conveying the proper message.
Getting Started on Your Personal Brand
You need to have a firm grasp on your own individuality before you can begin to construct a personal brand that does justice to your individuality in the professional world. Think deeply about yourself and make a list of your best and worst qualities. Here are a few questions to ponder:
- In which areas of work do I excel?
- What is my motivation?
- What characteristics have others complimented me on?
- Which roles seem to drain my energy?
- Which projects, or types of projects, can I spend hours on without feeling tired or overwhelmed?
- It is important to know that the answers to these questions today will not be the same answers you provide 10 years from now, as you will grow at a personal and professional level.
Your personal brand should be more than just a snapshot of who you are right now; it should also serve as a guide to getting you where you want to go. In addition to knowing what you’re good at now, you should evaluate if your strengths and limitations are a good fit for the field or profession you’re interested in entering. Finding out what makes you special in this way can help you grow as a person and as a professional. Predicting where you’d like to be in five or ten years will help you figure out what you need to do now to get there.
You need to know who you’re talking to before you can start building your personal brand. Is it other influential people in the field? Someone who works for a certain business? Who are these people who are trying to hire me? If you know who you’re writing for from the start, you’ll have an easier time figuring out what to write. As an example, over 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn as a way to locate qualified prospects, so making sure your profile is up-to-date there is a good place to start. To the contrary, if you’re a web designer or graphic artist, you can benefit from creating a personal website or portfolio to showcase your many skills. It all depends on who you want to reach and how you define that group.
Start looking into the top professionals in your field as you begin to plot out your future career moves. The best way to learn about a topic is to talk to people who are already experts in it. Instead of just following someone on social media, take the time to engage with them. Join the conversation by commenting and asking questions. Try to model your actions after those of successful people… and then surpass them. The point of creating a personal brand is to make yourself easily identifiable among competitors.
The old adage says something like, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” Maintaining and expanding your professional network is essential as you build your personal brand. Attending networking events, both formal and casual, is a great way to make connections with other professionals and learn from the best in the business. The more people you know, the more probable it is that others will remember your name and associate it with your personal brand. If you meet someone interesting at a networking event, don’t be afraid to ask if you can get together with them again for a coffee or informational interview. If you don’t manage to strike up a discussion with someone at the event, don’t fret; simply contact out via email or LinkedIn to kick things off.
Making sure your internet presence is interesting to potential employers, colleagues, and other stakeholders is crucial to establishing and growing your personal brand. You can nurture your brand across all of the available social media channels, or you can choose to devote more time and energy to one or two. It’s possible that the appearance of your online identity will vary depending on the medium you employ. Although your narrative should be consistent across all channels, you should refocus your efforts to deliver your most compelling content in the places where your intended audience spends the most time.
We’ve stressed the significance of developing and sharing an engaging narrative in order to draw the attention of recruiters, industry leaders, potential employers, and others who may come into contact with your personal brand. Don’t discount the importance of your story and message because of how you look. The use of professional headshots is a powerful way to promote your personal brand. Photographs taken by a professional personal branding photographer will be able to convey the qualities, backstory, and character you’ve worked so hard to develop for your brand.
Imagine how far your narrative would travel when accompanied by a professional headshot and personal brand photograph. If you are trying to build your own brand or break into a new field, contact the top photographer in Charleston, West Virginia, Emily Shafer. She knows how to get the most out of your brand’s potential in front of the camera, and she has a keen eye for spotting the ideal angles to use.