A Hollywood powerhouse, Ellen DeGeneres is an epitome in acing personal branding. She is said to be currently worth $70 million a year in income. All this from effortlessly showing the world the “person” behind the brand and being loved for it.

The only difference between business branding and personal branding is the human element. As quoted by a famed international brand consultant, Kepferer, “Identity precedes image” – something I always keep in mind.

An identity is who you are and an image is how you are seen; stability between these contrasts will fetch long-term gains to your enterprise.

Your business is like the scrumptious meal you intend to serve and personal branding is how you prepare it!  

This emerging start-up age has determined investors who settle to invest in the person rather than the plan and customers who buy from a person rather than a firm. Let me give you four important “must do’s” if you are looking to engage in active personal branding:

• Branding your profile on Linkedin
• Engaging with the end users on Facebook
• Launch on Twitter
• Speak your story on Instagram

Linkedin branding greatly increases the pace and intensity of collaborations. The start-up age cordially coexists with a social media manifesto. Blogs, posts and stories have become the lingua franca of new age branding. It offers a single platform to interact with your consumers, be aware of the competitors and find key insights to stand-out from the multitude.

Personal branding is a conduit to achieve effective inbound marketing and sales leads

Linkedin has an approximate of 500 billion users from all over the globe and 1 billion endorsements. Your voice plus the vision speaks for the visuals. Strategic self-promotion transitions your journey from thought leadership to being a Linkedin marketing expert.

Here are a few insightful analytical reviews of personal branding statistics from a Linkedin article

• Employees get 10x more followers compared to their corporate social media accounts.
• 77% customers are inclined to engage in business with a company, on hearing it from someone they trust.
• Employee social marketing drives 7x more lead from the usual leads.

Personal branding is the new age replacement to the bygone advertising approach. The world outside perceives your profession through your personal brand. Appear as a beloved and a fearless brand for harnessing the power of your credibility. Here are five basic and practical ways to ace your personal branding persona:

Distinguish yourself

A sincere question to begin with, how often do we plunge into exploring and regarding our sincere strengths? Your faithfulness is the grounding to your personal branding. Your dependability is what determines the customers to trust in you, connect with you and propagate about you to others. Embrace your values by heart in every pursuit, starting from interacting with people to what you post on the social networking sites. Inspire your audience with your values and morals aiming to bring them back for more.

Takeaway: Build the bridge for your audience to know your personality based on your intellectual and transferable skills.

Present yourself

If you have an ethical heart to speak about animal safety or environmental protection, speak about them. This will give the audience or customers a perspective of who you are and influence their view of the brand. Use the latest trends to showcase your work, stories, and personal experiences.

Takeaway: Aim to hide your need and show your skills instead.

Convey your experiences

Make use of this personal branding platform to speak more about your experiences and stories than stating straight information. For instance, let’s say in a recent networking event you met an influencer who imparted his business knowledge; speak about personal learning instead of the business gain.

Takeaway: Inspire your audience through your inspiration from the world.

Communicate

Practice the ‘elevator pitch" technique in communicating with the brand or your business in verbal or written forms. Craft your messages carefully in accordance with your target audience, cultural references and ethical values. Utilize your personal branding channel carefully. Remember that your communication skills will eventually set a stage for you to be an influencer for larger masses.

Takeaway: A lion’s share of your success comes from how effective you keep your communication skills.

Network

The upside to networking is to seek inspiration and discuss problems with other experts in real time which can fasten your understanding of the needs and desires of the end users.

Takeaway: Always look out for help, inspiration and inputs from other experts and influencers.

Key to survival in a constantly changing environment is to adapt and learn the emerging social business trends. The world of business is never at a standstill and every brand must engage in a continual growth to sustain. In the pursuit of crafting your personal brand, mark your LinkedIn profile through effective networking, post relevant content, share insights from other influencers etc. Even with driving technologies and transforming business trends,
remember that ‘humans’ will always be the subcultural audience. Personal brand will always be a constant channel to communicate the transition of trends in the business world.

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