What is a personal brand

3 posts

Even at work, you have a personal brand. What are people saying about you when you're not in the room? Are you giving off the right vibe to your colleagues and conveying the brand you want to convey at work?

Developing your personal brand is essential for the advancement of your career. It is what makes you special, and how you'll become more valuable to an organization.

Here are a few tips on how to develop your personal brand:

1. Get Clear On Your Unique Value Proposition

To become respected in your company or industry, you need to be very clear on what unique value you provide and how to connect that to your company's mission.

Most peopleâand I see it all the time with my interview coaching clientsâare not that clear on what makes them different from others. This is the reason they don't get the jobs or promotions they are after!

Your brand should be authentic to you so notice your emotions when performing certain tasks and activities. If it is something you have passion and energy for, it should become part of your personal brand.

Spend some time thinking about what makes you different from your peersâyour strengths, your passions, and your goals.

2. Ask For Feedback

What do you want others to experience about you?

You might want to write down 3-5 things you'd want others to experience when interacting with you and then ask a close friend or a trusted colleague to do the same. Are the answers similar? If so, well done. If notâyou have some work to do in terms of branding yourself the right way.

It is important to understand how others perceive you as this will enable you to start sending the right messages to your audience. And having a personal brand is definitely a requirement for leadership positions and will enable you to create more impact.

3. Be Consistent

Everything you do or post on social media ultimately contributes to your personal brand. Once you're clear on your personal brand, make sure that the way you dress, the emails you write, your body language, and so on are consistent with your brand message.

4. Use Social Media Effectively

Platforms like WordPress make it easier than ever to promote yourself to your target audience. I blog weekly, and I'd recommend that you post a couple of times a week on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter on topics that your audience will find educational (and will also highlight your experience).

Here is a quick guide on how you can position yourself as an expert so that you get the best opportunities in your business or career.

5. Promote Your Brand In Person

Utilizing social media to build your personal brand is great, but make sure you promote your brand in person, too. Whether it is participating in industry groups, giving talks, or offering to lead a project that highlights your talents, what can you do to promote your brand offline?

If you want to be successful, creating a personal brand isn't just an option; it's a necessity. Whether you aspire to get that promotion or land your dream job, creating a compelling and consistent brand will help you meet your goals.

Need more help building your personal brand?

Join our community to learn how to create a personal brand and UNLEASH your true potential to get what you want from work!

This article was originally published at an earlier date.

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5 Tips For Building Your Personal Brand …

Why is your personal brand so important anyway? Do you REALLY need one?

Great questions. Allow me to explain...

Here are four personal branding tips absolutely EVERYONE should know:

Brand Or BE Branded!

Whether you like it or not, you've got a brand. Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. It's what comes to mind when people think about you, and how people describe you to their friends.

Chances are, you want SOME say in what people say about you. You want to make sure people are perceiving you the way YOU want to be perceived, right?

In order to do that, you need to create a brand for yourselfâa brand that represents you, your goals, and your accomplishments. As Work It Daily founder and CEO, J.T. O'Donnell, says, you must "brand or BE branded!"

Be Honest About Your Brand

This is important. Don't build a brand that's not true to you. Not only is it exhausting to try and keep up with something you're not, but everyone can see right through it. Don't strip your brand of its true flavor! Embrace who you areâall of your quirks included.

Strategically Polarize

One of the biggest keys to a strong brand is to strategically polarizeâto fully embrace who you are (your brand) with no apologies.

"I think for a lot of us, we want so much to be liked that we boil ourselves down to this grey, watery mush," says Sally Hogshead, author of FASCINATE, in an interview with bestselling author and web TV host Marie Forleo. "If you're trying to create messages for everybody, you end up speaking to nobody."

Yes, there will be people who don't agree with your brand. They may even hate it. But the people who love you will REALLY love you. They will be able to connect with you, engage with you, and trust you because your brand is honest. And, in the end, who else do you need? You can't please everyone, so be selective. Who do you want to associate with your brand?

Style Your Brand

Don't just keep your awesome, quirky, AMAZING brand to yourselfâlet it shine! Embrace your brand and reinforce it in everything you do. This isn't just limited to your work. Think about your style and behavior, too!

"Develop your personal dress style, appearance, and image that consistently screams what you are about," writes Deborah Shane in her article "How To Be Memorable: Develop Your Unique Brand Style."

Who are you? How can you reinforce your brand through your personal style and behavior? Don't just brand yourself on paper. Live your brand!

Need more help with your personal brand?

Join our community to learn how to build your personal brand and UNLEASH your true potential to get what you want from work!

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4 Personal Branding Tips EVERYONE Needs To …

When you begin the job application process, you need to make sure your resume is optimized and ready to be sent out to employers. The struggle isn't so much finding enough things to include on your resume. Rather, it's choosing what skills, experiences, and accomplishments to include on your resume to boost your likelihood of landing an interview.

Choosing the right skills to include on your resume is easier said than done. What skills will really stand out to recruiters and hiring managers? What skills demonstrate why you'd be a great fit for the position? What skills best represent what you bring to the table?

Fortunately, there's an easy process you can follow to ensure you're answering these questions and setting yourself up for job opportunities.

Here are four steps for choosing the right skills to include on your resume:

1. Decode Job Descriptions

Before you hit "apply" on a job posting, it's important to read through the job description and understand what the job actually entails.

What is this company really looking for in a candidate?
What responsibilities are listed?
What skills are they asking for?

You have to analyze the job description, then think about how you would fit into this "mold" of an employee that they have in mind for the position. Start to think about the core responsibilities you've had in your previous jobs.

Do your previous core responsibilities translate into skills that this job posting is asking forâskills that would make you a great fit for the position?

2. Ask Yourself "Can I Quantify That?"

Once you've decoded the job description and determined if you have the skills the employer is asking for, it's time to think about which skills you should include on your resume (because you can't include them all).

The key to getting your resume past the ATS is to include only hard skills on your resume.

Hard skills (skills that tie directly to core responsibilities) are what applicant tracking systems (ATS) and hiring managers want to see. They're quantifiable. If you can't quantify it, it's probably a soft skill. Soft skills DO NOT belong on your resume.

So, when deciding what skills you should include on your resume, ask yourself, "Can I quantify that?" If you can, it's a hard skill, and it belongs on your resume.

Both industry-specific and transferable hard skills can go on your resume. After decoding the job description, you will know which hard skills the employer is looking for.

3. Think About Your Brand

The next step in deciding which skills should go on your resume deals with personal branding. You want to make sure you are "branding" yourself correctly for job opportunities.

By that, we mean knowing what type of service you provide for a companyâand what skill sets support that service.

After all, here at Work It Daily, we know every job seeker is a business-of-one. Are you branding your business (yourself) correctly in order to attract customers (employers looking to invest in you)?

Know your brand, and own it!

4. Customize, Customize, Customize

The last step in deciding which skills should go on your resume is customization.

Customizing your resume is very important. You'll probably have to highlight different skills for the different jobs you apply for. That means customizing your resume for each job application.

What projects did you work on?
What expertise did you gain?
What skills should you be emphasizing?

If you ask yourself these questions for each job you apply for, your answers will most likely differ. That's how you'll know you're customizing your resume correctly and giving yourself the best chance to land an interview.

As you're thinking about your resume, remember you have more skills than you realize. Your job is to make it easy for employers to see the connection between your skill sets and the skill sets needed to do the job. When in doubt, ask yourself, "Can I quantify that?"

The goal at this stage in the job search process is to get an interview. You can only worry about getting the job after you know you're in the running. What skills are going to get you in the door?

Need more help with your job search?

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This article was originally published at an earlier date.

As you're thinking about your resume, remember you have more skills than you realize. Your job is to make it easy for employers to see the connection between your skill sets and the skill sets needed to do the job. When in doubt, ask yourself, "Can I quantify that?"

The goal at this stage in the job search process is to get an interview. You can only worry about getting the job after you know you're in the running. What's going to get you in the door?

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