Assignment 4

Personal Branding Report

A professional and polished personal brand is important as it serves as a vital tool of self-promotion in terms of profiling skills, values, achievements, and offered services. Similarly, a strong personal brand helps to connect with one’s chosen market by reflecting worth, and what value would be brought to an organisation or project. Moreover, this would lend itself to the possibility of exploring mutually beneficial collaborations or courses that would embellish existing skills.

A personal brand should also set goals and targets and explain motivations concisely yet dynamically and serve as a reflection of one’s own professional persona. Ideally a personal brand would also boost likeability, credibility within one’s own target niche, and trustworthiness without seeming overtly sales focussed – social media is the pre-eminent medium used to achieve these targets.

Social Media platforms serve to add or build on the professional persona created offline. While Social Media pages such as a Facebook business page, Linkedin profile and Twitter page showcase skills; interaction with potential customers and employers should be the focus of these profiles. More than ever people want to do business with other people rather than companies, therefore developing a niche and focussing on a smaller audience and becoming a trusted source of information by posting relevant and helpful content, without an obvious sales agenda, are ways to establish oneself online.

Joining groups in one or two networks that work best for your brand and participating in, as well as starting discussions, while maintaining a single brand voice across all profiles also serves to improve and maintain one personal brand online. It is important to ensure that all comments, interactions and shared content stay on message and that this is consistent across all platforms. Similarly, it is prudent to engage with social media influencers to see how their audience reacts to content. One can then curate and share one’s own and other relevant content with the target of becoming a trusted authority in one’s field.

Having a profile reflective of personal skills is also advantageous. Peg Fitzpatrick as a leader in visual marketing has a beautifully illustrated twitter page whose pinned tweet is a simple yet effective image with the bold words “How Social Media Can be magic for your blog.” She also retweets industry relevant articles, as well as Social Media for business advice, which add to the idea of her being a general authority on visual marketing.

Marvin Gleaton’s Linkedin pages works well as there is a real personal touch with his professional qualifications and achievements, while noted at the end, being secondary to his personal story. He starts by thanking others and similarly the testimonials at the bottom help to increase his likeability and trustworthiness.

References

1.
blog.rebrandly.com. (2016) 10 Amazing Personal Branding Examples. www.blog.rebrandly.com. Available at: https://blog.rebrandly.com/personal-branding-examples/. (Accessed 15.9.2018.)

2.
Patel, S (2016) 9 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand. forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/11/12/9-ways-to-use-social-media-to-build-your-personal-brand/#248e0d393520 (Accessed 15.9.2018).

3.
Nemo, J (2016) How to Create a Killer LinkedIn Profile in 5 Minutes. inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/john-nemo/how-to-create-a-killer-linkedin-profile-in-5-minutes.html . (Accessed 15.9.2018)

4.
Young, H (2016) 5 Social Media Best Practices for 2017. salesforce.com. Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/12/5-social-media-best-practices-for-2017.html (Accessed 15.9.2018).

5.
digitalmarketinginstitute.com (2017) 10 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand on Social Media. www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com Available at: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/2017-11-09-10-steps-to-building-your-personal-brand-on-social-media (Accessed 15.9.2018).

6.
Gasca, P (2016). A Strong Personal Brand Will Enhance Your Life, No Matter What you do for a Living. entrepreneur.com Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/273589 (Accessed 15.9.2018).

7.
Schwartz, C (2018) The Importance of Your Personal Brand. monster.ca Available at: https://www.monster.ca/career-advice/article/the-importance-of-your-personal-brand (Accessed 15.9.2018).

8.
DeMers, J (2014). 5 Steps to Building a Personal Brand (and Why You Need One). inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/jayson-demers/5-steps-to-building-a-personal-brand-and-why-you-need-one.html (Accessed 15.9.2018).

9.
Kawasaki, G and Fitzpatrick P (2014) The Art of Social Media. Portfolio Penguin (2014).