Personal branding is an important career tool. Having a clearly defined brand will affect how people perceive you professionally and will open up more career opportunities.
It has important business benefits too, including more productive teams, more effective relationships with clients and candidates and improved customer service.
We’ve collected some personal branding tips which can help you build your unique selling points and a great career for yourself.
Understand who you are and your unique abilities
- It is important to identify the strengths and qualities that will power your personal brand. Assess everything from your style, body language and tone of voice, to how you communicate on email or by phone.
- Build on your strengths and seek out opportunities to demonstrate your skills in these areas to others.
- Ask yourself: What are your values? What motivates you? Focus on the things that make you unique and authentic.
- Be aware of your weaknesses and understand how they counter your strengths.
- Consider the way you react in situations, including how you manage people, how you deal with stressful situations and how you think and process information.
Understand other people’s perceptions of you
It’s important to understand how other people perceive you. Select a few people who you trust and respect and ask them for honest feedback on what they see as your talents. Compare this to what you have established as your unique abilities. You should expect some surprises but its invaluable insight that you can use to begin make changes. Think about why there are differences, what they are and how they could have come about. It’s important to understand your impact on others.
Once you’ve gone through these steps and you know what it is that you want to be recognised for you’ll have a clearly defined set of objectives that you can put into practice.
Put it into practice - 4 steps to creating your personal brand
1. Plan
What do you want to achieve with your personal brand? This could be linked to a specific project or meeting (including client or candidate meetings). For example, consider what you want the outcome to be, what you want people to remember about you, then think about how you go about doing this. Remember it’s about using your strengths so think best how to bring them to the fore.
2. Social media
Use networks such as LinkedIn to make connections with new people and build your network of influence. Do this by joining groups – or set up a group if there isn’t one already – and participating in online discussions. Get yourself endorsed by the people you know well, and with who you’ve worked for a prolonged period of time. The power of endorsements is crucial in communicating your professionalism.
3. Mentor
Who do you admire for their personal brand, internally in SThree and externally? Could they mentor you to help you build your own unique brand?
4. Keep it fresh
It’s important that you keep reviewing your brand at regular intervals. Are you portraying yourself the way you want to, consistently? Are you achieving your goals? What skills/knowledge do you want to be known for? It is important to grow and improve your personal brand on an ongoing basis.
If you want to learn more about our people at SThree and their unique selling points and achievements, browse the most recent SThree stories on our blog.