Tweet

Four Easy Personal Branding Tips

Written by: Marcel Sim

Article Overview: Your personal brand, if managed and developed properly, can become your greatest business asset. Decide today to build up your personal brand, and it’ll go a long way in your entrepreneurial career. Learn how you can stand out in the crowd with these four easy personal branding tips.

Four Easy Personal Branding Tips

Corporations and companies today spend millions of dollars on corporate branding. Why is corporate branding so important that it attracts so many businesses, big and small, to invest much time and money on it? Effective corporate branding can boost the bottom line of your company significantly; it has the ability to equip a new product or service with instant credibility and value in the market. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that for any serious corporation that wishes its product offerings to be successful, corporate branding is an essential and vital tool to project a strong brand and identity.

What’s in a brand anyway? I looked it up on Wikipedia, here’s what the site has to say about branding: A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and serves to create associations and expectations around it. A brand often includes a logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, and sound, which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.

Whenever we talk about branding, we almost always think of logos and slogans. See the curved tick on your running shoes and apparel, and you’ll recognize in an instant the famous Nike “Swoosh”. What comes to your mind next? “Just Do It”. But do you know that branding can also take place at a personal level?

With personal branding, you’ll rely less on logos, slogans and sounds; it’s more of your individual values, qualities, personality and vision. In today’s business world, it’s important for you as an entrepreneur to learn to promote and market your personal brand. To gain an advantage over the competition, you need to stand out in a crowd. Here are four simple personal branding tips on how you can become your own brand:

1. Develop your own personal marketing plan.

Include your personal mission statement: what on earth are you here for? What do you hope to achieve in your lifetime? Specify your short-term and long-term goals, and plan your timeline to achieve your goals. Include detailed strategies and action steps, and don’t forget to review your personal marketing plan quarterly.

2. Build up your credibility

In whichever field or industry you’re in, aim to be the best you can be and to offer the best you can give. Make use of every opportunity to learn and hone your skills. Become the expert whom people in your professional field go to for help and advice. Give a lecture, contribute advice and articles to an e-zine, or go join your local community organization.

3. Develop and present your “elevator speech”

An elevator speech is a short, succinct description of what you do, how you do it differently from the others, and the benefits you’re able to provide to your customers. Develop yours today and present it to prospective clients whenever opportunities arise.

4. Contribute your time, talent, and money to charitable causes

Find a charitable cause which you are passionate about and is related to your particular field of expertise. Give it back to society for the help society has given to you. Donate your time by volunteering to do work for free for a local charity. Give your expertise and advice or even donate money to a charitable cause. By doing all these, you’re reinforcing your personal brand and establishing your credibility.

Your personal brand, if managed and developed properly, can become your greatest business asset. Decide today to build up your personal brand, and it’ll go a long way in your entrepreneurial career.

Related Articles
  Personal Branding Tips for Beginners
  What Is Personal Branding And How Do you Do It?
  How to Use Personal Branding for a Competitive Edge
  The Secret Behind Successful Branding (and No, It's Not About a Logo)
  Personal Branding for Better Visibility

Article Tags: corporate branding, corporate branding, corporate branding, corporate branding, implicit values, marketing plan, marketing plan, personal brand, personal brand, personal brand, personal brand, personal branding, personal branding, personality, personality



Related Forum Posts
Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
Re: Domain name sugestion - Hi Anelly, Support-Box.com sounds very good to me. Easy and catchy.
Delegating - Good info and interesting list. Easy to see how the authority or power is slowly passed to the person - the secret would be knowing WHEN to move to the next step. I like to avoid people who are stuck at the #1 level. Chris
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I know this is a naive question but i'm really not sure: What do you tweet ? Business? promote your business? Personal? Are there things you can't do? ALSO :Is there a rule book? Is there a success formula using twitter?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Web Design in 30 Minutes - Can this be Right?

The Right Job - Part Five 'Compensation'

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.