The importance of personal branding

Big Business Ideas
Stephene Chikozho

PERSONAL branding entails creating a brand around a person in relation to their role in society or business.

It involves taking responsibility over personal profile and presentation.

Through personal branding, you can position yourself as an authority in your industry, elevating your credibility and differentiating yourself from competitors to ultimately advance your business, social standing or career.

Self-branding can enhance and anchor your reputation as a leader, widen your circle of influence within your niche and increase your impact, in line with your desired goals.

By showcasing unique character traits, milestones and endorsements; as well as having an active public presence through events and the media (including digital), you can work towards building a personal brand that resonates with people in your locality and all over the world.

The process of personal branding involves finding your uniqueness, building a reputation on the things you want to be known for and then allowing yourself to be known for them. Ultimately, the goal is to create something that conveys a message and can be monetised, or perhaps drive career and business growth.

Leading figures

Africa has many individuals who have invested resources in enhancing their personal brands.

I will make reference to a few cases.

Kudzai Violet Gwara, better known as KVG, is revered for her entertainment acumen. As a lifestyle influencer, her Facebook and Instagram platforms consist of real estate, fashion, beauty, food, insurance, travel content and more.

Sharon Mundia from Kenya is admired for her genuine, down-to-earth spirit that radiates from her content.

As a lifestyle influencer, her Instagram content consists of a little bit of everything, like fashion, beauty, home, family, food, fitness and travel.

Ghanaian Nana Antwiwaa Nuamah’s YouTube audience love how transparent she gets in her content.

She teaches financial literacy and touches on life-related topics, even the uncomfortable ones.

Importance

Personal branding is important because it gives you more credibility. Branding yourself allows more people to get to know who you are and how you bring value.

It can also help you land new opportunities like business deals or marketing partnerships that you would not otherwise clinch, especially if you are a person of influence.

Self-branding instils trust in your knowledge and abilities, so companies know that partnering with you will improve their brand awareness.

Improving your personal brand

Once you have started to work on your personal brand, ensure it is aligned with your personal statement and objectives that will help you improve on your progress.

Personal branding has been hugely successful for many different people.

However, without your personal branding statement, it can be hard to know when you have achieved success in your endeavours.

It is essential to know what progress looks like to improve your personal branding.

Guidelines

1. Figure out where your personal brand currently stands: This determination will act as a benchmark for assessing your future activities.
2. Brainstorm on ways of providing value to your audience: The value you offer varies, depending on your industry and audience. Generally speaking, building a unique personal brand means creating something different.
3. Research and create your personal branding statement: Define your audience and audit the competition that may exist for you.
4. Build a personal branding strategy: Plan how to engage with your target audience and define what success will look like for you in one month, one year and two years.
5. Prioritise trust, authenticity and relatability: The key to personal branding is being relatable and real. That means sharing content and experiences that speak to your audience. This could include the challenges you overcame or the resources to solve a problem.
6. Have a communication plan: Controlling your presence online, in the media and at events can be time-consuming, so this plan will help you with negative backlash and help you to easily provide information to partners you will work with down the line.
7. Have a focus: Keeping your message focused for your target demographic will make it much easier to both create content around your personal brand and have others define you.

Strive to share your personal brand through social media, networking, outreach and speaking opportunities

8. Tell a story: If your personal brand is not telling a story, perhaps you have already lost half of your potential audience, so create a story around your brand that your audience can engage with.
9. Be consistent: Consistency is arguably the biggest challenge of building a personal brand. Regularly sharing and creating content is vital.
10. Let other people tell your story: Personal branding is the story people tell about you when you are not in the room, or stories about you shared in other media such as magazines, radio and television.

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11. Monitor your personal brand engagement: Promote positive participation and have a plan of action for negative remarks.
12. Be conscious about avoiding brand burnout: When your brand starts growing, you might feel pressure to post more or create more content. That is good but it is important not to sacrifice quality for quantity.
13. Create a positive impact: Keeping a positive attitude and making an impression will help healthily grow your brand in the long run.
14. Be ready to fail: You may never achieve the best branding until you fail a couple of times while pushing past your comfort zone. The very best brands always come from repeated trial and error, mistakes and failures, and not from instant perfection
15. Consider engaging personal branding experts: Hiring a personal branding agency or expert to promote your brand is worth considering, as it allows you to concentrate on your core business.
16. Measure your success regularly: Set some performance indicators for personal brand success so that you know you are heading in the right direction. Celebrate even small wins to remain motivated to achieve more.

Be yourself

Branding demands commitment to continual reinvention. It entails striking harmonies with people to stir their emotions and commitment to imagination.

If you are not branding yourself, you can be sure others will do it for you. Do not be scared to present the real you to the world. Authenticity is at the heart of personal branding success.

 

Stephene Chikozho is managing director of Urbane Create Agency, a strategy, marketing and advertising agency. He writes in his personal capacity. You can follow him on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) WhatsApp +263772409651 or email [email protected]