BRANDING GUIDE: HOW TO BRAND YOURSELF AND YOUR BUSINESS

In today’s hyper-connected world, competition can come from anywhere, whether from your next-door neighbour or someone halfway across the globe. That’s brand yourself and your business is more important than ever. 

It’s the key to standing out from the crowd and making a name for yourself in a global marketplace.

It’s crazy to think about, right? But despite this, so many people don’t realize the true value of building their own personal branding strategy.

Did you know that each and every one of us has our own personal brand? The way we present ourselves to the world, including how we dress and speak, can influence how we are perceived and categorized by others. 

However, what really sets us apart and defines our brand value is our individual knowledge and experiences, such as our expertise in our core domain. These are the key factors that truly shape our personal brand.

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is taking control of how companies or individuals perceive you, whether it’s a business or people in your social circles. The main objective here is to establish a powerful emotional connection with your brand name when it’s heard.

There is a well-known quote by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos about personal branding, which we feel summarizes the concept effectively: “Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Why do you need to brand yourself?

Personal branding helps you gain a positive outlook towards you and your brand. It portrays your stories and unique experiences that make you stand out.

You can set yourself apart from your competitors through your values, strengths, beliefs and passion for creating something new which can make a lasting impression on your audience. 

Having a finely tuned personal branding strategy, helps you gain popularity through media platforms such as magazines, podcasts, television, newspapers, etc. This helps you connect with industry professionals and entrepreneurs as they see value in your brand and have a purpose connecting with you.

How to choose the right Brand type for yourself?

Now that you’ve understood the significance of creating personal brands, let’s dive deeper into selecting the appropriate ‘Brand Persona’ that aligns with your preferences. This will help you in brand yourself and your business.

Choosing the right brand type for yourself boils down to identifying your brand intent and what you want to be recognized as. Making the wrong decisions here could result in wasting your efforts. So, how do you choose the right brand type for yourself?

Every brand persona belongs to one of the following types of brand categories. Identifying the category you fall into will help you discover the core idea around which you would want to build your brand.

Giver :

This category of people always find ways to help others and drive change through their actions.

Achiever: 

The achiever is obsessed with achieving milestones and is a thought leader in their industry

Trendsetter:

Trendsetters are always up-to-date on the latest trends in the industry and love being an early adopter.

Influencer:

 Influencers have a knack for persuading others and getting them to take action.

Rebel: 

Rebels love to challenge the status quo and are always questioning things. Their brand identity revolves around driving others to think like them

Motivator:

This category of self brand motivates others by sharing their personal journey or breaking down how successful people got to where they are.

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What Next?

How to create your own personal branding strategy?

Know your audience

Every brand has a brand manager who takes care of how a brand gets built. Their sole responsibility is to ensure that the right strategies are developed for that brand and, in the process, try to change the brand perception in people’s minds and build an emotional connection with its customers.

This is exactly what you need to do. After you have decided on the type of brand, you want to build, conduct thorough market research on your target audience, and craft your brand persona in such a way that it attracts your audience. The brand persona needs to be redefined based on what is relevant to your audience so that you stay in trend.

 It’s like how an AI model keeps redefining itself to make accurate predictions; you need to redefine how you want to be represented and keep building on that.

Once you start promoting this way, people will recognize you as an expert in your field, and your niche in the market will help you attract more customers. This way, your customers will refer you to more people, which is known as personal brand awareness.

Develop a personal website

Developing a personal website that is convenient and accessible to your audience can be a game changer in today’s world. Your website can define who you are and what you do & it should exactly do this. 

Start with an introduction video of yourself and your brand. Write articles related to your field and the current trends in different areas. This will show your domain expertise and build trust in your audience. 

This will, in turn, attract more traffic to your website. You can also create an eBook showing your journey and experience.

Prepare a Content Strategy

Developing a content strategy  is the process of planning, creating, distributing and measuring content in all its online forms to achieve predefined business and marketing goals. Your website and social media platforms should bring knowledgeable information for the real world.

Have a plan to publish your work and experience in journals and engage with industry experts through interviews. In this digital era, people spend more time online than offline.

Some of the ways to engage with your audience is through online courses, infographics, conducting webinars, podcasts etc,. The more you give out to your audience, the more engagement you receive for your brand. 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, developing a powerful personal brand identity is essential for you and your business. At Luxeveda, we excel at building and nurturing brands. We have worked with some of the best clients and know what it takes to create one. Contact us for more information regarding branding services, and we would love to help you!