In today’s post I discuss why there is value in personal branding?
Do you ever meet someone high up in business? Maybe a CEO or major speaker, and then you go to their social media channels or maybe their LinkedIn account, and you’re unimpressed?
Let me tell you. The reason branding is so important when it comes to your personal self, is that you are an extension of your business. Keep your personal and business brand aligned together.
I find this topic very important because as I’m networking, as I’m meeting a lot of people, I noticed that everyone has such great ideas. They’ve got great businesses and are entrepreneurs. They’re hitting it really hard, but then when I looked at their personal branding, it’s so lacking. Yet, it’s such an easy thing to update. Here’s the thing. We’re a visual society and first impressions count.
Any kind of relationships that are built through business are always at the end human interactions, authentic interaction. When you’re networking, when you’re out there representing your business, it’s important to look polished as an entrepreneur.
We’ve all met those people that aren’t put together. Subconsciously, we think in our heads, if they can’t take care themselves, how are they going to take care of my business. If you went to somebody who, let’s say, was taking care of your finances, and they couldn’t even afford a nice pair of pants, you’re not going to give them your money.
Here’s something else to consider that these days with social media accounts, you can’t really hide. Everybody has a way to look into your life. It’s important to make sure and check everything that you’re posting in the way that your profile picture looks and the message that you’re sending.
A great example is athletes. They’ll be out there doing an amazing job playing football, basketball, or any other sports, and then they’ll post something really stupid on social media and right then and there, it’s about that little moment that happened on social media, probably something they shouldn’t have done and now, the way they were playing, the way that they had their talent isn’t really taken seriously.
Let’s talk about some of the key points when it comes to your personal branding. Always have a nice profile picture. Be consistent and authentic with your messaging. Keep your style up to date and try to build an online presence. Keep your LinkedIn account current and your personal stuff away from business.
Here’s a statistics from entrepreneur. Ninety-two percent of people trust recommendations from individuals, even if they don’t know them over brands. When brand messages are shared by employees on social media, they get 561 percent more reach than the same messages shared by the brand social media channel. Those two statistics right there proved that personal branding is very important.
Let’s do a little fun practice with LinkedIn, because what I do is I go on LinkedIn and I take a look at a bunch of photos and see what I can find. What I noticed a lot of times is there’s a lot of unprofessional photos.
There’s photos of party animals, the throwback, the happy parent, the hunter, the person in a random room who takes a selfie, and then he shows the ceiling up above where there’s usually a leak or there’s the partier. There’s the, “Hey, sexy.” There’s the world traveler.
If you go on LinkedIn, I bet you can find a bunch of these profiles too, but the thing is it doesn’t show me your professional side. I’m glad that you have kids. I’m glad that you liked to fish, but at the end of the day, I want to know you through business. Keep business with business, and personal with personal.
The best thing you can do for your personal branding is have a nice profile photo. These days, it’s not that hard to snap one. If you have a phone that can take decent pictures, you don’t have to get a professional photo made. You can just use your phone.
Find the place that’s work‑related like a lobby area of a building. Make sure to be by the light and that the light is not directly on you but at an angle. You can either use a selfie stick or have a friend take your photo. Move around as the light changes and take tons and tons of photos. Smile, people love happy people. You can use apps like Snapseed to clean up the photo.
Crop it from the waist up. Make sure that there’s no other big distractions around you, big details that the background is very simple and lighten it up a little bit.
To recap what we talked about today, there’s three forward strategies when maintaining your personal brand.
Number one, have a great profile photo. Number two, keep your LinkedIn up to date and get reviews if you can. Number three, keep check of what you post.
Our takeaway for this episode is keeping your brand polished and aligned is a requirement to grow your business.
If you enjoy this podcast, please share with your friends and colleagues. If there are any other topics on running a business or building a brand you would like to hear about, please leave a comment.
Remember the time and energy you put into your brand determines the success of your business.
Thank you for your time. Keep rocking and dream big!
Best, Kasia
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