Personal branding has become a staple in terms of career assets. People are deriving benefits from personal branding ranging from new career opportunities to audiences they can monetize for new business ventures.
However, these benefits take hard work, strategy, and dedication to achieve. And that is why understanding the importance of personal branding is critical, so you have a firm grasp on the potential value you can receive by investing in personal branding, and motivate yourself to start your personal branding journey.
In this blog post, we examine the importance of personal branding, not only outlining the key benefits that a personal brand offers, but also discussing the risks not having a personal brand can present.
Professional and career opportunities perhaps demonstrate the importance of personal branding best. Thanks to the byproducts of a strong reputation and network growth that personal branding creates, people who build personal brands open themselves up to more career opportunities.
These opportunities can come in the form of more exposure to recruiters and hiring managers seeking employees for job roles, referrals from connections made through network growth, or new clients for consulting work and personal businesses. This is the network effect of personal branding, as the more your personal brand grows, the more potential opportunities you will find through your expanded network, and the more inbound opportunities your improved profile will attract.
Regardless of your personal brand goals, the increased opportunities that personal branding creates can support them.
Another way to look at the career opportunities that personal branding generates is to view your personal brand as a career safety net. The larger your network is and the stronger reputation you have, the easier it will be to find a new job should you ever need one, or to find clients for consulting work or side hustles should you need additional income.
For people employed by organizations, you never know what will happen as layoffs or changes in company strategy can impact job roles even for the best employees. Having a personal brand to fall back on and derive job opportunities and income from is a great safety net, and a prime example of the importance of personal branding.
Use this personal brand framework to get started with building your own personal brand.
You could be the strongest and most talented professional in your respective field, but if no one is aware of your work because you don’t promote yourself, you won’t receive the maximum value you could have for what you’ve accomplished.
Failing to invest in personal branding will see others who prioritize their brands receive this recognition, and propel themselves as thought leaders in your industry. This will allow them to receive publicity opportunities like public speaking and article contributions, as well as better career opportunities as they are recognized as an authority in your space.
Those same opportunities are available to you if you start investing in your own personal brand. Personal brand building challenges you to step out of your comfort zone, with brand building activities like writing Twitter threads, recording videos, and public speaking pushing you to put yourself out there and receive credit and recognition for your expertise and body of work.
If you want to maximize the return on investment from your career accomplishments and expertise, build a personal brand that helps to amplify those attributes and claim deserved credibility.
Use these tools for Personal Branding to build your brand.
Working on your personal brand is a rewarding experience, as building one will see you gain more recognition for your work as mentioned above. The importance of personal branding for confidence building is an unsung benefit of investing in developing one.
Through personal brand building you will connect with more like minded peers who appreciate your unique strengths and value as your network expands. For example, financial professionals will understand the nuanced skills and knowledge possessed by a fellow financial professional more than the general public does. The same goes for other professions. This makes the network growth that personal branding yields confidence inducing as you make connections who recognize and appreciate your strengths.
The tangible business and career opportunities mentioned above are also confidence boosting, as your expertise and services will be in higher demand the more your personal brand grows.
Network growth with industry peers who present the opportunity for deep and genuine connection, recognition and demand for your work and expertise, and the shedding of imposter syndrome are all aspects of personal brand building that make it a rewarding and confidence building journey.
Confidence building through personal branding can be particularly helpful for introverts who may not naturally seek out the exposure that personal branding creates.
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of a personal brand is that it is a tangible asset that follows you from job to job, and provides the benefits mentioned above over time. The sub components of a personal brand like social media audiences and an established reputation in your industry serve you for the rest of your life.
For example, if you have an established personal brand and want to start a business, or look for a new job, you can turn to your niche audience and leverage it to seek those outcomes. This quality makes a personal brand something you can leverage as needed throughout your career.
Read “5 Things Every Professional Should Have to Build Their Brand.”
Just like with financial investments, personal brands compound as you invest in them over time. That is because personal brand sub components like social media audiences follow the law of compounding, meaning the more you invest in their growth, the more growth and greater returns you will see later.
Not only is this justification for building a personal brand, as you are setting yourself up for future benefit, it is also motivation to get started building your brand early. For example, students and young professionals, or entrepreneurs looking to start a business can start building a personal brand now, see immediate benefit in terms of network growth, and set themselves up for even more growth later in their careers.
Related: Personal Branding Challenges: Tips for Overcoming the Most Common Personal Branding Challenges
The opportunity for monetization is an attractive component of a personal brand. Personal brands can be used to launch new businesses, build passive income by selling products, and be leveraged to generate leads for freelance and consulting work.
Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi is an example of an entrepreneur who used consistent writing on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium to build a significant following online. Her audience not only generated consulting and paid writing gigs for her, but she was also able to start creating and selling her own digital products that give her passive income.
This is just one example of someone using personal brand building to carve out a business for themselves— a trend plenty of creators are taking advantage of as personal branding and the concept of the creator economy becomes more popular. Consider monetization as a goal for your own personal brand that can offer additional income streams.
Check out this Gary Vaynerchuk personal branding case study for another example of an entrepreneur using a personal brand for monetization and career growth.
The importance of a personal brand has multiple facets to consider, like career security and professional opportunities, which will be more meaningful to different people depending on their specific personal brand goals. Review the points in this blog post as you consider which aspects of personal brand growth are most important to you, and use those to stay motivated on your own personal branding journey.
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Hi, I'm Justin and I write Brand Credential.
I started Brand Credential as a resource to help share expertise from my 10-year brand building journey.
I currently serve as the VP of Marketing for a tech company where I oversee all go-to-market functions. Throughout my career I've helped companies scale revenue to millions of dollars, helped executives build personal brands, and created hundreds of pieces of content since starting to write online in 2012.
As always, thank you so much for reading. If you’d like more personal branding and marketing tips, here are more ways I can help in the meantime:
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