3 Ways to Develop Your Personal Brand

Whether you’re a corporate professional or have entrepreneurial goals, building your personal brand is important. Why? It’s your security blanket and your body armor when the time comes to make a change. Let’s be clear: A personal brand isn’t about vanity and it isn’t about creating performative bluster. It’s about ensuring that your value as a professional is secure and visible regardless of employment or corporate whimsy.

For a long time it felt like the formula for professional success was pretty simple: “Work hard, get rewarded.” At the beginning of a career, this formula checks out, but when you get to middle management, the efforts seem to stop reflecting in the outcomes (jobs, promotions, raises, etc.) Suddenly, your performance becomes secondary to office politics, reorganizations, bureaucracy and any number of external factors. So what can you do?

Build a personal brand.

I know how valuable a personal brand can be. When I was 35, I got laid off from my corporate position and immediately felt like a fish out of water. My problem? I’d fallen into the trap of getting all of my professional validation from within a company structure. I’d freely given my effort, time and creativity to a company that treated me like a number. It was a hard lesson learned, but I was fortunate to learn it early in my career and it opened my eyes to the importance of putting building blocks in place to protect my personal brand despite professional ups and downs.

So where do we start? I’ve identified three actions we can all take today towards building our personal brand:

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1. Network

Networking can really be done in a few ways, but breaking up your networking efforts into two categories can be useful: local and global.

Developing your local community is a fantastic investment of your time. Start small. Connect with local business owners, neighbors and your kid’s friend’s parents. Look up local networking groups, attend events, volunteer with local organizations and take networking meetings — even if it doesn’t seem like they are going to be able to help you out. Getting your name out there and dedicating time and effort in your local community helps you to build relationships across industries and expertise.

When building your network globally — you’ve got to go digital. While this concept is nothing new, the importance of being socially adept via virtual correspondence grew exponentially as a result of remote work through the pandemic. Now, professionals have a broader mindset when it comes to their networks, so their digital presence must mirror this trend. Conduct research and discover who is in your industry or performs similar functions to you across other businesses. Connect with these people.

2. Build your online presence

Working hand-in-hand with global networking efforts, it’s important to understand the value of developing your online presence. While this may vary slightly based on your industry and where your network does business, a pretty sure bet is to bolster your LinkedIn profile.

The most important piece of advice I can give for building your LinkedIn profile: Don’t tie your identity to a specific company. Rather, build your personal brand around your career achievements, your career successes, your efforts, your wins. You should establish your unique value proposition, credibility, industry and subject matter expertise. You can do this through articles, videos, rich content, speaking engagements, etc. Demonstrating your expertise in a public way is important. Of course, you can mention where you work, but remember: your brand is about YOU.

Think of it this way: if you are applying to a job and somehow get in through the AI filters, preliminary screening and the interviews, what sets you apart? What makes you look stable and like a good bet for their company? Social proof. It’s hard to fake it when you have the background and evidence of year over year success.

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3. Invest money and time

As your network and online presence grows, you may find that the demand to connect, post fresh content and build relationships becomes too demanding and too time consuming. While you want to have these touch points and connect thoughtfully with your network and provide value-packed content, there comes a point where you must strategize better ways to bolster your personal brand without spending an inordinate amount of time on maintenance. This is where I lean into evergreen content and technology solutions.

Evergreen content is exactly what it sounds like – a backbone of core content that is applicable to your network regardless of time or circumstances. This content can be reposted, repurposed and tweaked. Most importantly, it provides steadfast credibility over years that supports a personal brand.

At some point, it also becomes valuable to invest in technology solutions to help pick up the slack. Ask yourself: is it worth it to buy a premium LinkedIn subscription? Should you consider an automation software to send value-added messages to connections? Would you benefit from a content scheduling tool? Leveraging technology solution tools to support your online presence is a fantastic way to maximize your reach while continually adding more and more stability to your personal brand.

At the end of the day, it’s important to realize that a personal brand isn’t built overnight. Like physical health or financial security, it requires ongoing efforts that are most effective when they’re built into a daily routine. So start networking locally and globally, build your online presence and invest a little time and money to maximize your personal branding efforts.