Creating your personal brand is like creating a brand identity for a product or service with one big difference. In creating a brand identity, you can choose its name, values, and personality. When it comes to your personal brand, it’s all about you and your authenticity. That’s everything that you are, everything you aspire to be, and everything that people believe you to be.

So why should you build a personal brand?

Personal branding is all about establishing your public persona and communicating your values, beliefs, goals, and purpose. As the trend of entrepreneurs, freelancers continues to rise, and the internet and social media platforms become the focal point for everything, there has never been a more important time to define your online presence.

When creating your personal brand, you create your own digital asset that will remain with you for your lifetime, outlasting any particular job or career. It will be the way the majority of people will see you today in our digital world. If you don’t, you leave yourself open for someone else to control your online identity, damage or even tarnish your reputation. Now is the time to make your mark!

By following the points listed below, you can create an authentic online personal identity that is sustainable and able to evolve as you evolve.

Key benefits of developing your personal brand

Demonstrates your uniqueness

Your personal brand is built upon your values, goals, skills, experience and passions. Your brand is the essence of who you are. It makes you unique and allows you to carve out your niche. And by doing so, it will enable you to position yourself as an authority. Enhancing your credibility and giving you an enormous edge over someone who hasn’t worked to develop a strong personal brand. This applies especially when it comes to landing a new job or winning a new client over the competition.

Builds your credibility

Your online brand will become your digital reputation, portfolio and platform. It will be the channel to your audience that creates that vitally important first impression. You can showcase your work, case studies and include valuable testimonials. These elements will make you more valuable to those looking for you. And, if structured correctly, your brand presence will convey your experiences as high-value credibility builders and door openers.

Develops your network

Your personal brand will clearly articulate who you are, what you do, and how you can help others. This will make it easier for people to see the value in connecting with you. As you build your network, you will be creating your circles of trust, interested in you and what you have to say. You, in turn, can learn about your follows, about their needs and interests. This will take time and effort to cultivate but when its established and flourishing, no one can take it away from you.

Strengthens your influence

With a defined niche and voice of authority within a particular field of expertise, your online presence gives you visibility and the stage to influence opinions, decisions, attitudes and actions of your audience. It can be especially powerful if you are able to educate them along the way through the sharing of your knowledge and expertise. If you can bring clarity on a particular topic by cutting through the noise and uncertainty of something. This will add real value to your viewers and strengthen your position as a subject matter expert.

Increases your premium

Having put all the building blocks in place, and you have started to develop your online presence, all the elements inherent within your brand come into play. Your skills, experience, reputation all go towards justifying charging premium prices for your work or services. So if you are building a brand for commercial reasons, or plan to someday in the future. Having a strong brand will help you move out of the commodity market. This could be to speak at conferences, writing in publications, or gaining affiliation with a group or organisation.

Leverages your career

When you have been through the process of building your brand, you will have built the foundations of your professional and public identity. This will position you in front of people’s minds within your industry. It will elevate you to a position where you are sought after by headhunts for your expertise. And being a person of influence, it will help you raise yourself out of the job market pool. You won’t be seen as a number, and you won’t be put into a box. This will give you complete control over the direction you want to take your career.

Source: BRANDALLAGENCY