Personal Brand Coaching: The Complete Guide to Success

Brands have always been an important part of any economy. The purpose was originally a form of proof of ownership, but that changed once the potential of branding revealed itself. In the current marketplace, branding is everything and has the potential to make or break a business despite the business size. A good brand was always distinguished and that led to an increase in sales.

Over the decades, we as consumers have set our loyalties with brands across different industries. The most common example of consumer led branding is the question “Do you like Pepsi or Coke?” which can all boil down to a familiarity with branding rather than a taste preference.

Branding for a business is everything. From your business website to the content you produce, they all have to be branded. Now, with a rise in influencer marketing, personal brand coaching is now becoming just as important along with the branding of the business. Entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk have proven that creating yourself as your own personal brand along with the branding of your business can be extremely successful.

This is a guide to help you stay ahead of the evolutionary curve of the worldwide market through personal branding. In other words, consider it a personal brand coaching workshop.

Personal Brand Coaching: What Is Personal Branding

The term branding can become misconstrued between personal branding and corporate branding with many not able to highlight the difference. Both as just as important but in the business world currently, there is a bigger spotlight on the personal branding of professionals within a business.

Personal branding is creating an insight into who you are despite what industry you are based in. It is sharing your personality on your social media channels and even a dedicated personal website to put yourself out there to your business consumers and audience. Marketing yourself just as vigorously is a priority as any product or service your business provides.

Corporate branding is much more restricted in how you build your brand to secure your position amongst your competitors. Brand image and ethics rely more heavily on the business assets and the design of branding to strengthen the position in business has in their market. Brand personality can be difficult to convey to your audience as you first need to highlight the best personality to represent your business model.

Personal Brand Coaching: Why You Need Personal Branding

When someone enters your name into Google, the results that are created will be the first impressions people will have of you. Whether you want to or not, a personal brand will be created for you by how people perceive you. Getting personal brand coaching will allow you to build your brand and take control of how people view you and create the most accurate representation of you and your personality.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Personal Brand Coaching: Benefits of Personal Branding

There are a number of benefits that come with getting personal brand coaching for yourself both within a business and if you are looking to join an industry. We talk through some of them here;

Getting Hired

Having a strong personal brand can multiply your chances of getting hired. The point of the application and interview process for employers is to get to know the applicant. When you already have a brand that they are aware of or can be aware of, that gives you a huge advantage over other applicants. Personal branding allows you create relationships with everyone that’s interested in what you have to offer. This makes you much more credible to prospective employers since your name is already out there.

Furthermore, finding jobs is much easier when you know exactly what you’re looking for and what you’re capable of. Think of your personal brand as your own reference book; all you need to know about you.

Attracting Opportunity

Not only does personal branding make it easier for you to grab opportunities, it turns you into an opportunity magnet. The big brands in any market, like Pepsi for example, don’t need to go to you personally when you’re thirsty and convince you to have a can. When you are thirsty, you automatically think of Pepsi or other names. That is exactly what branding can do for you, if your personal brand is strong enough.

When your name’s already out there and associated with a certain field, you’ll find that employers will come to you. If two people are both skilled technical writers, and there is a job opening at a certain firm. You will find that the firm will reach out to whomever advertises his work the best.

Networking

Personal branding can make wonders for your social network outreach. If your personal brand is compelling enough, people will want to learn more about you. Your Twitter followers will increase, for example, if your brand is relevant to more users and offers them something different.

Networking is important because increasing your outreach means more people are watching you. The more eyes you have on you, the higher the chances are for some of these eyes to have opportunities for you.

Strengthen Your Business

Associating your personal brand with your business can boost your business’s potential sky high. Think of all the big names in the business world, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and many others. A large portion of their company’s value is in the heavy name associated. Steve Jobs is the perfect example of merging his company brand with his own personal brand to exponentially boost both names.

Your company is much more likely to close deals when your name means something to other parties. People will want to do business with you just for the sake of doing business with YOU.

Knowing Yourself

In the process of building your brand you will find that you are also building yourself. It’s one thing to know that you have potential, but another to have it in detailed writing and said out loud. Successful branding in the end is a way of communicating things that otherwise have no words to describe. Employers will know that you can get the job done, and it’s not because you said “I can get the job done.” This certainty of your value becomes apparent to you before other people. This is the most valuable aspect of personal branding, discovering who you really are.

Social Value

There are much more perks to self-advertising than finding more jobs and opportunities. Having a valuable brand is attractive; others can notice the value outside the business world. In the end, It’s easier to make more friends when they already know your name.

Since the moment you first decide to build your personal brand, you will notice positive changes in your personal development. You will become more focused, more organized, more confident. People can sense that, and they will want to watch you grow, because in the end people want positive influences in their life. This is the power of personal brand coaching.

A perfect example of the power of personal branding can have on you and your business is previously mentioned, Gary Vaynerchuk. Vaynerchuk, also known as GaryVee, is an extremely successful entrepreneur, with a net worth of $168 billion, that has built the foundations of his number of businesses on his own personal branding and content.

We have a number of personal branding examples from our clients who increased their business through personal branding. Here’s just one: Shane is the owner of Eldron Property Consultants, a property investment business in Dublin. While Shane has a strong business brand, he was missing an opportunity to leverage his personal brand. We worked with Shane to help him build his business brand, and also advising him on how to leverage is personal brand to gain more exposure for his business.

After building up a reputation as a go-to expert in the property field through social media, he was able to leverage his personal brand to become featured on nationally televised shows such as “this old home” and “house hunters international”, as well as national papers including the Irish Independent and the Sunday Times. This all starts with getting the right personal brand coaching.

Personal Brand Coaching: Personal Branding Vs. Business Branding

What’s the Difference Between Personal and Business Branding

A brand is everything that sets an organization or a product apart. “Everything” includes symbols, logos, fonts, colours, slogans, or even the general aesthetic. It is in a way the personality of the organization that is displayed to the public.

For example, The 20th Century Fox logo before countless films is a stamp that marks a majority of the quality production films. The brand is so well-tailored and advertised that whenever a movie starts no matter who produced it your brain automatically expects to hear the 20th Century Fox music. This is what branding is all about.

The main use of branding is to advertise the company’s very existence and strengthen its position in the market. In order to show off our brand, we need to communicate with the public somehow. In the end, the brand is considered an intangible asset that adds to the value of the company. But how does a company advertise something that can’t be felt or seen? Logos, trademarks, jingles, and so on, are the language of communication. For example, coffee from an independent chain is generally low in cost but by adding that famous green star logo, it almost triples in value. Why?

A well-established brand isn’t just about mass production or showmanship. It’s about a guaranteed standard of quality. McDonald’s didn’t start off as one of the largest fast-food chains in the world overnight. The key is consistency in quality and ambition. You can do the same by getting personal brand coaching.

By proving your worth and the quality of your brand, time and time over, you will begin to become less of a salesman and more of a reference in your field. In the end, if your brand is based on empty promises and advertising, people will notice.

Creating a brand has proven to be the most effective way to create an ongoing relationship with the customer. This relationship is far more valuable to the business than any advertisement. A strong name in the market, in the end, has a monetary value of its own, regardless of the quality of the product or service.

In contrast, personal branding gives your consumer access to you as the person behind the business brand and opens up the channels to create more prospective relationships and potentially increase sales and partnerships. Personal branding is also important for future career choices as candidates social media channels are screen during the hiring process.

Personal Brand Coaching: Real-Life Example

Belfast Artisan Distillery was a completely new gin brand being created in NI that needed collateral to help them stand apart from the influx of new gin brands in recent years. They realised that the heritage and history of Belfast was something they could tap into very easily, which tied in perfectly to the artisan nature of their product. We created a bottle label, website and social campaign aimed at rooting the brand in Belfast while establishing a wider-reaching market across NI. The bottle design took the brand and elevated it by tying in illustrations of local iconography, and the website and social campaign took this concept and rolled it out digitally.

This helped the gin makers achieve phenomenal growth, going from 1 to over 60 stockists in less than a year. This is the true value of a strong brand coupled with a fantastic product.

To sum up, branding is a means of asserting the position in the market. It also provides a way of free advertisement, as well as a way to increase value. The question now is: how can we benefit from this on a personal level?

Personal Brand Coaching: Personal Branding Is Important for Everyone

If branding is a set of methods used to create a lasting impression of a product or service with a customer, then why can’t we do the same with people? For instance, if you are applying for a certain job, you will be asked to present a resume. You may be required to go to an interview. Employers require that because they don’t know the person they are hiring; they need to know what you have to offer. In other words, you need to advertise yourself and your value in order to get opportunities.

It may seem like you are reducing yourself to a product or a service, but that’s not true. Close your eyes and visualize which path you want your career to take. You know you are capable of reaching that career goal. The truth is that people can never see what you see in yourself without you telling them. This is exactly what personal branding is all about; it’s your chance to show the world what you’re capable of.

Personal Brand Coaching: How to Create Your Personal Brand in 5 Steps

Personal branding is nothing more than expressing your personality in a professional and attractive way. Your personal brand isn’t some persona you put on before a business meeting then take off afterwards, it’s who you are. For that reason, creating a personal brand is a huge milestone in your career and your life as a whole. By getting some personal brand coaching, you’re actually investing in yourself and celebrating your achievements and everything that makes you, you.

However, this shouldn’t alarm you, personal branding isn’t hard if you take the right steps and follow through with them. Here are our personal branding tips to help you.

Personal Brand Coaching: The 5 Steps To Your Personal Branding Strategy

Personal Brand Coaching: Step #1 Finding Yourself

You think you know exactly who you are until you’re asked to put it into words. For example, in any interview you will be asked about what kind of person you are. Unless you have a prepared answer for that, you’ll find yourself stumbling and just stating random facts about yourself. However, preparing an answer doesn’t make it any less real, but would make you seem more confident and focused.

Knowing who you are is the foundation of your personal and business brand. It determines the direction it will be taking, your brand vision, your target audience, and everything else in your professional and personal life. So who are you?

In order to answer that, you first need to be able to answer a couple of questions:

What Are You Passionate About?
It’s important to reflect on a list of your passions throughout your life for many reasons. Personal branding is a gateway to success, and with success many people lose themselves. Let this list be your true north; a reminder of what drove you to this success. Your personal brand coaching guide can help you create a unique list based on your own input. In this list you should add the things that if you have will mean you succeeded.

For example, you could be passionate about:

• The environment
• Helping others
• Making friends
• Making money
• Technology
• Storytelling

It’s important to be truthful with yourself. There is no calling more important than one you truly believe in. Your passions are the fuel to the unstoppable machine that is your personal brand.

Personal Brand Coaching: What Are Your Traits?

This is basically your personality type, not necessarily a list. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Are you goal oriented or haphazard? Are you an up-beat person? And so on. You must always be aware of what you are and aren’t capable of.

A lot of people want to be charming and social, party all night, go home and get work done, enjoy a quiet weekend alone in bed, keep everything well organized, while enjoying spontaneous adventures. But that’s just unrealistic. It’s much more productive to know what traits we have and use it for our advantage. For example, if you are an introvert, you could capitalize by getting more work done on the weekends.

How do you know your own traits? A good place to start if you’re confused is to take a big five personality test. Of course these tests are never 100% accurate, no two people are the same after all. They do, however, provide you with a footing on where to begin to look.

You could also get a second opinion for the sake of objectivity. Ask your friends, family, and co-workers what you’re like. They will all have a different outlook on you based on the nature of your relationship, and all very valuable.

Personal Brand Coaching: What Are Your Skills?

Your skills will be the core of you’re selling to the world. Your brand is much more than what you accomplished, it’s also about how you accomplish them. Here you should list the things you’re good at (the more, the better.)

These are all examples of skills a person might have, but when it comes to personal branding, you need to be as specific as possible. Generalization may seem like a safe bet; in other words, more opportunities, but that’s not true. The truth is people relate much more to the technicalities, and so do employers. So instead, your list should be as specific as possible.

Example

• Goal keeping
• Theoretical quantum mechanics
• Young adult fiction writing
• Microsoft office

These are all considered hard skills. There is another set of skills that are important to possess, which are soft skills. They are skills like:

• Time management 
• People skills
• Empathy
• Creativity
• Etc…

These are skills that you cannot display directly, but through your actions. You need to be well aware of them and try to enhance them over time. Your skills are your personal brand’s product, after all.

Personal Brand Coaching: What Are Your Experiences?

As mentioned previously, personal branding is telling your story in a relatable and professional format. In order to do so you need to figure out what experiences influenced you the most and in what way. Your experiences, good or bad, are what sculpted your personality, equipped you with skills, and created your passions.

You can write down as many experiences as you can remember and how each one impacted you. A trip to Spain, for example, or a certain job, or even something traumatic, and so on. Another thing you could do is to cross reference your skills with your experiences. That way you can try to get a similar positive experience to enhance a certain trait or skill.

It’s important to know the origins of every aspect of your life in order to have some control over the future.

Personal Brand Coaching: What Are Your Ambitions?

It goes without saying that if you don’t have ambition, personal branding just isn’t for you. As with any brand, the first order of business is to establish a brand vision. You must figure out exactly where you want to take your brand. Yes, the main reason of building a personal brand is to open up new opportunities. However, these opportunities only present themselves to the ambitious. You need to have something to work towards. For example:

• “I want a steady five figure salary in 5 years.”
• “I want to be the CEO of my own company in 10 years.”
• “I wish to make a difference in my community.”
• “I want to have my own magazine by the time I’m 40.”

These are the milestones you create for yourself, and they’re important for many reasons. First of all, without a reward in the end you’re likely going to lose motivation and slack. Another reason is that these milestones are your own corporate strategy, everything you build has to be towards these goals. Finally, they are a way which you can assess your own progress.

“If you can turn your wants into your needs, you can do anything.”

– Randy Jackson

In other words, you have to need those ambitions to become reality, nothing else is acceptable.

Personal Brand Coaching: Balancing Ambitions and Passions

All your ambitions and all your passions aren’t of the same importance. You have to look at all of them and make a case for each one, then rank them. Those are your rules of conduct. For example, you care about becoming wealthy, but you care about the environment even more. At some point in your future both values will have a conflict, that is when you refer to your priorities.

No problem has no solutions. If your priorities stop you from progressing in your career, for example, you shouldn’t just give up. Instead, this should encourage you to think creatively. There is always a way to do the right thing. For this reason, selecting your priorities needs to be done carefully and with much thought. Put it in writing as a contract between your personal brand and yourself.

Personal Brand Coaching: Step #2 Create Your Personal Brand Vision

Now that you have a clear idea of who you are, it’s time to know who you want to become. This is where you use every piece of information about yourself to customize a personal branding strategy. Personal branding is not possible if you are promoting someone that isn’t exactly who you are. The point of the previous step is to explore yourself, now it’s time to use this information.

Personal Brand Coaching: Find Your Everest

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Before you take any step further into personal branding, you need to ask yourself why you’re doing this. Is it to be successful? What is your calling? In order to figure that out you’ll use every piece of information you learned about yourself. Of course you can’t be everything you are good at and everything you are passionate about, all at once. But your goal should be to become as close to that as possible.

If you’re struggling to find your calling, there are things you should know. Every skill, every passion, and every desire, will be a part of your brand profile. It’s only a matter of figuring out which aspects you will pursue professionally and which you will use to give life to your professional character? In reference to the previous example, she managed to incorporate both her skills into her professional vision. She could also use her passion for traveling to drive her software, like a portability feature for travelers.

So start visualizing where you’re going, and how the skills you have in your toolkit could come in handy. The more thought you put into it, the clearer the image of who you want to become will get. This is another point where having a professional personal brand coaching guide comes handy.

Personal Brand Coaching: Visualize The Peak

You can see the path laid ahead of you, now. You know which way to go. Now, it’s time ask yourself questions on how far you want to go.

• Do you want to be a CEO of your own company? 
• Do you want your brand to be a leader in renewable energy?
  

Picturing your perfect career ending is the best way to remain motivated, as long as you still believe it’s attainable.

Many people have trouble visualizing their end game, especially if they just figured out their career path. A good exercise for this is to picture a newspaper article in your honor, what would the headline say?

Again, much like choosing your path, there is no wrong answer. The beauty of personal brand coaching is that it allows you to choose your potential, as well as your limits. You do it so no one else gets to do it for you. There are many examples of people that find themselves progressing beyond their expectations in a career they didn’t choose. In that case it becomes harder to go back.

Keep in mind that these are goals for your personal branding and not for your business objectives and goals.

Personal Brand Coaching: Plan Your Climb

Picturing your end game is only the easy part, the hard part is knowing how to get there. Personal branding is a practical means of achieving your goals. This is why you need to have a solid personal branding strategy in place.

Planning backwards helps you stay on track instead of jumping into the unknown. If, for example, your dream is to win an Oscar for best lead actor, you need to think “What happens before I can accomplish that?” You’ll need to be a lead actor, before that you’ll need exposure, and so on.

You can make many paths leading to the same ending. That way, when you encounter a hiccup in one of them, you don’t lose motivation. In the end, no matter how well we plan, we can never predict the future. Prioritize those different paths according to how you feel towards them.

The next time you imagine your career end you will also see clearly the path leading there. That makes success feel only a few steps away. You now have your vision, it’s time to carve the first words into your brand profile, which are your mission and vision statements.

Personal Brand Coaching: Who Are Your Idols?

Before creating your brand profile, it’s not a bad idea to check out how other successful professionals have developed their personal brand. You’ve already figured out which path you’re going to take; you can look for examples of success in the same path. Who would you learn from the most? Who would you consider on the same level of ambition as you?

Make a list of the people that come to mind. Then analyze their brands; what is their vision? What are they like as a person? You should analyze their work on your own, listen to their talks, and figure out what makes them unique.

Learn, but don’t imitate. Everyone has a different life experience, and no one can fill someone else’s shoes, let alone their ambitions. The whole idea of personal branding is establishing you, not anyone else. That being said, you shouldn’t be afraid to allow yourself to be inspired by other people.

Personal Brand Coaching: Make a Statement

Once you know what you’re selling, the next step is to figure out who you’re selling it too. The success of any business depends the market research done both before launch and throughout its life. A crucial part of this market research is defining the target audience.

In businesses the target audience is usually anyone or any entity that will buy your product or service. In personal branding you are selling yourself as a business. Your personal brand coaching guide should also share with you some insights on who might be the best audience.

Your target audience will be potential employers or investors or the general public. If you’re selling motivational speech for example, your audience will be listeners. There is no one answer for this; it all depends on your brand.

Personal Brand Coaching: Mission Statement

A standard mission statement for any company should outline what it’s willing to do for its customers, employees, and its owners. In other words, a mission statement should talk to your stakeholders (yourself included) about your goals. When personal branding, your stakeholders are usually, your future employers, your peers, your partners, and anyone who will benefit from your brand profile, both professionally and personally.

Personal Brand Coaching: Vision Statement

The difference between a vision and a mission is that a mission states why your brand exists. A vision, however, is about your dreams and future for the brand if everything goes as planned. It’s less of a technical term, and more about what you want. If you’re stuck, refer back to your ambitions and passions in step one.

Finally, your vision and mission statements should be unique; they should only fit you and your personality.

Personal Brand Coaching: Step #3 Building Your Brand Profile

You’ve done all the planning and now it’s time for execution. How do you turn all these ideas and plans into a persona that anyone can learn about? How do you present yourself to the world? This is what personal branding is all about, after all.

In order to see your dreams and ideas become reality you first have to project them on everything related to you. You’ll need a strong online presence. You’ll need to stop thinking like an individual and start thinking like an entity.

Erving Goffman (the American-Canadian sociologist) devised a theory on self-presentation. He said that the key to self-presentation is to look at your life as a drama. In this drama you are the lead actor, script writer, director, and producer. In the movie industry, the film-makers can choose the way they wish their lead actor to be viewed. The same can be said about personal branding. No matter what your goals are, you get to choose the package you wish to be viewed in. This package is called a brand profile.

Personal Brand Coaching: What Is a Brand Profile?

A brand profile is everything associated with your personal branding. Imagine your brand profile as a folder that goes to all your stakeholders. Your online persona is only a file in that folder. A brand profile includes things like your likes and dislikes, your hobbies, the way you dress, the music you listen to, and everything that belongs to you.

You need to, more or less, set a unified theme through your life as a whole that is aligned with your brand. For example, your brand personality can’t be all about productivity and energy while you barely leave your house. In other words, you need to live and breathe your personal brand and that’s through developing your brand profile.

Personal Brand Coaching: Identifying Your Target Audience

Once you know what you’re selling, the next step is to figure out who you’re selling it too. The success of any business depends the market research done both before launch and throughout its life. A crucial part of this market research is defining the target audience.

In businesses the target audience is usually anyone or any entity that will buy your product or service. In personal branding you are selling yourself as a business.

Your target audience will be potential employers or investors or the general public. If you’re selling motivational speech for example, your audience will be listeners. There is no one answer for this; it all depends on your brand.

Personal Brand Coaching: How to Target Your Audience?

A part of the market research process is always profiling the target audience. In other words, looking beyond their names and business titles, and knowing what kind of people they are. What are their interests? What is their age group?. These are all factors that greatly affect the approach you’ll take when personal branding and subsequently building your brand profile.

Create a profile by choosing a representative for each demographic as an example. You can either choose someone you already know, or make a fictional character. Write down a list of attributes that make then unique, and what they mean to your business. Are they your peers, customers, or even other companies?

Personal Brand Coaching: How to Influence Them?

After singling out your target audience, you need to find a way to make your brand profile attractive to them. Social media is an excellent tool for not only to share your own personal branding but to find your audience and influence them.

Find your targeted audience on social media, or someone similar and follow them closely. If you’re on twitter, check out the kind of accounts they follow. Check out the people they interact with and how they do it. What content do they like? What would they share or repost? Study their online behavior.

Take it a step further and figure out who influences them. For example, what kind of magazines do they read? Do they listen to a certain podcast? Or follow a newsletter? If you could somehow make your brand profile reach the mouths (or hands) of the people that whisper in your audience’s ears, then you will have succeeded.

This brings us to the most important issue: Creating the material that is capable of making your brand profile go viral with your target audience.

Personal Brand Coaching: Step #4 Constructing Your Personal Brand

In this step we explore the different channels that are ideal to provide a stage for your brand. Until this point most of your work was to form an image of the personal branding process in your head. It’s time to project this image into the minds of your target audience. In order to do so you’ll need to be well informed on the different online and offline assets, and how to use them. The main idea is to associate an attractive charismatic persona, with expertise in a certain field or practice.

Personal Brand Coaching: Become an Expert

Before applying to any job you need ask yourself: What makes an ideal candidate for this position? The answer is almost always, the person with the most experience and devotion to the tasks required. In other words, It’s always better to be a specialist in a small task than to be informed on many. This, for an employer, guarantees your full focus and in turn higher efficiency.

Besides increasing your chances in the job market, you should become a leader in the field to your peers. Your personal brand should always aim at becoming the gold standard when it comes to a certain issue. The next step is becoming a credible reference in that area.

The most practical way to convincing your target audience that you are an expert is to actually become one. This means reading everything new about your field, take courses and workshops, and if possible, get a degree in the field. You should always try to keep proof of your credentials and have them accessible to everyone interested in reading them.

Personal Brand Coaching: Building Your Personal Brand Online

Personal branding is an effective way of giving your name a push. Meaning that the job market itself doesn’t get any easier, but you are just getting better at it.

The first and most effective way of getting your brand profile out there is through the internet. We all use the internet and social media, almost all day long, but not everyone uses it professionally. Companies, for example, use social media in advertising and gathering consumer information. But how can you as an individual do that? Do you make an ad campaign about yourself? Well, yes and no. Personal branding in a way is a lifelong ad campaign. But not all of the rules of social media and digital marketing can apply to you, at least in the beginning.

You need to be able to identify your target audience and locate them on every platform they use, then establish yourself on those platforms. The idea is to have your brand name imprinted in on their minds when it comes to a certain topic or field.

Personal Brand Coaching: Make a Name for Yourself

The first thing you need to worry about when it comes to creating your online presence is your name. Have you noticed how BuzzFeed for example, have the same name on all their accounts on different platforms? Consistency is a strong marketing tool, that allows your stakeholder’s mind to group all the impressions of your content, under one name. This increases that name’s value greatly, instead of having that value spread out across multiple names.

If your name is Sophie Jones, for example, you’ll want to secure a unique username that is available on as many marketing channels as you can think of. Even if you are not going to use that website or community, you never know where your stakeholders’ interests will shift. There is also a problem that if your name is used by someone else other than you on a different platform, there is a risk they might write or share things that are far from your values and harm your brand profile.

There are tools available that can check if a certain username is available on all social networks. Websites like NameChk or Knowem tell you if the username you chose is used and on which website. They also provide suggestions to related domain names that are available. The next step is to sign up and get these accounts under your hands.

Personal Brand Coaching: Social Media Pages

For personal branding, along with allowing your personality to shine through, the most important thing is getting as much exposure as possible. That’s why social media pages hold great weight in your personal brand profile. There are essential social media channels that you must be present and active on.

Instagram, especially if you are targeting a younger or more creative demographic, is an invaluable tool when it comes to personal branding and advertising in general.

LinkedIn is the perfect place to start creating professional connections. It greatly increases your employment prospects as well as networking with the right people.

Personal Brand Coaching: Choosing The Proper Channels

Although the most effective way to spread your message is to get engagement on as many platforms as possible, no one can be everywhere at once. It’s better to deliver quality content on specific platforms than to just post for the sake of advertising. This begs the question: Which social media channels should you choose? There are two factors to take into consideration when choosing the most suitable social media channel:

1. Where are your target audience located?

The point of personal branding is to eventually get your brand profile in front of your target audience as much as possible. The fact is, every one of your targeted audience uses one or more social media platform on daily basis. For example, if you’re brand is music production related then they will be on SoundCloud and YouTube. This is why researching your target audience is very important.

2. What are your interests?

If you like to take pictures, then it’s a great addition to your brand profile to incorporate your Instagram account, for example. Any form of content can be used in personal branding, as long as you can link it with your brand vision somehow.

Personal Brand Coaching: Secure Your Domain

Nothing says professional more than having your own website with your brand name on it. The fact is, people are more likely to do business with you through your website than a page or blog. Your website should be a solid representation of your brand profile. That’s why it’s important to secure a domain name as soon as possible; To keep the domain aligned with your account names on all the other platforms.

You can check the availability of your desired domain name through Check Domain or Go Daddy. Another good practice is to acquire domain names similar to yours, like the .net versions of it. Redirecting similar domains to yours gives your brand more security and “domain” over your brand name.

Personal Brand Coaching: Create an Attractive Website

Your website could be the most valuable tool in your personal branding utility belt. It’s called your “domain” for a reason, it’s your space to claim. You get to decide the content, the way it’s displayed, the colors, the message and so on. It’s the center piece of your brand profile. This is why it is a very sensitive step in personal branding, because your entire brand will be judged by the quality and professionalism of your website, especially if your brand is web related.

The first thing to consider is hiring professionals if you are not capable of designing or developing your website. In the end, personal branding choices are done according to the return on investment. Yes, it’s cheaper to create your own website but you invested time and effort, and a good website is worth every penny.

Your website is an expression of your brand profile, that’s why the design and layout can make or break your brand. From Smart Color Selection, to font type and sizes, everything about the general aesthetic of your website should be well thought of.

Simplicity is key when it comes to personal branding. Your website should be to the point and informative. People have low tolerance for unorganized websites, or ones with too much noise. You wouldn’t like to spend time on a website with an unclear purpose or value.

Neil Patel’s personal branding is another honourable mention. NeilPatel.com is an example of successful use of a website for a brand he created through his personal branding techniques.

Personal Brand Coaching: Creating Your “About Me”

Imagine you created the perfect website and it got in the hands of a prospective business contact. The first thing they’ll do is check your “About Me” page. This page should include a brief description of who you are and what your brand represents. You should also include your mission and vision statements.

The purpose of your About Me page is to put your brand profile into words. Your message should be clear and relatable, to urge your audience to go from there to your “Contact Me” page.

Personal Brand Coaching: Compliment Your Brand with a Blog

There is a reason why blogging is a thing. It’s because people generally want to learn more and read about their interests. This is an opportunity for anyone who wants to reach people with certain interests. Again, this is why everything about your brand profile is based on your target audience research.

The purpose of a blog is to get people reading about topics relevant to them and to your brand. This shows the readers of your blog that your brand is aligned with their interests and needs. Creating a bond with your audience through a blog means your personal branding is successful.

Your blog can be added to your website using a content management software. WordPress, for example, is invaluable to any starting website. Besides the blog feature, it also makes maneuvering the site easier, through themes, templates and other free features.

Personal Brand Coaching: Creating Value Through Relevant Content

There are many ways to market your brand, but with personal branding you can’t just create ads. That’s why many refer to content marketing. Content marketing is basically creating and distributing content to specific people that contains valuable information. This method is superior to traditional marketing techniques in the sense that it actually provides certain knowledge or value to the reader.

The message you want to send with your personal brand is that you are an expert in some field. creating relevant content to that field can definitely send that message. In addition, search engines like Google scour the internet for content relevant to its users’ queries. There are certain algorithms that determine whether your content is relevant and valuable or not. This on its own opened the door for the practice called content marketing, that is beneficial for everyone.

Of course, not everyone can write engaging posts or articles, or simply don’t have the time to. You could hire content writers to write them for you. Again, the thing to consider here is your return on investment. Your content isn’t only your blog posts, but also everything you, as a brand, post online. Everything from Facebook updates to profile content should be professionally tailored to fit your brand profile.

Personal Brand Coaching: Personal Branding and Effective Networking

Personal branding goes hand in hand with networking. The worth of your brand lies in its distinction from all the other brands in the field. That distinction comes from your ability to create an impression. There’s more to networking than making small talk and handing out business cards.

Personal Brand Coaching: Who Do You Want in Your Network?

The first thing you do before any step when personal branding is asking yourself: Who is this move intended for? Same applies to networking. Who will be an asset for your brand? If you’re selling a tech service for example, then the most important assets to you would be tech bloggers and YouTube tech influencers and so on.

But don’t get caught up in the possibilities that your contacts will open for you, and forget the most important thing: What can you do for them? Imagine you’re in a business event and someone rising in your field came up to you, handed you a business card and asked for a referral somewhere. Chances are you’ll throw that business card in the nearest trash. Always include what you can do for your potential contacts as early as possible in the conversation.

Unfortunately, approaching others isn’t a skill everyone has. However, it’s a skill anyone CAN have with the right training and attitude. There are some basic soft skills that every marketer needs to have in utility belt. And that’s basically what we are doing, marketing our whole brand profile to people of interest.

Personal Brand Coaching: Offline Personal Branding Tools

Now that you managed your online assets, you’re ready to get your offline tools in order. People tend to focus on their services and the quality of their products and forget their own personal image. You need to realize that you are your most valuable asset. Once you start personal branding you and your brand become indistinguishable. For this reason, you must speak, eat and breathe your brand. For example, if your brand is about self-improvement, then you must first practice what you speak. You also have to be good at inspiring others through talking as well as writing.

Believe it or not your appearance and lifestyle play a major role in personal branding. A study in Harvard stated that it takes only seven seconds for a human being to make a first impression. This means that most of likability of a person comes from appearance. Remember that you need to be likeable to create a network of contacts that will be useful for you later.

The way you dress, your posture, your composure, even the tone of voice, are all parts of your brand profile. You need to give off a professional, assertive impression at all times. Not only is this good business practice but it also helps you remain confident and focused in your life.

Give Them Something Worth Keeping

Your second most powerful offline asset is your business card. You need to choose your business card design very carefully. It may seem outdated but when it comes to first time meetings, it’s much more professional to exchange business cards. The problem is: Will they keep it? Well, that depends on your card. Most of the time when someone hands you a plain white or off-white business card with tiny font you lose it.

Your card needs to be unique. It needs to cause an impression the moment they glance at it before pocketing it. If you get compliments on your business card as soon as you hand it to someone, they’ll probably contact you. But how do you do that?

Again, think of your personal brand. What are the fonts you used? Do you have a catchy slogan? Always choose a design that relates to your field, in some way. But don’t let a complex design get in the way of the original purpose. Your contact information should be clear and in the front of the card. Use the back of the card for an attractive element; include a smart design or a slogan.

Personal Brand Coaching: Step # 5 Cash in On Your Brand

Just to recap,with your new personal branding tools, you learned how to:

• Know what you want, what you’re good at and what your career path is.
• Identify and attract the people that could help you get where you want.
• Create a brand profile from scratch.
• Expand and enhance your online and offline assets.

Personal Brand Coaching: How to Make a Brand Profitable?

Now you must be wondering: 

• When do I get my return on investment? 
• How do I make my personal brand profitable?

To answer that you need to realize that by the time you reach this step you will have already noticed the positive impact of personal branding. From creating new contacts and friends, to actual employment opportunities.

That being said, there are still many ways you can generate profit while expanding your brand at the same time:

Personal Brand Coaching: Generate Quality Content

Personal branding is about focusing on that one thing that only you can do or at least do better than the rest. This is the backbone of your personal brand. Whether it’s a skill, product or a service, why not sell it to those who need it?

Personal Brand Coaching: Teach

No matter what your area of expertise is, you can teach it for money. Once you are confident of your abilities and establish a network and presence in the field, you can become the mentor in someone else’s personal brand.

Another profitable way to expand your personal brand is through webinars. Webinars are increasing in popularity in all fields, especially those related to tech. Of course you can’t get into the webinar scene until you first make a name for yourself as a web speaker. You can achieve this by co-hosting webinars with already established speakers and mentors. You need to engage with them and offer your services and value. It won’t be easy but, once you get your first webinar, it gets easier.

Personal Brand Coaching: Write

This is a guide for personal branding, but that doesn’t mean everyone who reads it will start to change their life today. People need inspiring stories, practical stories from the real world. This is why, most people turn to writing about their success story. It’s not a way to brag or make a quick buck, but it’s a genuine contribution to inspiring other people.

So if you’re good at writing or storytelling, you should consider sharing your experience with personal branding. Not only is it profitable, but it’s a good way of getting exposure and adding to your contribution to the field. That’s the point of personal branding to build your personal image and promote your abilities as a professional.

Personal Brand Coaching: The Value of Personal Branding

Every entity values having personal brands within its structure. Movie producers for example, pick the stars sometimes before the script itself. Sports teams endorse their individual players’ personal brands on social media, because they know that this in turn adds value to their entity as well.

You too can be as valuable and contributing to your field, if you first develop the exposure you need, and cultivate your name in the field. Eventually, you can become a pillar of the field and a reference that is worth millions.

Personal Brand Coaching: What We Can Offer

Now that we have explained all the benefits that personal branding and branding for your business can create, do you need personal brand coaching?

At ProfileTree, with our team of experts, we have worked with many of our clients to provide them with personal brand coaching and techniques that equip them to create a strong branding strategy to grow their business as well as themselves. 

As well as creating brand strategies, we offer our clients a range of high quality services to grow their businesses online and achieve their goals.

Talk to us Today!