Why is it crucial to manage your personal brand?

There is a danger. Our environment is changing with the speed of a bullet. No one guarantee money income. No one guarantee constant job. No one guarantee constant relations.  

According to Forbes statistics average worker today stays at each of his or her job for 4.4 years (in many industries it is much less).  And there is a tendency to decrease. Employers value long-term employees less

than they used to.

Imagine that you work somewhere for 10 years and your boss comes to you and say that the business goes very slow and they can’t afford to employ you anymore. What if you can’t do anything else? What if your achievements, skills and knowledge are medieval? What if nobody outside your company doesn’t know you and doesn’t need you?

Or maybe you yourself don’t want to work 10 years at the same place doing the same job and crave to have much more interesting activity?

In today’s new world of work changes are permanent. Stability has gone into history. Also there are more and more project-based jobs. When you’ve done your part of a project you are no needed more. So it is very important that people who can invite you to another project at least know that you exist and know that you are reliable, fast, creative or something else that is needed to complete the project successfully. And it’s not just important. It is a matter of survival.     

That’s why you need to manage your personal brand. Your personal brand is the salvific constant in the world of instability. It is your defensive and attacking weapon.

What is a brand?

In simple words a brand is a reputation. Personal brand is what other people think about you. Why do we use vague trendy words “personal brand” instead of more clear word “reputation”? I suppose this is the way to accentuate that the personal branding uses marketing instruments which were proved by different organizations since the birth of marketing. And there is one more reason – everything obscure but fashionable is always attractive.    

Who is your target audience?

Everybody have some kind of reputation. We can like our reputation or not but all the same we have it.

We can have a reputation of a reliable/amiable/clever person or we can be known among people as a deceitful /brutal/rebellious person.

But here is an interesting thing about branding. You don’t need to have a good reputation among everybody and your so called vices can be either ignored by some people either they can be considered as your strong sides.

Who is fond of liars? I think not much people. But who cares whether somebody is a liar if he or she is a great singer and had never lied to you personally? Or do you want to interact with cruel people? I don’t. But this is a valuable trait for bandits and can be considered as a strong side among them.  

To build a personal brand you should understand whose opinion about yourself is important to you (who is your target audience)?

Be different.

You should be different from your competitors. Imagine a fruit. What fruit comes to your mind first?

For the most people it is an apple. So apple is the strongest brand of fruits. It is hard for other fruits to compete with apple. But let’s change the question a bit. Imagine a sour fruit. I don’t think it is an apple now. Most probably it is a lemon. A lemon is the strongest brand among soar fruits. Another test: what sour fruit is best to be eaten for breakfast? Let it be mandarin (I don’t think much people wish to eat lemons for breakfast).  Mandarin is a strong brand in fruits for breakfast category.

What fruit are you? Find the category where you can be the first.   

Be integral.

If you’ll create your brand by splurging (create image of a macho if you are shy, create image of an expert if you are not) and you have no possibility to keep a distance from your target audience then during the close contact the fraud will come to light and your brand will be destroyed. The brand should be created based on your charismatic nature and basic values. Charisma - the manifestation of what you are (you manifest what you feel). Basic values are the system of principles and ideas which are really important to you (to have a family, to be honest, to be polite people around, etc). According to your basic values you decide what is bad and what is good. You can’t build a strong brand if it conflicts with your basic values. Brand should contain your basic values.

You can be a seed of innovation. Isn’t it what many companies are gasping for?

In order to succeed in a competitive environment, companies need to create something innovative. Innovation - a product of creativity. Creativity – a product of diversity. Everybody is unique. That’s why you have a chance to offer an ingredient that is not available from somewhere else. When you believe in what you are doing, when you do it with passion, when you apply your talent and make a good presentation about that all, the best employers will find you and will crave to get you into their ranks.