Personal Branding:
“It’s about what you’re an expert in”
“It’s about your logo”
“it’s about the way you write”
“It’s about the colours you use”
“It’s about your values”
“It’s about your photos”
“It’s about what you can do better than any bugger else”
Let’s be honest though, yeah, Personal Branding? It’s about a whole lot of what the actual fuq really, isn’t it.
So, let’s make it simple…
…by first quashing a wrong’un:
Doesn’t matter if you sell consultancy or cookies, service-based or product-based businesses all have people pedalling them, therefore every business owner needs a personal brand.
And let’s just get one thing straight, we ALL have a personal brand without even trying, it’s just not all of us are using it to our advantage.
Right, so, there are a bollock-load of definitions of what Personal Branding is, and this is mine:
Personal Branding is how you use your personality to make people feel you’re their solution.
3 key words there:
Personality
Feel
Solution
Let’s delve…
#1 Personality.
This is the kingpin. The clincher. The mother bitch.
Why? Cos every soul has one. And every soul has one that’s totally different to the next soul along.
Which means, when carving out your personal brand, starting with YOUR personality is where it begins.
Err…Luce, wtf? Ain’t it about your market first? Y’know, market, message, media?
No. In Personal Branding it’s not.
It’s about YOU. You first. You always first.
Don’t know your personality type? Check out 16personalities.com and do the test. It’ll give you a nip-on, it’s that accurate.
#2 Feel
People don’t remember what you say. They don’t always remember what you do, but they do remember how you make them feel.
Gut feeling is nature’s compass to decision making. Gut feeling makes you act. Sometimes it makes you shit your pants. Sometimes it makes you fall in love.
Therefore, how we make people feel is the second most important element of personal branding.
When building yours, ask yourself, how do I want people to feel about me?
This bit ain’t easy, and takes some time to get your head around.
The feeling of your brand is both how you market yourself and indeed what you deliver as a service.
But let’s focus on the marketing side.
Let me share how I did it.
When I conceptualised The Personal Brand Provocateur, I thought of the connotations attached to that title.
‘Provocative’ stirs up feelings of intrigue and cheekiness, possibly even taboo. It feels on the edge of something exciting.
That’s exactly what I want people to feel about Lucy with a Why – a cocktail of cheeky exciting intrigue.
What’s yours?
#3 Solution
Now, you can have all the personality and all the feckin’ feels in the cosmos, but, if you haven’t got the right solution to your ideal market’s desire or problem, then you might as well go pick conkers.
Your service or product is your solution, obvs.
But creating a really strong personal brand is about how you CONVEY that solution to your market.
It’s about having a strong message, attractive packages and delivering value as much as you can as regularly as you can.
Trite as shite? Yea, but true.
I struggled with this for the first year of my biz, so don’t be downtrodden if you haven’t quite nailed this yet.
Ultimately, these 3 things combined can work togevs to create a Seriously Stand Out Personal Brand, but they ain’t gonna work unless you work it.
So, there we are then, a nice lil simplifier on what my interpretation of what personal branding actually is.
What’s your interpretation of personal branding? C’mon hit me…