If you look at the two faces in the image above, you know who they are. That is personal branding.
Personal branding is your unique mixture of skills, experience, personality, and know-how; these features promote you and tell your brand’s story, reflecting your conduct, behaviour, spoken and unspoken words and attitudes.
In simple words, personal branding is more about how people portray you rather than what you think of yourself.
[image - your reputation in their mind]
Personal brand can either develop organically, or you can portray to the world the person you want to be. It can be the key to become influential.
Why do you think brands use celebrities in their adverts?
The simple answer would be to increase sales.
But what would be the actual psychology behind it?
“Celebrity is, what celebrity does”. They create a kind of lifestyle and behaviour in a way they want people to portray them and gain their trust. The brand that celebrities create for themselves is used by the companies to sell their product. When a company feels that a particular celebrity's lifestyle matches their customer base; the company hires them as their ambassador to promote their product. Then people start to think that since the celebrities are using that product, they need to buy it too. Thus increasing sales for the company.
For instance: an Instagram cookware brand called Our Place, partnered with Selena Gomez to release new limited-edition colours for their products. Selena, who is host of her own cooking show, collaborated with the brand to make promotional videos where she cooks and tells the story of why she wanted to collaborate with the brand.
[image from instagram]
How to Build Your Personal Brand
1. Self-awareness
No one knows what's inside you except you. Thus, you have to decide who you want to be defined as. After that, figure out what you need to bring out to prove to people - 'that's who I am'.
2. Tell your story with your life
Tell a story in such a way that you grab people’s attention. People benefit from that and becomes memorable, so then they know where to find you when the need arises.
3. Deepen your relationships
Personal branding is about building trust and loyalty, so you don’t just have to focus on the present needs, but also think about the future needs and fulfil it before you are asked to do it.
Importance of Personal Branding
Personal branding highlights your strengths and passions, so people feel like they know you better and trust you even if they have never met you in real life. Some instances of this are politicians and rockstars.
- It helps you differentiate from other individuals who are of similar qualifications or expertise. It highlights your unique strengths, experiences, and perspectives, making you more desirable for potential employers and clients.
- It builds trust and credibility. By showing your expertise and delivering value constantly, you could have an upper hand as a trusted authority.
- It also helps in your career growth and advancement. Having a personal brand will open you up to new opportunities accompanied by higher salaries.
- You can make more meaningful connections and valuable relationships by communicating who you actually are, what you do and attract and collaborate with like-minded people.
A Few Industries That Require Personal Branding Skills:
Real Estate
Whether you are a real estate agent, interior designer or property developer, personal branding can help you in many ways. Since it will highlight your expertise and your approach to your work, it will help you gain more clients and spread your influence in your industry.
Public Speaking in Training
There is a lot of competition in this industry. So having a personal brand that people can trust can really help you stand out from the crowd and gain more followers. People will consider you as their role model and you can influence them into pointing their behaviour in the right direction.
Leadership
Personal branding is a key factor in making a successful leader. If people trust you and are loyal to you, you can become highly influential. Professionals may establish themselves as experts in their industry by providing useful ideas, writing articles or books, presenting at conferences, and keeping an active internet presence. Thought leaders are frequently rewarded with increased exposure, influence, and new possibilities.
Financial Services
Money related matters are something that everyone has the utmost care about. Trust and credibility are crucial when dealing with financial matters of different clients. Having a strong personal brand as financial advisors, financial investors and financial managers is important so that people see you as a reliable expert, which will help you gain more clients as well as build long-term relationships with them.
Overall, you can say that personal branding is necessary in any industry for taking charge of your reputation and molding it in a way you want. Stay true to your values, and keep delivering value to your audience; this will help you in creating a strong personal brand.
How would you like to present your personal brand? Do you know any other industries that benefit from having a strong personal brand?
Creativity and Innovation
At present, humans have been successful in creativity and innovation to an extent where they have created automated processes driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The speed with which these technologies have progressed has been remarkable. If you look back a few years, some of the present technological innovations would have seemed impossible. So, you can say that capacity of a human brain to generate any sort of idea is marvellous.
Now, let us look at why creativity and innovation are important skills.
Whether you decide to do business, become a professional or are looking for ways to be successful in your personal life, this skill would be helpful.
- You can solve complex problems and challenges by thinking outside the box.
- You can identify new opportunities to drive growth and success.
- It helps in welcoming a new perspective to the desire to explore and discover.
- Your energy will be boosted to envision new things.
A Few Industries That Require Creativity and Innovation Skills:
Marketing and Advertising
Nowadays you can see everywhere how brands are using creativity to advertise their products. Professionals in this field create creative campaigns, unique strategies and engaging content for their audience in order to attract customers and create an unforgettable experience. Roles such as copywriting, graphic design and creative direction rely on this skill to create a beautiful outcome.
IT and Technology
This industry relies on innovation. The capacity to build cutting edge products and foresee future trends are critical for many sectors in the industry ranging from software development to hardware engineering. Professionals in this sector use creativity to develop innovative solutions. Software designers, user experience designers and data scientists rely on these skills.
Art and Entertainment
Thinking creatively is what sets professionals in this field apart from others. Artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers rely heavily on these skills.
Entrepreneurship
Startups in different sectors succeed by thinking out-of-the-box idea. The aim is to bridge the gap in the market by developing a creative and innovative product or service.
Design
Product designers, graphic designers, interior designers and user experience designers rely a lot on creative thinking to come up with new ideas. Professionals in this field work hard to create eye-capturing yet easy to use design solutions for various products and services that people use on a daily basis.
Overall, creativity and innovation are essential for any industry that aims to grow, remain competitive and adapt to the ever-changing demands of the market and consumers. In this world of creativity and innovation be sure to keep an open mind towards machine learning and AI, which have the potential to be a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Have you been creative, or do you have any innovative ideas to showcase?
