What is Personal Branding?
Thinking about ‘Brand’ brings into the mind the identity of a Company or Business. But the concept of a brand is beyond that. An individual, when earning an identity or popularity among masses for either a specific influence, service, achievement or activity, is said to have established oneself as a brand.
Personal Branding is a term referred to as a process of improving the brand value of oneself and managing the way one is presented among masses. Social Media sources are one of the prime platforms for personal branding. You might wonder why that is. The answer to your query would be available when you just type your details in Google Search.
When you are searching on Google, the top three links are usually from social media portals such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram, based on where your activities are recent as well as very frequent.
What are the benefits of a Personal Brand?
It is all about the effectiveness of a personal brand that reflects the influence one has on various social media handles. Anything from showcasing your work, getting clients for your services, sharing thoughts and having discussions can be done through personal branding. There are several benefits of establishing yourself as a brand:
- More Clients: Personal Branding ensures that people recognize your efforts, understand your work and connect with you to avail your services. The better the brand, the higher the stream of clients you get.
- Partnerships: You may get a chance to establish your business and build trusted partnerships with great other influencers and established brand names.
- Leadership: You might get an opportunity to expand your team and manage larger client projects with effective leadership and teamwork.
- Knowledge sharing: You get a chance to share your work with others in your field and converse with other established influencers to learn more.
- Market Association: It is quite probable that once you are popularized and established, the market in your field of work opens for deeper associations for yours and well as the benefit of other businesses.
- Credibility: People begin to trust and believe in you through your frank showcase of all your work and effort on social platforms. They find you credible and you get greater opportunities.
- Recognition and Reputation: It is understood that you will be recognized far and wide through the web and get a highly reputable title for your work.
- High Value: Finally, you would be able to call yourself a valued brand.
ICCCM Technique to Building Your Brand
There are 5 tips that we have collaborated to form a unique ICCCM technique to ensure that you can build yourself as a brand on Social Media Platforms, quite effectively.
1. Identify
This is the first part that requires thorough inside research. You need to examine what you do best and identify up to 3 areas of expertise. Any more than 3 would be a load and a lot confusing. Therefore, try and identify at a maximum of 3 categories or domains of your work.
Identifying here is necessary because what you wish to know needs to be clarified first. Also, since there are numerous and uncountable influencers and entrepreneurs in the world and in various niches, it would be advisable to find that particular niche of yours that is specific for you. This ensures that you can converse about it with people comfortably, talk from experience and provide effective solutions promptly.
Another thing to identify is at a place where the crowd stays. Best way to do that research and browse. Identify the key areas where your services are required and how people reach service providers. You need to find the target keywords people search when looking for someone like you. Since social media platforms work with hashtags, you can look for tools to aid you in keyword research. When you identify your brand profile you can select similar Instagram accounts for sale with the required description and your target followers. This approach should definitely save your time and easily bring first results.
So, now you have the data in hand, you can go about building your brand foundation.
2. Create
It is quite a necessity today that you have your social media handles on many platforms. Having one portal is not enough because sometimes, different workings showcase you in a little different light which potential clients are always interested in.
It is also better to ensure that all your social profiles consist of the same name, username, profile picture, information and contact details. This ensures seamless browsing of your profile and is always a plus for clients and audiences. Let us see how you can do that:
- Impressive Name: A username that is unique to all relevant social media platforms and is an extension of you is the right brand name for you.
- Consistent Full Name: It is best to ensure that all platforms have your name in the same manner first followed by the last name.
- Identical Profile Photo: Ensuring that your profiles contain the same photo of you clicked in at least a semi-professional manner.
- Unique Headline/Blurb: A short intro that is enough to understand what you do, what you offer and what you can achieve, is necessary.
- Consistent Design/Look: A steady design and background to your profiles enable a creative insight into your personality. Additionally, an impressive logo, color scheme, and standard font family would do wonders for your outlook.
3. Converse
The best way to make yourself get noticed is to start conversations, begin discussions and make introductions. In short, get conversing. When you get people to find you, the next step is to engage them.
Share your views, work, ideas and expertise with them. Get active on all social handles. Post relevant content, share concerned posts and build engaging activities like polls, debates, posts inviting opinion sharing and so on. That increases the reach, invites engagements and improves clicks. This will enable your brand recognition and people will recognize you.
Building an effective social media marketing strategy would be beneficial.
4. Connect
Only posting stories and ideas on your wall is not enough. It is necessary that you join communities and groups on all portals. That way you can be active on posts, ideas, and stories of others as well and your right comments just might click enough people to join your venture.
Building your following is crucial and connecting across groups and communities is the best way to do that. You can search for relevant mentors for yourself and follow them, take advice and learn more, ask questions and give answers, be confident and you can be on your way to success.
5. Monitor
Keep a track of who mentions you and respond to them. People reacting to your posts should be answered as well. A little show of gratitude if someone comments positive, can never go wrong. Responding quickly on social media platforms is always going to be positive for you.
To Conclude……
Personal Branding is often misunderstood as a practice by those who are looking to be popular on social media. But that is not the case. You can now ensure how you present yourself to the world online. This ICCCM technique will definitely aid you in your endeavors.