Personal Branding Made Easy - Part 1 (Why & What)

So what's the big hype about Personal Branding?

To put it simply, it's your future resume. Yes guys, it's literally going to replace your current resume in the future and people will be recruited based on what their personal brand is. You can't believe it? Now picture this.

Companies are going to operate like movie production houses, especially in the ballooning gig economy. Cast and crew are selected based on what their personal brand is or what they are known best for. When the movie or project is done, the team splits and the cast/ crew will have to hunt for a new project to work on.

We are already seeing signs of it with the rising number of contract or project based roles offered as opposed to permanent roles in the past. No job is an iron rice bowl anymore, not even if you are working for the Government. Many companies are already offering project based work and the numbers are just rising by the day. According to this Nasdaq Article, nearly 53 million Americans were freelancers in 2016 (that’s 34% of the workforce). Projections show that by 2020, 43% of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers. It's becoming a freelancers world out there and one can outshine each other only by their unique personal brand!

If panic has started to creep in as you have no clue what your personal brand is and how to develop one, then please read this full blog as I will be making it really simple for you to understand and detail what you should do to develop your future-proof resume or personal brand.

WHAT IS A PERSONAL BRAND?

There is a popular quote that answers this very well, "Your Personal Brand is what people talk about you when you are not in the room".

It's not about what you think, what others think of you as, but it's what people actually think of you as. How can you find out? Two ways you can do this:

1) Do a google search with your name and see what the results are ; and

2) Ask your closest friends/ colleagues (ideally one is a critic) to share what they think of you - like frankly. Nothing sugar-coated, please! It can even be written on a small piece of paper and put into a box intentionally placed at a disclosed location for this self-discovering mission, if they don't want to reveal their identity. We have to be focused guys, we just need to know what others think of us, period.

If what you see, hear and discover from the above methods don't scream what your personal brand is, I am not sure what else would. Can you change them, of course you can! I will address that question in the 'How to develop or change your personal brand' section.

WHY MUST WE INVEST IN PERSONAL BRANDING?

Firstly, on an individual scale, you get to take control of what others perceive you as opposed to leaving it to chance that they perceive you as you wish them to. Brand yourself before others do. Frame their thoughts of you so that they bring you the opportunities you desire.

Secondly, even the corporates should encourage their employees to develop their personal brands as it can yield mind-blowing monetary returns as a result. Let me throw some statistics now. Did you know that brand messages are re-shared 24 times more when posted by employees and the leads developed through employee social marketing converts 7 times more frequently? If the employee has a strong personal brand or social influence, imagine the reach your corporate brand gets as a result with him/her sharing your company's posts or messages. Now you understand what I mean? It pays when you have influential employees or when you invest in your staff to develop their polarising powers through their personal brand.

So how to develop your personal brand? Stay tuned to my next blog on that.

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