Building Your Personal Brand

By Lauren | August 16, 2023 | 0 Comment

Your personal brand can be the entry way to several new and exciting opportunities professionally and personally. Taking time to build your own personal brand is a long-term commitment but one that will help accelerate your career into the right direction.

About a year ago I started to focus more on my personal brand. I developed a logo, worked with a web designer friend to build a professional website that housed my experience and portfolio, plus dedicated myself to building my social media presence, which included regularly posting on my blog. Since the launch of my brand, I’ve only reaped the benefits. My website has received upwards of 8,000 views in a little less than a year, and my reputation in my industry has increased drastically. I now have people reaching out to me with freelance and job opportunities, and my professional network has really grown.

So what steps did I take in developing my professional brand and how can you get started? Here are my tips.

• Begin with a plan: What are the steps you are going to make to reach your ultimate goal and what is your goal for developing your personal brand? Laying out your plan will help make sure consistency and hold you accountable for the goals you are setting for yourself.
• Build out your image: Think about how you want to present yourself professionally. If you don’t have basic design experience, spend a little money to work with a freelance designer to help you develop what your brand will look like. This will include everything from your social media profiles, to a logo, to the fonts you’ll use on your website.
• Develop a website: I know this is easier said than done as most people don’t have the experience or skillset to do this themselves and it can get costly, but there are several cost efficient solutions out there. Look at places like WordPress which has user friendly, pre-built themes that are easily customizable. Also, it’s amazing what you can find and learn by reading and watching tutorials online.
• Update your social profiles: Create or update your current social profiles. Make sure that your LinkedIn is fully filled out with information that compliments your resume. Also, be sure that your branding is consistent across all platforms. Use the same headshot, colour scheme, etc.
• Start networking: Reach out to other people in your field on LinkedIn and Twitter, join LinkedIn groups, find related Twitter chats in your field (ChatSalad is a great resource that lists many Twitter chats), and attend networking events and conferences. Another great resource is Ten Thousand Coffees, which I use to reach out to professionals who work at some of my dream companies.
• Start a blog: Starting an industry related blog was probably the biggest commitment of my personal brand for me because it requires time and effort to regularly update it and develop interesting content, but my blog has been one of my biggest drivers in building my network. Building out a content calendar and sticking to it has been a lifesaver for me in this department.

Many people push building their professional brand aside as they claim that it is too time consuming, but if you put time aside to work on building yourself professionally, I promise that you won’t regret it. Just remember that it takes time and commitment. You can’t build out all the above things I mentioned and then let them sit there collecting dust.

This post was originally written for Ten Thousand Coffees.

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