Individuals with powerful personal brands now overshadow faceless business and institutional brands, becoming more influential than the companies and even industries they represent.
The rise of the personal brand
The concept of a personal brand is not new. Celebrities began cultivating personal brands to expand opportunities and to highlight causes important to them. Tech entrepreneurs noticed the value in this, becoming more synonymous for their achievements than the brands they represent, a trend that has extended to smaller businesses where owners are achieving greater success through personal branding than relying solely on traditional business operations.
This trend may be due to the increasing ease of self-promotion via direct publishing, video platforms and podcasts, as well as a cultural shift toward consuming more easily digestible information. Successful entrepreneurs understand the importance of humanising a corporate entity to strengthen connections with both talent and customers. For instance, Richard Branson has fifty times more followers than Virgin and has consistently acted as the face of his brand as well as a champion for entrepreneurship.
Personal brands, however have evolved. In a world of confusion and disruption, there is so much discord and information, making it difficult for audiences to make "informed" choices. An individual with a personal brand can operate off-script, free from corporate jargon and affect more people through their humanity and personality, rather than simply being the face of a business.
How to start operating as a personal brand
The most effective way to begin building your personal brand is by becoming comfortable chatting about what you do, this can be achieved by practicing how to talk about your business journey, your origin story, mission, vision, the people you collaborate with or hire, the results you achieve, and the problems you've tackled. Create short videos, seek opportunities to speak on relevant panels, and connect with like-minded business owners to feature in each other's content. Most importantly, let your personality and passion shine through, the more your audience feels they know you and value your expertise, the more trust you'll establish with potential clients or customers.
Establishing your personal brand
Once you have become comfortable talking about your yourself, your business, your successes and failures and have provided audiences with a recognisable and reliable persona for potential customers seeking your particular expertise, you can start considering ways to enhance visibility. This primarily involves creating a portfolio of intellectual property linked to you, such as demonstrative techniques, books, a blog, talks or workshops, a business strategy, industry insights, or any other niche aligned with your personal focus and business expertise.
Do I need help to develop a personal brand?
A personal brand has some differences to a business brand, although it may still require some elements of a traditional visual identity, in the form of a recognisable typeface and colour palette, YOU become the logo, ie the symbol of brand recognition. There could be some graphic design needs for creating materials like book covers, websites, and video intros, but the key to building a personal brand is in developing your persona, strategy, and intellectual property, this can be done by you or augmented by a brand specialist to help narrow your niche and full-proof your approach using brand psychology techniques.
If you would like to discover more about the psychology of branding and how it can shape the user experience or to work with me direct on your personal branding, please get in touch.
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