In this era of internet most brands are built or destroyed online. FILE PHOTO | NMG
For legal and practical purposes small businesses and its owners
are one and the same thing. Consequently, the business brand and that
of the owner is conjoined.
This is why personal
branding is gaining momentum and is arguably the single greatest
determiner of small business success. Unfortunately, not many small
business owners pay attention to personal brand.
So, what is personal brand?
A
working definition of personal brand is a generally recognised and
accepted perception or impression of an individual based on their
professional competencies, experiences, character and achievement in a
given area. It is a promised or expectation that dominates the minds of
the public whenever your name is mentioned.
Therefore,
you can build or enhance your brand by consciously working towards
becoming known by the public who matter as a trusted person of influence
and authority in a certain area. This should differentiate and elevate
you above your competitors and peers in terms of quality, credibility
and other treasured values.
Whether you know it or not you have a personal brand that plays a crucial role in all your engagement with people.
The
key building blocks of your personal branding are your character, your
credibility, your professional and career achievement, the things you do
or you don’t do, the people you associate with and in this age, the
things you post on internet platforms.
It is said that
human beings decide emotionally and justify logically. Thus, people need
to be emotionally attached to you so that they can justify doing
business with you.
By positioning yourself as a
professional who can be trusted and who values customers more than money
you emotionally appeal to your customers.
You brand
yourself by deciding what you need to be known for. It could be human
face, quality, professionalism, teamwork, innovation, leadership and so
on. This applies right from your home, to your work place and the public
in general.
Every boss knows who to assign a job if
they want quick response; who to pick for confidential assignments, for
complicated task that require critical thinking and so on. Consequently,
we know where to go shopping if we need quality and where to go if we
need bargain price. We know what products are known to last long and
which are just provisional. This is the essence of branding.
The
golden rule in branding is to know that: Everything counts. Everything
that you do either creates and builds your brand or weakens and destroys
your brand.
In this era of internet most brands are
built or destroyed online. It is extremely hard to delete the
information that you post and is consumed and shared by your online
community.
As a matter of fact, most of us do not
really know the direction they will take professionally and career wise
five, 10 or 20 years from today. By posting careless and associating
with the wrong people online you can create impediments and
insurmountable obstacles for your brand in future.
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