Personal Branding in the 21st Century

With the introduction and popularity of the internet, the way we live, communicate, and do business has changed completely, in a good way! This new era of modern technology has made it extremely easy for anyone to start a personal brand that will attract a large authentic audience of particular interest.

Take a look at your top YouTube celebrities, the bloggers you follow, and the companies you buy your goods from… they all have something in common, which is a unique brand that allows them to differentiate themselves from the ordinary.

A brand is an image that represents what a company stands for, and it is what defines the culture, values, and belief that it is operated in. To put it in simple terms, it is how people see you as a person or a business.

If you’re someone who runs a business or an entrepreneur who’s just starting, or if you are an artist or a professional… no matter who you are creating a successful personal brand is a must, and if done correctly, you earn trust from people as being a professional or authority of a particular field. People will recognize you immediately simply by just hearing your name. Personal brand is a high-quality status that all individuals should strive for.

Here Are The Top 5 Most Crucial Tips That You Need Today To Build Your Brand.

#1 Build a Community: The easiest way to build a personal brand is to create a community around like-minded individuals who share the same interests, values, and beliefs as you. But how do you go about building a community around your personal brand?

Luckily, we live in the 21st century, the number one way to build an audience is through a blog. You can have a blog set up within a day and start writing about topics that matters to your target audience. Blogging does take some time to build up an audience, but that audience will benefit you in three powerful ways:

Recognition and trust of your brand:  People will understand your brand more as you provide them with content and your experience that helps them. In return, you earn their recognition and trust.

You’ll build a strong presence online: Look everywhere around you, people are on computers and phones, blogs will allow you to reach these people quicker!

You become an authority: Your brand will be there for all answer, you are now the professional.

#2 Be Authentic: Authenticity allows you to differentiate yourself from all the fakes. How you can go about building authenticity is giving people real insights on how you can solve their problems.

That’s right notice “real insights”, if you come up with something generic, people can sense this and will not be interested in what you have to offer. Real insights come from having personal experience, so a suggestion is to make sure you choose the right field of service to the public to build your brand around.

The easiest way to building authenticity is doing something you’re good at or have a passion for. If you are authentic, people will in return trust your brand and know you are the real deal!

#3 Always Be Willing to Learn and Adapt to Changes: The world is at a constant change. We may have all this excellent technology that allows us to create a brand effortlessly, but there’s always something new brewing up that could be the next big thing.

As a personal brand, you should always be on a constant lookout for new opportunities and learn to adapt to these new opportunities. The sooner and quicker you learn to adapt to changes, the more authentic you stand out to your audience.

For example, the trend for virtual reality is becoming huge. This could be a great way to adapt your personal brand into the new technology and have your brand be one of the first to gain exposure from virtual reality.

#4 Utilize Social Media for What They Are: Social media for those who are looking to create a personal brand is a powerful tool – just like a blog – to create and connect with an audience. While many people use social media as a way of entertainment, you can use it as a channel that’s like your very own newspaper or station and allows you stay connected with your audience in real time.

Entrepreneurs, professionals including artists are now looking to social media as a way to not just advertise their personal brand, but to also strengthen a connection between them and their audiences. Social media also gives you real-time data that picks up trends on what your audience is currently into.

#5 Always Be Giving: Give, give and give some more. Giving is an important factor that everyone should be utilizing when creating their personal brand. When you give your audience what they want, they will always come back to you and know your brand. I’m not telling you to always give away everything for free, but when you have the mindset of giving, you will disregard all greed and self-interest. You’ll also sound more interested and tuned into your audience because you want to always be giving your audience the best of the best.