Building a personal brand requires you to be super intentional and patient, it requires a lot of time and effort; but at the same time, it’s something no one can take away from you. I speak a lot about branding from a business angle though I’ll share a bit on branding from a personal perspective and how I’ve built mine.

Before I begin, I personally think personal brands aren’t limited to influencers, celebs or entrepreneurs, your personal brand could be why you get the job or a contract you pitched for, personal branding is for everyone.

Know Yourself

You’ve got to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, what really makes you unique. What is it that you do well and effortlessly? This is the discovery phase of finding what your personal brand should represent and which values it should stand on.

Prioritize

Maybe create a vision board for your personal brand, have long and short term goals that you’ll work towards – prioritizing will help you focus on things that matter and where your time and energy should be spent. It will help you align your decisions.

Position

My bio says everything I want you to know about me, when in person I say the same thing but in detail. I speak on who I am, what I do and how what I do helps others. Positioning helps you attract the right audience and build the right community.

Platforms

Choose which platforms or mediums where extensions of your brand will live on: podcasts, websites, social media etc. Different platforms work in different ways so identity how people use them and how you can curate your content to be consumed on these platforms.

Engagement

I feel this is one of the most important parts of personal branding. You won’t be able to build a personal brand without being in touch with the people that interact with you. Engage. Engage. Engage! This is the human part of it.. see what I did there?

Be Authentic

If you can’t be real, you’ll be building your brand on a foundation that you’re not confident about, being authentic is imperative, “if it’s real it will resonate”.

Network

Build networks that are in line with who you are, and what you to achieve. “Your network is your net worth”.

I made this one up, I’ll call it Conflate

One thing I’ve done with my personal brand is to have the brands I work with into the work I do; I’ve been really strategic about my partnerships but I’ve also found ways to make them amplify my work.

One example is my partnership with Tanqueray, aside from the cool content I created for the brand, I made them a part of my podcasts –– Gin & Insightful conversations? I’ll drink to that. Not forgetting the Subtle MeetUp experiential platform we’ve built.

Value

The goal of a personal brand is not only to help you excel in your industry or career but to create value for others, at least to me. I can’t focus on being intentional, putting in so much effort on work and projects, campaigns if it only impacts me. As much it’s your personal brand, I really believe it should be able to live beyond you. When this happens it means you’re creating value and value can be monetized.

Association

Your personal brand also relies on who you associate with, it’s worth can either increase or decrease. Pay attention who’s your circle, what they do and how what they do impacts others.