How to Stay Authentic in Defining Your Personality in Branding

As you seek to define yourself, keep in mind that authenticity is a key component of an effective personal brand. Your brand should feel natural to you. Defining your personality is about focusing on the areas of it that you want to bring across with your personal brand. What aspects are best matched with your personal brand? Which ones should you let shine?

Personality is really important

When we think of Dr. Phil. He probably isn’t the smartest, best or most knowledgeable psychologist, but he is one of the most followed. It isn’t because of his knowledge. It’s because of his big personality – he is straightforward and makes things easy for people to understand. His no BS style attracts people to him.

Remember:
Your personal brand connects with the hearts and minds of your target audience, and your personality is a big part of this! Personality will build stronger connections with people than any amount of professional knowledge or expertise.

Examine other brands

It may be helpful to also examine other personal brands to evaluate the elements of personality that shine through and inspire you. People connect with people – so getting your personality across is key.

Power Tip:
Sometimes we take ourselves for granted or fail to see the parts that other people really appreciate. Check back with friends and family to gain some insights on the parts of your personality that really connect with people.

Evaluate yourself

When defining your personality, evaluate your yourself to choose the elements that you want to incorporate into your personal brand.

• What is most memorable about you? When people meet you, the thing that they remember is _________ (this could be personality, physical, trait, behavior, etc.)
• People like to work with me because:
• My friends would say that my personality is:
• The aspects of my personality that I want my brand to portray are:

Your brand should build on your strengths and be natural to you. A brand built on a persona that doesn’t match who you really are will be difficult to maintain and probably won’t connect with people.

Remember:
Your brand also needs to connect with both the hearts and minds of the people that you want to reach. Brands are both logical and emotional. This is why strategically incorporating your personality and personal interests into your brand is important. People want to get to know YOU – and you are a person beyond your professional presence.

The is taken from an excerpt of “Launch Yourself”, by Krista Neher. For your free action planner and bonus resources, visit www.LaunchYourself.com/book.