As you embark on your personal branding journey, it is helpful to have some people to reference who you admire or can learn from. While not every personal brand will match how you want to portray yourself, you can learn something from every execution. Here are my top 3 tips on how to get inspired in defining your personal brand.
Find Someone Doing it RIGHT
For me, that person is, Gary Vaynerchuck. He has built a strong and powerful (and profitable) personal brand for himself. While my personality and style are different from his, I have learned a lot by observing how he lets his personality shine through and uses video to tell his story.
Try finding someone who is successful in their career through their branding and run an analysis on WHY they are successful. What are their strengths, and how can you incorporate things that they do into your branding?
Find Someone UNIQUE
Look for people with personal brands that you can learn from – whether it is their style, their positioning, their execution, or their approach. What makes them unique, and how are they leveraging that in their branding?
To find some people that you can look to for inspiration, do some searching on Google, LinkedIn, and other social networks:
- Thought leaders in your industry
- People doing what you want to do
- Top personal branders
- Industry experts you follow on LinkedIn
- Celebrities or personalities that match the persona you want to radiate
Find Someone Doing it WRONG
It can also be helpful to see things that won’t work for you – for example, when I see overly promotional personal brands, I am reminded to balance my promotion with my content better.
As you look at others, consider what you like and don’t like about what they do. Once you have a list, you can start narrowing down on things you want to include in your personal brand.
Action Item:
Find 5–10 people that you want to use to create your personal branding sample pool. Write down what you like and don’t like about their execution. Apply this to your branding, what will you do from your research to improve your personal brand?
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.
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