Building a Personal Brand

What do you look for when you decide to make a purchase or hire a company to provide a service? Are you checking them out online, looking at their website, reading reviews, reviewing samples of their work, and learning a little bit more about them and their background?

If you’re smart, that’s precisely what you’re doing. Because you want to know who or what you’re getting into business with. This is particularly true with large transactions, but even the day-to-day decisions are influenced in this way; how often do you check out a restaurant’s Yelp reviews before deciding where to eat dinner? It’s a small thing, but the implications are far-reaching.

When going about the task of business acquisition, whether you’re just starting out or have been in the game for years, the way you present yourself, your brand, and your abilities are critical. Yes, you are the one doing the buying. You are the purchaser. You are the one planning on coughing up a lot of money. But that’s just one side of the coin. At the end of the day, you still need to be able to sell yourself. That desire for credibility is a two-way street.

Why It’s Important to Build a Personal Brand

• Your personal brand is how you’ll be represented to the community. It’s an opportunity to showcase your talents and expertise, show off your personality, and create a clear picture of the person you are. It tells people to work specifically with YOU.
• It creates new opportunities. Building your personal brand, marketing yourself as an authority, showing your successes, and telling your story will lead to open doors and opportunities that can take your business to new heights.

How To Build a Personal Brand

• Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram — whatever you decide to use, make the profile pic, bio, etc., the same across all of them. Curate your social media presence.
• Provide social proof. Don’t expect people just to take your word for it. You have to earn their trust. This can be achieved via customer testimonials, media mentions, published articles, endorsements, social media shares, or followers.

Some Final Thoughts

If you’re someone who is uncomfortable with self-promotion and the idea of “selling yourself” feels, dare we say, a bit braggadocious, that’s even MORE reason for you to heed this advice.

As we mentioned in the previous, deals and opportunities aren’t going to fall into your lap. You can’t sit on your hands and hope for someone to discover you or take you seriously. (You’re going to be waiting a very long time.)

Creating a personal brand will provide legitimacy to your business, help you leverage and build partnerships, make you recognizable (online and in-person), and establish you as an expert/authority/go-to person — which will lead to more confidence, more deals, more money, and another step closer to the lifestyle you’re dreaming of that set you down this path to begin with.

By Luigi Rosabianca of Shield Advisory Group

Originally published at https://www.shieldadvisorygroup.com.