Top Tips To Build Your Personal Brand Image

The concept of ‘Brand You’ is how to you want others to see you, think about you and talk about you and also how to make yourself stand out from all other candidates when seeking a new job, according to careers website Monster Gulf.

The company offers the following tips to build ‘Brand You’ –

1. Tell your story

We are often asked by friends, colleagues and contacts ‘what have you been up to lately’ and our default response can often be ‘same old’ or ‘not much’ – but this is a prime opportunity to tell your story about a key project or recent achievement. The message should always be the same, regardless of the person you are talking to.

2. What do you stand for?

Think about the three things that you want to stand for and be known for as Brand You. Ask your friends and colleagues if they agree, or what they think, since they may have other things they think you excel at. Once you know these, it’s important to ensure you reflect these in your professional capacity and clearly in your CV, online profile and any other channels in which you communicate. Remember, you’re not defined by your job title and you’re not confined by your job description – define yourself and what you stand for in 15 words.

3. Identify what you are passionate about

We’ve all heard the saying ‘Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’, therefore it’s important to identify what you are passionate about, what makes you get out of bed in the morning to go to work and what excites you. Everyone does a better job if it’s something they are passionate about.

4. How to market Brand You

There are no limitations in how you can market yourself. It’s important to note that everything you do – and everything you choose not to do – reflects in your character and brand, including emails, calls, meetings and of course social media.

With social media and networking tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter, ensure your profiles are up to date and you have connected with old contacts as well as adding new contacts as a follow up action after meetings. You can also create your own content and expand it to blogs and videos.

5. Don’t stagnate – create your own opportunities

Don’t let opportunities pass you by, sign up for an extra project inside your organisation, introduce yourself to new colleagues and showcase your skills. If you have spare time, freelance on a project that gets you involved with new people or new skills.

6. The power of you

What does power mean to you? Most importantly, it’s mainly a matter of perception. If you want people to see you as a powerful brand, you need to act like a credible leader. When you’re thinking like Brand You, you don’t need to be a high rank in an organisational chart to be a leader. You are a leader – you’re leading You!

7. We live in a project world

Our days have now become bite-sized projects squeezed into one day, which can be used to our advantage – projects exist around deliverables and they create easily measureable results. It is estimated that 70 per cent of our current workload should be projects, broken down into manageable tasks that work towards the overall objective.

8. If you only do four things, do these…

Inspirational writer Tom Peters said that no matter what you’re doing today, there are four things you should measure yourself against:
• Be a great teammate and a supportive colleague
• Be an exceptional expert at something that has real value
• Be a visionary: a leader or a teacher
• Be a businessperson – you’ve got to be obsessed with pragmatic outcomes