How to Use Personal Branding as Your Effective Tool for Personal and Business Success

Christopher Colombus was credited with discovering the Americas. So he was a discoverer of some sort. One who started the voyage of discovery through his transatlantic voyages. What most people however did not know is that he was a consummate salesman and leader. He had to sell his vision of transatlantic voyage in order to execute it. First let us consider the odds staked against him in his bid to fulfill this dream:

·         There was no market for transatlantic voyages.

·         Although he had made voyages as a passenger but never as a captain.

·         He was a foreigner (Italian) living in a foreign land, Portugal and then Spain.

·         He did not have enough money to fund his expedition.

·         His price for this expedition was not cheap. For a start he wanted 10% commission on all the trades between the discovered territories and the mother country. Second he wanted the title of Admiral of the Fleet. Thirdly he wanted a permanent position of Governor of all the territories discovered. Finally he wanted all the honors and rights passed on to his heirs after his death.

Despite all the odds stacked against him, Colombus was able to sell the expedition at his own price. How did he achieve this?

He did this through personal branding and marketing of course! He got the wealthy and influential citizens in both Spain and Portugal to invest in his dream, mission and vision. He however had to market his vision before he could begin the expedition. People first had to buy into him (his brand) before they bought into his vision. His prospects had to ask themselves whether he was convincing. Or whether he could pull what he was marketing off. This was a man who branded himself as a voyager and a discoverer before he actually became one. Colombus did pull it off. His success came through the finest form of salesmanship. It came about through personal branding.

Imagine you are in Colombus position and had to market yourself or your business today, how will you go about doing so? Or you are presently seeking an effective tool for your personal advancement? Or you are a business owner presently at loss on what tool to use to enhance your business? Or you are looking for ways of shortening the period of your hunt for work and do not know how? How will you go about achieving all these?

This is where personal branding comes in. Personal branding strategists having observed the agonies of most job seekers and business owners have come to realize the benefits personal branding plays in effectively positioning job seekers and in particular executives in their quest to land their dream jobs or for winning jobs for their business.

What is Personal Branding?

Meg Guiseppi defined personal branding as “Defining, differentiating and communicating ROI (return on investment) value you offer your target employers or clients over others competing for the same job.” From this definition, personal branding indicates the chance to “stand out” among the crowd of job seekers or competitors. In this world of increased competition and globalization regardless of age, position or business, it is necessary to understand the importance of branding. Successful organizations like McDonalds, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Dell Computers etc are known for their branding. Like these successful organizations, to continue to be relevant in business today, job hunters and business owners need to make personal branding their most important job. To these successful organizations, their brand is their Unique Selling Points (USP). To you a job seeker, personal branding should be your Unique Selling Attribute (that is the attribute you could use to market yourself to prospective employers).

Tom Peters who coined the term in 1997, in his own contribution on the importance of personal branding said “Regardless of age, regardless of the position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of personal branding. We are the CEO’s of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be the head marketer for the brand called you”.

Using Personal Branding for Personal and Business Success

Stretching this a bit further, how can you then use personal branding for your personal and business success? Since branding is all about identifying what makes you unique and relevant and communicating it to targeted audience or potential employers so that you could reach your career and business goals faster, how do you go about doing so?

1.      First, you need to find out what makes you different from others (i.e. your competition).

2.      Once you have identified your strengths, passions, skills, interests and values, you can therefore use the same information to separate yourself from your competitors. Branding yourself therefore sends a clear message about you and what you have to offer. Consequently, it makes you more unique and more successful in your job hunting and business life. Your brand is therefore your personal DNA.

3.      After identifying these qualities and characteristics within you, you will then bring them all together and communicate it in a crystal clear and consistent message across multiple channels both online and offline (that is what differentiates your unique promise of value and these will resonate with your target audience).

According to William Arruda another personal branding expert ‘Your brand resides in the minds and hearts of those around you.’

Personal branding

·         Helps you optimize your strengths and consequently enhances your self-awareness.

·         It helps you clarify what you want and how to set your goals and reach it.

·         Once you have identified your strengths, it makes it possible for you to use it to create visibility among those who will assist you in reaching your goals.

·         It helps you in differentiating yourself from the crowd.

Just imagine what properly branding yourself or your business on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook could do to advance and enhance your market-ability. Branding yourself as an expert in a niche and disseminating valuable contents to solve people’s problems or satisfy people’s wants will go a long way in advancing and improving your lot or that of your business and consequently your market-ability. 

From the foregoing, the importance of personal branding to personal and business success could therefore not be overemphasized. Branding creates wealth. This is because strong brands charge a premium for their services since people know their value. Further, strong brands are usually successful despite challenges and downturn in the economy because of their uniqueness. Consequently branding makes job hunting more successful in whatever capacity but most especially as an executive or business owner.

I have always used personal branding to enhance my USP, and I believe you could too and also benefit immensely from consistently using it. You can never regret doing so.