Curating a voice for yourself and portraying it in public to pursue the audience is ‘personal branding’. It is all about selling yourself and creating what you want to showcase to the audience. When we talk about ‘personal branding’ it is intentional, and we tend to depict ourselves as public figures on whom the target audience can rely.
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. – Henry Ford
Most of us think that personal branding and reputation are interchangeable, but it’s not. When we are talking about ‘personal branding’, it is about visibility and while talking about ‘reputation’ it is credibility. Reputation is how people perceive and react to your personal brand while when it is about personal brand, the result is in our control. In this article you will be diving deep to know everything about personal branding for entrepreneurs and its importance. So, let’s begin the journey.
What Kind of Personal Brand are You?
When it is about personal branding for entrepreneurs, it is important to recognize your niche. You need to understand the genre in which you can explore. Let us have a look on the categories:
- Benevolent: There are people who love to help people selflessly. They keep trying to make the world a better place to live. Entrepreneurs like Rachel Brathen and Shiza Shahid are perfect examples of this.
- Calculating: These entrepreneurs seek to become leaders by sharing personal and business accomplishments. You will hardly hear them talking about personal life. Jeff Bezos, Melannie Perkins fall under this category.
- Bohemian: These people have a difference in whatever they do. They chase new things and keep an eye on the upcoming trends. Dara Khosrowshahi is a great example of this.
- Ricochets: Entrepreneurs who fall in this category know well how to influence the algorithm in their favor by sparking controversy. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are perfect examples for this category.
- People-Oriented: These people thrive to build community and stay active on social media like LinkedIn. These people feel energized when they find people around.
- Finicky: These leaders tend to share information with some specific person only. They don’t tend to become influential though they are very resourceful in their niche.
Why Personal Branding is Important for Entrepreneurs?
Be it a social media influencer, motivational speakers, freelancers or entrepreneurs, they all are an existing personal brand, they all understand the importance of personal branding for entrepreneurs.
Imagine a brand, which is not known to people, do you think it would have a brand value? Unless people are aware of it a brand does not have any value. It becomes very necessary to reach out to people you want to connect with because that will increase the opportunity to highlight your skills. Personal branding for entrepreneurs becomes necessary to show your target audience how credible you are and allow people to remember you for a long time.
Benefits of Personal Branding
- Personal branding of entrepreneurs enhances credibility when you showcase your skills and accentuate your knowledge.
- Highlighting the points what separates you from other people in your niche and illustrating your specialties.
- A lasting impression is created in people’s minds when you often show off.
- Showcasing skills and USP will allow you to connect with the target audience.
How to Create a Personal Brand?
Now when we know what personal branding is, types of personal branding entrepreneurs, importance of personal branding and its benefits, let us explore what is required to create a personal brand.
You need to understand, whatever you do online or offline, you culminate it for your personal branding because this is what people will see you as. While creating a personal brand you carefully need to adjust your brand with some steps.
Begin by asking questions to yourself.
- What do you want: Ask questions to yourself about what drives you and what are exactly expecting from yourself. Write down the answers and look for skills you have or some tasks that fill you with enthusiasm. Once you get the answers to this, you will get some idea from where you need to start.
- Identify your values to the company’s goals: To succeed you need to ponder whether your values align with the company’s goal or not. Look for people who are admired for their work in your company and what do they exactly do. If you find that you are lagging, then it’s high time to start working towards the organization’s goal.
- Search Yourself Online: When it is about personal branding for businessmen, it is required that you search online and see what people are talking about you. By doing this you will get to know how much you need to change.
- Strategize Consistently: For this you need to determine how and what you are going to showcase. Personal branding for entrepreneurs requires blogging, interviews, social media or anything else in a constant manner.
- Plan for Stakeholders: How will you succeed if nobody knows about you? This is where the role of stakeholders comes into play. To enhance your visibility, it becomes essential that you create stakeholder maps.
- Be Visible: You might feel awkward if you are new to the industry but being connected with people has a vital role to play. You are adding value to your career.
Remember that your personal brand is you and for this it is required to keep pushing yourself to every inch. The importance of personal branding for entrepreneurs in 2024 was felt heavily by the established leaders as well as the budding ones. When we are talking about personal branding for entrepreneurs it means that we need to work on the kind of audience we want to retain and stay visible as long as possible.
