5 ways to create a successful personal brand step by step

Many people are surprised when I explain that I did not consciously develop any strategy to start creating my personal brand. In fact, I started working on my personal brand with almost no intention of doing so back in 2010. At that time I had a well-functioning affiliate marketing company and had no interest in building my brand.

Little did I think that the blog would be the catalyst for many of my current projects and that it would make my personal brand what it is now.

I didn’t know how I would make money with the blog but it was something I wasn’t interested in knowing at the time either because I didn’t intend to monetize it.

I remember that before I decided to offer my services in the blog, when I was contacted by companies that wanted to hire my services, I told them that I was not hiring. Everything was going well for me and I didn’t want to get involved in other Tech projects.

But my personal brand thanks to the blog was growing and becoming more and more popular, and the demand for my services was increasing. I realized that I was fooling around and that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do business, so I turned my speech around and started offering my services.

Today that company I had at that time does not exist and I am partly glad because my professional life changed radically from the moment I closed it and started to focus on my personal brand.

Entrepreneurship changed my life, but creating a blog and working on my personal brand were undoubtedly the best decisions I could have made in my life for all the good that came after.

Personal brand

What is personal branding?

Other definitions of personal brand

We live in the age of Google

Things to know about personal branding

Advantages of personnel branding

Steps for creating a personal brand

Examples of personal branding

Tips for developing your personal brand

Practical tips to improve your personal brand

Personal brand books

Conclusion

Personal brand

What is personal branding

To define what a personal brand is, I like to go a bit outside the definition given by Wikipedia and I usually define it as “the mark we leave on people”; it’s how you are perceived by others.

A great quote from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says that your personal brand is what people say about you when you’re not around.

“Your personal brand is what they say about you when you’re not around.” Jeff Bezos

And that’s because personal branding is something we can’t control. It’s not what you say you are, but what others perceive you to be.

Other definitions of personal branding

As you can see, the definition of personal branding is very open. Here are some other definitions of personal branding that will go down in history:

“A personal brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that together represent a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” – Seth Godin

“Personal branding is about managing your name, even if you don’t have a business, in a world of misinformation, and semi-permanent Google results. Going on a date? Chances are your date has googled your name. Going on a job interview? Exactly the same.” – Tim Ferriss

“If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” – Zig Ziglar

“If you don’t give the market the story to talk about, it will define the history of your brand for you.” – David Brier

“Focus on identifying your target audience, communicating an authentic message that they want and need, and project yourself as an ‘expert’ within your niche.” – Kim Garst

“If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” – Zig Ziglar

We live in the age of Google

The google era

I always say that we live in the age of Google, in which the most knowledgeable and the most experienced have no more chance of finding a job, no. In this new era, the one who has more possibilities is the one who knows how to move intelligently and has more visibility.

You can be the best in the world doing your job, but if you don’t manage to reach the public that can hire you, it’s no use.

Whether you are a professional who wants to find a job or is looking to specialize in a certain sector, you will need to work on your personal brand.

And I think that nowadays you can have it a little more complicated than if you had started a few years ago, because the market is saturated with professionals and every day it is more necessary to stand out from the competition.

Don’t worry, I’m not saying it’s impossible to stand out with your personal brand today, far from it, but you do have to know that you will need to make an extra effort and a lot of patience.

And above all, and keep this in mind, what will make you stand out in this saturated market is specialization.

The generic no longer sells or hooks: there is a lot of everything. However, finding what makes you unique and different, as well as specializing in something specific, is the key to success for your personal brand.

The personal brand is the future, and the Knowmad movement is based on working correctly on your personal branding. Raquel Roca, author of the book “Knowmads, the workers of the future” explains it perfectly in this interview that I recommend you to listen.

Recently I was talking with Berto López about a new batch of bloggers that had come out last year and analyzing some months later which ones are still alive after some time, I see that they are those who have known how to find their specialization.

Things to know about personal branding

1. Patience will be your best ally.

The personal brand is not built overnight, it is a long-distance race that takes time to complete – not to mention that it is a long-distance race that you never stop running.

I don’t like to talk about times when creating a personal best but in my opinion it’s very complicated to build it in less than 1 year and a half or 2, if you start completely from 0.

There are always cases in which personal brands have grown fast as foam, but it is not the usual either. There are also cases of people who have been working on their personal brand for years and have no results.

2. It’s not easy

There are no shortcuts to the top. It’s that clear. If it were easy to create a personal brand everyone would do it (well). It’s one thing to work on your personal brand, it’s quite another to work on it successfully.

If you work on your personal brand together with a blog like I did, you’re going to need a lot of discipline. There are statistics that say that 95% of bloggers abandon their blogs in less than a year, and lack of motivation is the biggest cause of abandonment.

We’ve already said that patience is a key point to develop your brand, so if you’re one of those people who expects short term results you’re going to have a hard time.

Maybe you think that without a blog you can also manage to build your personal brand, but you have to know that although there are people who have achieved this, there are very few cases.

3. Without consistency there is no reward

You have to be very constant, there’s no point in random hits. In my case, until I started to be constant with my blog I didn’t see good results.

When I started to publish articles in my blog I did it whenever I felt like it, no matter what day it was, nor how much time had passed since the last post I had published. It was hard for me to realize that both readers and Google like to see a certain regularity of posts on your blog.

The moment I set out to write at least one post per week I started noticing something, but it was definitely when I decided to post every day (except weekends) that I noticed a big difference in how the rest of the world saw my blog.

4. Planning is the key

Setting goals, defining a strategy to achieve them and planning that strategy on a schedule is the best I could do at the time.

As I told you at the beginning of this article, I didn’t have a strategy behind my personal brand simply because I didn’t know I was going to develop it.

But when I saw the enormous potential that both my brand and the blog had, it was clear to me that I had to take what I was doing really seriously and start making a plan.

5. Your passion will mark your path

You may have heard it a thousand times, but I can assure you that passion is a good guide that should mark your path.

When the lack of motivation fails, when the results do not come, when you want to throw in the towel, the passion for what you do is the only thing that allows you to continue. That’s why it’s so important to do what you really love.

I know many cases in which people who had a passion for a subject have managed to monetize it and live completely from it.

“Be yourself. The other positions are taken” Oscar Wilde

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Advantages of personnel branding

The advantages of personal branding are several, and in my view these are the most important:

1. Anyone can work on their personal brand.

Although I would say that it is less and less optional and more compulsory. Besides, achieving it is often synonymous with work and financial freedom.

2. It does not require great resources or a large investment.

Starting to work on it is within everyone’s reach. You can start working on your blog, your personal domain, create a logo and create an account on different social profiles without having to spend too much.

3. There are opportunities for differentiation in the market.

There are still some sectors in which their professionals are not yet working on their personal brands, which makes this situation an opportunity for the rest of the professionals who want to stand out.

4. Opportunity to monetize in different ways.

Finding work, catapulting your projects, offering your services, selling products, giving training or giving conferences are some of the ways you can monetize your personal brand.

5. Personal branding is flexible, malleable, evolves with you because it is not static.

Many times some professionals ask me what’s better, whether to work on a personal brand or to work under their company’s brand. I always say that it depends on the case, but personal branding when it’s just us on a project can be ideal. Besides, it allows us to introduce new themes or brand territories in new

Conclusion

You still have time to start working on your personal brand, it’s never too late. It’s a great tool you have at your disposal and I recommend you not to waste it.

You have already seen the many advantages it has and why it is important to start now. I was lucky to start at a good time and you can see that things have not gone wrong for me.