Brand Yourself: 4 Steps to Building an Authentic Personal Brand

With a new year on the horizon, it's a good time to evaluate your personal brand to make sure it's in tip-top shape. Your personal brand is important — it is what people remember about you after you leave the room, and it dictates the way people talk about you when you are not in the room. Your personal brand is an important function in your professional life, but it also extends to your personal life.

For some people, their personal brand is what they are most passionate about when it comes to their careers. In marketing, it could be building community, executive communications, social media or even search engine optimization. It can also be other areas like fostering office culture, building intern committees and developing leadership skills.

You shouldn’t ignore your personal brand when it comes to your personal life, too. Whether it's a specific hobby like reading or hiking or watching sports or learning about history, the intersection of your professional and personal characteristics of your personal brand helps reveal the core element(s) of your personal brand. Once you have this figured out, you are set for 2024.

Audit Your Brand

To understand where you need to work on your personal brand, you first need to know the current state of your personal brand. You can ask friends or colleagues about what your lasting impression is or what words they would use to describe you to someone you have never met. You can also use brandyourself.com to audit your social media accounts. This platform will tell you where you can improve your brand and where you are already doing well.

Another step in auditing your brand is taking a strengths test to understand like CliftonStrengths or High 5 Test. These kinds of situational and personality tests help us identify traits we demonstrate that we may not typically recognize in ourselves. These provide a great baseline and insight into building your personal brand, and if you’ve already taken one, they are good to take again to see if you’ve changed so your personal brand can reflect that.

Define Your Brand

In the transition from auditing to defining your brand with strengths tests, you begin the important process of identifying your unique selling proposition. Usually used in marketing in reference to a product, a unique selling proposition also applies to personal brands — it is what makes you stick out in the workforce. When defining your brand, you must be able to answer the question: how do I provide value to others?

In defining your brand, you’ll want to begin to craft your personal elevator pitch and have a clear narrative surrounding your life, your career, where you are now and where you want to be one day. Use the three Cs as the framework for your story — character, conflict and conclusion. When writing your personal brand statement, there are three key things to keep in mind:

• Be honest about what your expertise is and where you can provide value for others
• Ensure it is authentic to you and valued by your audience
• Present a clear and consistent brand message

Promote Your Brand

Now that you know what your brand is, it's time to promote it. The best way to promote your brand is on social media. LinkedIn is a great platform for this, so optimize your profile so you can begin to showcase your work, your expertise and your passions. On LinkedIn, you should aim for the Rule of Thirds in your content — ⅓ inspirational content, ⅓ personal content and ⅓ industry content. This helps you build your brand by creating the full picture of what you do, who you are and what motivates you.

LinkedIn is also a great place for building your network which is another key step in promoting your brand. The key to networking is building authentic connections. 

Monitor Your Brand

As you promote your brand, it is important to monitor your brand. There are tools available, but also set up a Google Alert for your name. You want to monitor your brand so you can then manage your brand by maintaining, reviewing and refining it.

And make sure your brand stays consistent. Consistently update your profile, set aside 10 minutes a day to update your profile, like and comment on other’s posts and consistently share one article or one post a week. And once a year, asses and refresh your personal brand promise.

At the end of the day, a personal brand is designed to set you apart from others and encapsulate what makes you unique and memorable. It helps you establish authenticity and credibility as well as build sustainable connections based on shared interests. 

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Did you miss Amy Teller’s breakout session at Integrate 2023? You can find the recording, as well as other session recordings at integrate.wvu.edu/recap.

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And, as you prep for your 2024 personal brand review, be sure to attend Strengths-Based Personal Branding featuring Jessie Barclay, Gallup Strengths Coach at WVU.

Craft a personal brand that will not only stand out but also resonate in the ever-changing field of marketing communications. In this 90-minute workshop, you’ll explore and reflect on the four facets of personal branding, discovering and intentionally directing your why and values, utilizing your CliftonStrengths®.

Register and Add to Calendar

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