Personal branding 101: how to showcase your unique value

Everyone has personal branding, whether it’s something you’re intentionally creating or not. Building a personal brand can help you control your career’s narrative. It can also bring the right professional opportunities to your doorstep (or DMs).

However, it can also feel overwhelming and challenging to find your sense of direction. Choosing the right platforms, deciding whether to create content, and defining your target audience might not be part of your current skill set.

Not every professional has to make reels or build a YouTube channel. However, understanding why personal branding is important can help you navigate your career on your terms. It can also help you grow your professional network and stand out. 

Like a professional reputation, everyone has a personal brand, whether you purposefully develop it or not. The key to branding yourself effectively is learning to control how you communicate your brand. This can be accomplished through consistent and coherent digital marketing strategies. 

A successful personal brand speaks for you when you can’t speak for yourself. It builds your reputation, positions you in your area of expertise, and offers help with job searching. It can also help you find your purpose and build confidence in your career path.

Who needs personal branding?

Having a personal branding strategy can be beneficial for anyone in the workforce. However, a reputable personal brand can be more important for professionals in industries where building rapport and trust determines their success. 

Here are a few examples of professionals who can greatly benefit from a consistent personal brand:

• Accountants: Because referrals are a major source of business for accountants, creating a trustworthy brand is important for growing an accounting practice.
• Real estate agents: Buying a home may be the largest purchase you make in your lifetime. This drives people to find a real estate agent they trust is reputable. A 2023 report from the National Association of Realtors found that 65% of sellers who used a real estate agent found their agent through a referral by family or friends or went back to an agent they’d previously worked with to buy or sell a home.
• Freelancers: The number of full-time freelancers grew by 4 million professionals between 2022 and 2023. This increases the competition for freelancers such as writers and business consultants. Competition makes it even more important to find ways to make your resume stand out.
• Entrepreneurs: More than 77% of consumers prefer to buy from a brand they recognize. Branding yourself on the right channels can create brand awareness for entrepreneurs and small business owners. This can help drive sales.
• Creatives: Successful personal branding for artists and models shows prospective clients they have the ability to connect with audiences. This can make them more desirable for hire.

What sets great personal branding apart from unremarkable?

Because everyone has a personal brand, your focus should center on how to make your brand stand out from the crowd. It’s important to note that your audience might value different traits than other groups. This means your personal brand should always be geared toward those you’re trying to influence.

For example, the brand quality that millennials find most important is reliability. Millennials also value innovation, intelligence, and authenticity. 

Traits of successful personal brands include:

• Confidence
• Generosity
• Genuineness
• Ambition
• Intellectual curiosity
• A desire to learn something new
• Credibility

7 steps for crafting a personal branding strategy that communicates your value

Creating an effective personal brand is easier said than done. Personal branding is a reflective process where you define your professional self and set goals. Additionally, you might also build a strategic plan to communicate and achieve career success.

Here are seven steps you can take to navigate the right path for your brand.

1. Define your personal brand vision

Every intentional personal brand starts with a brand vision. A great way to develop this vision is to create a personal brand statement. 

Think of this as an elevator pitch briefly describing who you are, your skills, and the value you offer. If you had to self-promote to a recruiter or client, this statement tells them why you stand out and leaves them wanting to know more.

To develop your own personal brand statement, start by asking yourself the following questions:

• What are my professional strengths and weaknesses? (Tip: you can use a personal SWOT analysis to help you uncover these.) 
• How do I want to position myself? Do I want to be seen as a thought leader, freelancer for hire, or industry professional? 
• What are my long-term and short-term career goals?
• What’s my personal work philosophy? 
• What personal values are important to me? 
• What interests can I incorporate into my professional brand? 

Once you’re satisfied with your personal brand statement, try testing it at a networking event or placing it in the “summary” section of your resume. If you aren’t getting the response you’d like, try changing it up. You can reference professional bio examples to help you get started.

2. Understand who you’re trying to reach

As mentioned, the values of your specific audience might not be the same as someone else’s. That’s why it’s crucial to cater your personal branding to the connections you’re hoping to find.

Your demographic is usually your potential customers or followers. Oftentimes, you can categorize them by shared characteristics like the following:

• Industry
• Job title
• Location
• Age group
• Income level
• Gender identity

The more insight you have about your demographic, the easier it is to engage with them.

3. Focus on what makes you different

The best way to make your personal branding stand out is to prioritize the things that make you unique. Think of this as your value proposition.

To find out what makes you different, use the following steps:

• Research who your competitors are based on location, services offered, or other factors
• Type the name of a few competitors into a Google search to see what pops up about them
• Type your own name or business into the search bar to see how your existing personal branding compares to theirs
• Dive deep into common pain points for your customer base
• Identify gaps between competitor messaging and your personal strengths that can help make your customers’ lives easier

For example, let’s say you’re a marketing consultant who is great at promoting podcasts. You notice that very few competitors are marketing this specific service. A good personal brand message could be “Your marketer for premium podcasts.” This still identifies you as a marketer but places special emphasis on your unique skill set, which may help you attract more clients.

If you wanted to take it a step further, you could also niche down by industry. You could specifically promote healthcare podcast marketing services or marketing services for individual podcasters. 

4. Choose the right channels

Part of knowing your audience is knowing where to reach them. For example, if you’re targeting the Gen Z population, you might want to prioritize building a presence on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. These are the top three social media platforms utilized by Gen Z users. If you’re trying to reach the Baby Boomer generation on social networks, you’d likely want to prioritize Facebook over Instagram.

Millennials are the most active age group on LinkedIn. So, if you’re trying to connect with millennials, you might want to focus more on writing a good LinkedIn profile summary or pitching yourself via LinkedIn messages. You can reference LinkedIn networking message templates to help you get started.

Remember that you don’t have to be on every platform available. Make sure you’re on a few strategically chosen digital spaces that align with your goals and audience.

5. Build your online presence with content

Once you’ve decided which channels are best for your personal branding and impression management, create a content strategy. Focus on sharing educational content that your target audience might find valuable.

For example, if you’re an independent recruiter, you could post content on topics such as how to find a job you love or chronological resume tips. This content could naturally draw in current job seekers who could then be matched with your clients.

You could also create content for others in your industry. If you’re an entrepreneur, you could share entrepreneur tips. This can help establish your credibility and showcase you as a thought leader.

Remember that content doesn’t always refer solely to written content. You can get creative with the following mediums, depending on your chosen communication channels:

• Videos
• Branded graphics
• Webinars
• An online course
• A personal website
• Social media profiles

6. Prioritize relationship-building

A large part of personal branding has to do with your reputation. By providing quality services or products, you can help control your personal brand narrative, even when you’re not the one talking. 

Getting referrals is great for your professional branding. Roughly 88% of consumers trust recommendations from family and friends over advertisements. Referrals can also lead to higher conversion and retention rates.

7. Stay consistent

Consistency is the key to branding. This applies to individuals and businesses. To build brand awareness and recognition, you need to maintain a similar style across all of your channels.

Some personal branding factors that you can keep consistent include the following:

• Your brand voice/tone
• Your visual personality, which means using the same color scheme, fonts, and design styles
• Your brand values
• Your content posting schedule (for example, posting every day or once per week)
• Content themes
• Your logo and tagline

Maintaining personal brand consistency helps build credibility, trust, and predictability for your customers. It can also help you appear more professional and established.

Personal branding examples

If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to creating your personal brand, you’re not alone. Here are three strong personal brand examples from professionals across different industries. Use these profiles as personal branding tips by brainstorming how you can shape them to your needs.

Gary Vaynerchuk 

Serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk created a web of linked personal brands to showcase his different areas of expertise. These brands are displayed prominently at the top of his website to help audiences distinguish his different ventures:

• His overarching “Gary Vaynerchuk” personal brand is centered on helping to build businesses
• His “GaryVee” brand refers to his content arm, which includes a series of shows involving expert interviews called “DailyVee,” “Ask GaryVee,” and “Tea with GaryVee”
• His “VeeFriends” brand focuses on his efforts to create a movement at the intersection of kindness and creativity

These three personal sub-brands quickly tell his audiences what he does and values most. 

Bill Nye

Known for his love of science, bow ties, and cheesy jokes, Bill Nye’s personal brand as “Bill Nye the Science Guy” comes across as someone who is passionate about raising awareness for the amazing world of science. 

While his branding can involve him being goofy, he has built a career as a trusted science expert through his logical and visual approach to teaching. His authentic enthusiasm for making scientific knowledge more accessible constantly shines through all his endeavors. 

Martha Stewart

Despite covering so many different pursuits, Martha Stewart is able to keep her brand consistent through her sophisticated personality. She dives into cooking, designing, gardening, and more home-based hobbies with the same tone and helpful how-tos.

Her content output also stays large and consistent, which helps to keep her personal branding relevant as time passes.

Personal branding mistakes and how to avoid them

While a personal brand can take a while to build, it can be destroyed quickly. Be sure to avoid these common personal branding mistakes:

• Inconsistency: Inconsistency in your personal branding can confuse your potential clients and undermine your brand’s integrity
• Not being authentic: It’s easy to tell when someone isn’t passionate about their work, and that can quickly create distrust among prospects
• Lack of engagement: Not engaging with your audience when you share content can make it seem like you’re not interested in building relationships
• Not being mindful: Posting content or comments that may be taken as offensive or inappropriate by some audiences can hurt your personal reputation
• Setting unrealistic expectations for yourself: Because personal branding takes a lot of time, it can be easy to create an overly ambitious plan that doesn’t set yourself up for success. For example, planning to post video content every day might not be attainable long term and can lead to issues with consistency and burnout. Make sure the personal branding strategy you create is doable with your current schedule.

Take charge of your personal branding to control your narrative

Personal branding can help show the world who you are and what you stand for. It can open doors to new opportunities and ignite your career growth.

Working with a BetterUp Coach can help you understand and articulate your personal strengths and visions, which are fundamental to creating an impactful personal brand. Start chasing after your career dreams.