How Does Personal Branding Pay You?

 Authored by Saloni Gandhi, Founder, The Pen Project

HOW DOES PERSONAL BRANDING PAY YOU?

In this digital age where there are a zillion options available to people, how do you make them choose 'you' over others? Before clicking that buy option most of us would check the credentials of the source.How do you build those set of credentials? That's where personal branding steps in.

A personal brand creates a narrative that makes ‘you’ who you are and the way you want to project yourself to the outer world.

An image that can create an unspoken introduction of yourself to benefit your personal and professional life. You position yourself in a certain way to be seen in a certain way in the public eye by maintaining an impression and a reputation of yourself.

There was a time when one equated branding with only businesses but today individual’s brand is just as important.The vital question is do we want our online presence to take an image of its own or we want to take a conscious choice of building a narrative.Lets have a look at how personal branding helps us-

1.Leads to better opportunity

Personal branding will open your gates to better opportunities as it will make people aware about you and the product you stand for, which will further increase your demand in the market and increase the business of the product or the services you provide.

2.Building trust in consumers

Branding will mean building a unique identity of well defined look, specifications, attributes both offline and online. Many people are likely to accept you more if they know who you are. It helps build trust among the consumers or target audience.This way people will be able to relate with you and eventually trust you. Even the business brands do it by using celebrities which people associate with and that helps in building trust.

3. Visibility and relevance

Today what’s out of sight is out of mind, it is very important to stay visible in the mind of the targeted audience, it doesn't mean you have to be present everywhere but where your audience is. With so many media sites and clutter around, visibility becomes one of the most essential in personal branding.You can stay relevant only if people are seeing you and only this will make it more reachable.

4.Increase and grow influence on people

Any brand requires people, be it a small number or a big number so a target audience which supports or follows is important to build your brand’s community. The more people see you through personal branding the more likely you are to make an impact on them and the more chances are of you influencing them in the favour of the brand. This can be used to grow your audience which would otherwise be difficult in the social media age where most of us are screen users.

Keys points before starting your Personal branding-

• Staying true to yourself and what you stand for are the most essential things. People buy stories before they buy your products, telling your personal story humanises your brand which strikes a chord with people.
• Being careful what you put out is equally important because that will determine the future of your image in the public. Putting your strengths and abilities with conscious acceptance of your flaws is the key to a successful branding.
• Accepting your uniqueness and constantly innovating it will be essential while making your standing in public.
• Your personal brand is the employee that never sleeps and content is the engine of your personal brand, one key is to be persistent in working towards your own brand as it's an ongoing goal.There is always a scope of improvement.