Why Personal Branding Must Be Your First Focus

From Entrepreneur, Mike Wood discusses what is personal branding and why it is important.  Mike writes:

What exactly is personal branding?

Understanding the ins and outs of personal branding is obviously the first step in the right direction. The concept can be simply defined as the method of marketing yourself and your career to improve relationships with managers, colleagues and clients. Turning yourself into a brand helps you manage how you’re viewed and how much trust you can establish in your career. It involves creating a distinct voice, image and ethical standard.

But, it’s also something that takes consistent work over the course of your career. That is to say, you can’t write a particularly excellent blog post one time and expect that to carry you through the rest of your life. On top of that, just generally having a social media presence is no longer enough to qualify as a personal brand.

Building trust with those around you.

Trust isn’t something that flourishes naturally on a wide scale. It’s something you have to cultivate, and the best way to do that is with a unique personal brand. When it comes to who consumers trust the most, it’s almost always individuals. Corporate branding may technically be more visible, but it’s almost universally seen as less trustworthy. In fact, brand messages are shared 24 times more often if the originator of the message is an individual.

Clearly, you can use your personal brand to build trust as long as that brand reads as authentic and sincere.

Mike also provides guidance for finding a niche and becoming a thought leader.  Read the full story at Why Personal Branding Must Be Your First Focus