How can strategic communication improve your personal brand?

Define Your Brand: Craft a strategy that talks to your audience. Create an identity beyond a logo; establish a unique visual language. Be Consistent: Storytell to impress. Be consistent across every interaction point. Track & Analyze: Set KPIs and gather broad customer insights. Keep a watchful eye on your competitors, and adapt to market shifts. Deliver an Experience: Map out the customer journey for most impact. Create experiences that feel natural, intuitive, and easy for your audience. Cultivate Ambassadors: Reward those who support your brand. Word-of-mouth is the best marketing you could get.

One key to brand identity is finding your unique position. It's that sweet spot of knowing what your customer needs or concerns are, knowing what you do really well to meet those, and knowing your competition is lacking in that area. Your messages should bring that up again and again. For example: When it comes to [identified need], [Brand name] has got your back! We take care of [need or concern] because we are the ones that [explain why you are the best choice]. This is really simplified, but you can use this as your brand position statement—an internal reminder of what makes your brand unique, and create content that empathizes with your audience's unique needs.

Nothing has guided my mentees more than defining a purpose statement behind the work that they do!! Allow me to repeat … purpose is the North Star This is crucial for a personal brand. If you don’t know who you are … ... you don’t know who you aren’t … you don’t know who you disagree with … your audience doesn’t know if they agree with you Define WHY you ARE … then talk about it ??????

A brand in any kind whether personal or commercial needs positioning as a pioneer in the minds of its audiences in its domain if it is built to last.

Root your personal brand in authenticity and balance it with aspiration, inspiration, and opportunity. If it's not part of your truth in some way, move on.

It’s amazing that you’ve strategized and written down your personal brand - but no one will know if you don’t share it! Going back to the first step, what is it that you can do that no one else can? Talk about it! Not in a bragging way, but in a storytelling, insightful kind of way via channels where your audience is engaging regularly. This doesn’t have to be anything super complicated; rather something as simple as engaging on other people’s content on LinkedIn can be a great way to build an engaged audience of followers. Know your audience, provide value where they are, and the rest will unfold.

Start small and be consistent! Whatever channel you use consider the time and effort it takes to give the audience what they want. If you show up every Tuesday with a podcast or 3x a week with social posts — keep showing up! Expand to new channels only when you can devote the time and engagement.

Consider what you can bring to the conversation that other companies are not focused as much on. Think about how your audience may be feeling when a pain point comes up for them. If a friend came to you and said "I'm really frustrated about this", you would speak empathetically and offer advice. Do the same with your audience! You are having a conversation that offers solutions and builds trust.

Imitation will turn you into background noise. That's not to say you are not allowed to find content inspiring or have to reinvent the wheel all the time. When you come across content that contributes meaningfully to the discussion, be sure to share it or give credit to the original creator by mentioning (tagging) them. Then, further the dialogue by offering your own insights or viewpoints.

Different channels require their own strategy, but they should all sound as if they're derived from the same person. Your audience may change but your personal brand does not. Make sure that when you interact with different audiences you're tuned to their level but that you maintain consistency in how you're represented, your values, and your mission.

Diving into analytics can feel like a lot if you're not familiar with them or aren't sure what to focus on. But it really circles back to what you're aiming for with your content. Are you looking to spark a conversation? Then keeping an eye on how many people are liking, commenting, or sharing is your best bet. Or is it about getting folks to read your latest blog post? In that case, you'll want to watch your page views and how long people stick around reading(session times). The trick is to know your starting stats before your content goes live, and then you can really tell if it's hitting the mark.

Authenticity and storytelling. You MUST be yourself, find your own voice and then use it. Emulating other people will get you nowhere fast; people can smell a faker a mile away. And incorporate storytelling into your strategic communications. People learn from story, they connect from story and they remember story way more than facts and figures. Stories humanize and connect and exponentially increase the speed at which you build, and the value of, your personal brand.