5 ways you can position yourself online to create a fun & inviting Personal Brand

All business is people business. The people you attract on the road to wealth will determine your success as much as, or more than any other factor. At the same time, the mistakes you make in choosing these people will hinder you and hold you back as much or more than anything else. 

People are everything!

If you have ever heard me speak earlier, it is very likely you will have heard me recount a quote. I know that ‘quotes of the day’ are not everyone’s bag, but sometimes you hear someone say something or are referred to something someone in authority has said and their words touch you. 

A while ago, I heard these wonderful words by inspirational business author, Simon Sinek: 

100% of customers are people. 100% of employees are people. If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business!

Without people, every patent in the world would be worthless. People are the ultimate consumers of every product and service, even the most obscure manufacturing technology. Even in business-to-business sales, people make the decisions about what to purchase and when.

For example, a firm may cuts 1000s of jobs to increase profits. Think about the relationships it will disrupt by taking thousands of people out of the picture. Those missing employees will have had numerous relationships with customers, partners and suppliers. Tons of information will disappear about their needs. As those employees depart, so will their insights and information.

In a world where there seem to be as many ‘shareholder centric’ organizations as there are ‘customer centric’, it is refreshing to come across businesses who genuinely do put PEOPLE at the very heart of everything they do.

Pandemic has shown us one thing for sure - the businesses will go on, people will find ways and means to reach out to others, and there will always be a way to grow. Perhaps, that is why we hear about Personal Branding so much now-a-days. It is a sure shot way to get noticed, whether by clients or potential employers, it is all about knowing who you want to touch base with.

What is Personal Branding all about?

Before I answer that question, I want you to ask yourself, "What do you want to be known for?"

If someone mentions your name, business, or brand what do you want them to say?

Personal branding is the practice of marketing people and their careers as brands.

It is an ongoing process of developing and maintaining a reputation and impression of an individual, group, or organization. Whereas some self-help practices focus on self-improvement, personal branding defines success as a form of self-packaging.

Your personal brand is how you promote yourself.

It is the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that you want your followers to see.

It is the telling of your story, and the impression people gain from your online reputation.

Why is Personal Branding so important?

Your Ideal People Start To Find You

When you consistently tell your story and share snippets of your personality with your audience across social media, you will notice more people actively engaging, following, and sharing your content. The more personality you can add to your business, the easier it will get to find your tribe. 

Over time you will build this community of like-minded people who value your skills and sees you as an expert in your industry. You will notice that people will either love you or hate you, and that's okay! 

You wouldn't want someone who thinks you have a weird personality or someone who constantly disagrees with you to be a part of your tribe. 

One of the biggest reasons for creating a personal brand is to warm up this powerful group of people who are waiting to take action on anything you have to offer. Once you find your ideal followers, that's when you can really start making a profit and reaching your goals.

You Build Trust With People Who Matter

When it comes to doing business with someone online, studies show that 70-80% of people research an influencer or brand before doing business with them. 

People like to feel like they know you, especially before they spend money or do business with you. 

That's one of the reasons why personal branding is so important. It's a way we can naturally build relationships and connections with people throughout the world.

Because social media has become a place filled with highly reliable and resourceful information about anyone imaginable, it's important always to show our authentic selves. Almost everything we do can be found online, so make sure that whatever story you are selling is consistent across everything you say and do. Consistency is one of the most significant factors in building trust with someone.

Your personal brand helps you stand out from everybody else. 

Positioning Your Brand

A successful positioning strategy relies on a deep understanding of the marketplace you want to compete in. It identifies how your company is different from the competitors and the conditions and opportunities in the marketplace. 

A big mistake that many businesses make is assuming that positioning is just a marketing strategy. It should be one of the foundations of the business strategy. After all, you cannot position a product as a high-quality offering in your marketing if the product itself cannot back up those claims.

There are 5 ways in which you can successfully position your Personal Brand:

Audience Specific

As the name suggests, your Target Audience is at the center of everything and the whole positioning revolves around that.

You would have probably heard that a brand is more than a logo, product, or service.

Each is true!

It’s an umbrella that spans from social media branding to user personas to voice and tone to everything in between. In some ways, it’s even more because it’s all of these things packaged up and presented — then unpacked and cracked open, so the world can see the gooey insides.

In simplest terms, a brand has three components:

• Feeling: a gut-level reaction.
• Promise: the vow a brand makes to its audience.
• Relationship: the quality of ongoing interactions between a brand and its audience

In order to build a great brand, you need to bring them all together in a simple, energizing way to craft a brand strategy that appeals to the right people. The salient aspects of audience specific positioning include-

• Enjoying defined strategy and pattern for interaction and communication with your audience
• Attempt to attract Brand Audience Trust towards Personal Brand
• Tendency towards Social and Philanthropic actions
• Society Presence and Social Relations with People
• Accurate Identification of Audience and their behaviour
• Devising and approach for accessibility by Audience
• Innovation and Creativity in relation with Audience
• Classification of and then having defined the Target Audience

Capability Specific

This type of positioning is effective when you have a super skill that you can monetize, or have a skill that needs polishing and can be THAT ONE THING that you do better than the rest.

Using your characteristics or benefits as a positioning strategy associates your brand with a certain characteristic that is beneficial to customers. For example, in the automobile industry, Toyota’s position in the market is reliability, Porsche’s position is performance and Volvo’s position is safety. 

Brands consistently communicate the most unique benefit or characteristic of the product with consumers. The salient aspects of capability specific positioning include-

1. Having intrinsic and personal authentication through precedence or performance
2. Mastery and expertise in the field of activity
3. Interest in communicating with the fan and genuine liking for them
4. Adherence to ethics at all times

Strategy Specific

When you approach Personal Branding for a goal that you want to achieve, the best way is to do a Strategy based positioning.

Customers can recognize a clear positioning strategy — they understand whether a brand is competing on price or quality. Positioning must be a cohesive effort between the business strategy and sales and marketing tactics. It is far more than just a communication strategy. This is the only way the product or service will deliver on customer expectation and the promises of its positioning.

The salient aspects of strategy specific positioning include-

• Enjoying a personal goal in branding path
• Having a clear image and perspective for Personal Branding
• Enjoying a well defined Strategy for Personal Brand Positioning
• Enjoying a daily personal program for the management of Personal Brand Positioning
• Enjoying and having a proper strategy for self-introduction

Differentiation Specific

1. What is your Unique Value Proposition?
2. How are your different from your Competition?
3. What distinctive advantage do you provide your Target Audience that no one else can?

It is a world of differentiation out there.. especially post Covid!

The importance of this is worth considering. Your value is more than features and benefits. Since your ultimate goal is to create lifelong relationships with customers, this idea needs to part of the value equation. The only question is how much of this value-add do you, or can you, incorporate into a compelling value proposition statement?

If your prospective market segment doesn't see the WOW, either your product does not offer (enough) value and doesn't address their true pain points, or you haven't done a good job of putting in all into plain words as to why it is in fact so great.

The salient aspects of differentiation specific positioning include-

• Considering Competitive Advantage for Personal Branding
• Coincidence between adopted competitive Advantage with needs and expectations of the Target Audience
• Proper and applied self-regulation
• Identifying and analyzing Performance and advantages of Personal rivals :)
• Using traditional and emerging methods to communicate with personal branding audience

Performance Specific

This I feel is one of the toughest way so far, and hence the last!

This reminds me of a quote by Robin Sharma,

“Be spectacularly great at what you do. Wear your passion on your sleeve and hold your heart in the palm of your hand. And work hard. Really hard.”

A well-communicated image should help establish a brand’s position, insulate the brand from competition and ultimately enhance the brand’s market performance. One of the important assets that firms carry is the intangible value represented by its brand’s/brands’ purpose(s) that are acknowledged by consumers as in the case of Apple, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Toyota, BMW, Honeywell, etc. These brands capitalize on creating opportunities for positioning and growth.

And as the title suggests, when you deliver on your promises, when you have results to show, the best way is to go for Performance based positioning. The salient aspects of performance specific positioning include-

• Matching Lifestyle with adopted Personal Brand pattern
• Operational adherence to the designed Personal Goals and plans
• Professional behaviour and Mastery in the patterns and process of Personal Branding
• Stable Processes and procedures for continuity in Plans
• Avoiding too much or too low level of communication with the audience
• Alignment between positioning efforts and the efforts made to attain Personal Brand Equity
• Harmony between Behaviour, Speech and Performance

Effectively positioning a product or service gives it a USP (Unique selling proposition).

In a modern marketplace cluttered with so many choices with similar benefits, you want your brand to stand out from the rest. It becomes more memorable and can have a competitive advantage over alternatives. Your USP is your unique benefit to entice customers to purchase your brand over another. 

Brands must communicate This USP with their target audience to gift themselves "Raving Fans"

How to create your Personal Brand Positioning Statement?

It is all about YOU!

So, I can not tell you what to do; I can definitely share 4 fundamental points on how you can define and evolve YOUR very own Brand Stamp!

Here goes..

A positioning statement should be no longer than a paragraph, and should discuss the following:

1. The positioning statement should begin with describing your target market and what their specific needs or goals are. Market research helps businesses to understand their market and customers more intimately.
2. Define what category your product or service belongs to and how it meets the needs of consumers. Customers always need a reference point to provide context to evaluate a brand’s offering.
3. What differentiates your product or service from the alternatives? One point of differentiation is best, stating your difference from the customer’s perspective. How does your differentiator will help solve the customer’s problem or help them achieve their goals?
4. Explain why consumers in your target market should believe your brand’s claims. Consumers must see credibility in your positioning, so provide evidence to justify the claim of your brand in your positioning. Do not just say you are the fastest or best quality, state HOW you are.

This may need several re-runs and that is perfectly fine. Create one, test it, refine it and relaunch it. But once you finalize it, make sure that you follow it in words, deeds and thoughts.

Personal branding gives you the opportunity to show current and potential clients your skillset and strengths. The key to building a successful brand and becoming truly influential is to consistently show up and be so great at selling your story that people have to do business with you.

Now, go show up and serve your audience in every way possible and show them that you are worth investing in. When you do that, it will be a game-changer for your brand!