Day 7/ Three Things To Build Your Personal Brand

With each passing day, I hear more and more people wanting to build their personal brands. And because I am nearing about 10000 connections on Linkedin (I dont know how), a lot of people think I am an expert. And each person likes to chat with other experts and pick their brains, my brain gets picked a lot! And here we are.

So lemme start with what is a personal brand

I define personal brand as "sum total of your reputation, the value of your word, the experiences that people have had with you, the aftertaste they are left with after they meet you, the kind of work you do (quality, quantity, timeliness, etc) and more such things"

To me, the most important part is this thing called after-taste.

Like most things that sound like "aftertaste", aftertaste is tough to define in words. But you would get the drift.

Now, what are the three things you could do to build your personal brand and improve the aftertaste?

1/ Be consistent consistent consistent

Since the IPL season is on, let's start with cricket. What do you think of Rahul Dravid and what do you think of Chris Gayle? Arguably, both of these are great batsmen but one of them - Rahul Dravid - is consistently reliable, consistently delivers, consistently around. Chris Gayle may fire on some days. May not be on some.

Now that's the brand. Something that the batter has displayed over time. Consistently. And that!

In the same vein, what do you think of when you think of McDonald's? What do you think of when you think of Starbucks? What do you think of when you think of Boat?

In the case of McD and Starbucks, you would have a consistent experience with the brand. I am not judging good or bad. But I am saying both would offer a certain kind of predictable, consistent experience. Boat on the other hand would be great on some days. Good on some days.

Your personal brand is exactly that.

If one day you write a 1000-word essay about cricket, the next day you put a 20-second video about bitcoin and the third day you post a meme about the conspiracy of the aliens, your audience will not know what you stand for. And what you want to talk about. Or what your brand is going to be.

So, identify themes. Or niches, as they call it.

My friend Ashish Kila has done a lot of good work in building his personal brand as a financial expert. Arjun Vaidya has a fantastic personal brand around startups and investing. Rohan Ian does a lot of good work on talking about marketing. I can't not mention Pranita Bajoria when it comes to building a personal brand as a copywriting expert!

2/ Give value.

It is this simple. Each thing you do within your niche, in your theme, you need to add value to people.

If Pranita Bajoria did not offer priceless advice on each of her posts, there's no way you would follow her. If Deepu Sukumaran Nair did not give advice on how to make your LinkedIn stand out, he would not have so many followers. If Raja Rajamannar did not talk about marketing like a true leader, he would not have had this much respect.

I can spill a lot more ink on this adding value bit but it would not be enough. Most people come to you because you give value. And you can never give enough value.

3/ Read this...

Here's a plug. The third one is a link to my blog where I wrote a long post about how to build your personal brand. Go read it here.

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So that. These are my top three.

Oh wait. Before I end this, I need to add a few disclaimers

• While I may know what works on personal brand, I have been very very lazy in the implementation of the same. I am trying to fix it but I am merely trying.
• I offer this service for a living to select folks. Happy to work with you. :D

And finally, as always, what would you say is a good way for someone to build their personal brands?