Personal Brand or Unforgettable Personality?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that because LinkedIn is labelled as a B2B platform, you have to go to work in a suit and tie to be a member. That is until you spend more than 5 minutes there and realise that in a post-COVID world, suits and ties have been replaced with hoodies and unwashed pants.?

It’s a little less stuffy than it once was.?

What you won’t have missed over the last few years is the abundance of people claiming expert status at building personal brands for unsuspecting CEOs who have been led to believe that all you need to win is an exaggerated back story and a desire to bake cakes.

But do you need a personal brand, or do you need people to remember you for the right reasons?

Why did personal branding become such a monster?

To understand the answer to this question, you have to first look outside LinkedIn and shift your attention towards the so-called influencers that dominate our feeds on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and even good old Facebook.

People who have built followings in the millions by simply sharing their bang-average lives and of course, dramatising them for extra fakery.?

And irrelevant likes. Don’t forget those.?

This wave of ‘real world’ content has consumed us for one very good reason. For better or worse, it is totally relatable to our everyday lives. Which in truth, are also largely boring and mundane.

In business, despite most LinkedIn members raising an eyebrow at the mere hint of personality and god forbid someone showing a bit of leg… people want to do business with humans. Not corporations.?

This simple notion has meant that the savvy CEO is now embracing the need to introduce elements of their lives into the conversation. Wins, losses, challenges and mistakes are now all fair game in a world where your ideal buyers want to see beyond the professional front.?

They want to see behind the curtain and into the soul of the people trying to build their trust through social media content. ?

How does a personal brand link to your business?

Unless you’re the size of Amazon with a $20 billion ad spend, much of your success will have been built on the back of relationships and referrals. Until now, this has worked brilliantly in an analogue world but now you want to grow beyond your current book of business and scale.?

To do that, you have to take all the same elements of the analogue world (the reasons people like you) and bring them to the digital one so that more people like you.?

It sounds so simple when you say it like that doesn’t it?

Now, let’s not get this twisted. You still have to demonstrate your authority in your space , but your ideal buyer will buy YOU long before they invest any money in your services so HOW you deliver that education through your content is critical.?

And so is how regularly you talk about it.?

As I mentioned earlier in this article, the personal brand has become a little skewed over the last few years because too many people are playing (and teaching others to play) it completely wrong. A sob story here, a dog post there and a look at my tan line somewhere else has become the guru blueprint for success.?

Except by the time you realise success hasn’t come, you’ve done a few grand and said experts have had it away on their toes.?

Becoming unforgettable for the right reasons.

With so much competition in your space, I do understand the temptation to build an audience by any means necessary, creating content you know the masses will swarm over. We’ve all been there, lapped up the likes and nursed a semi over the fact we are now a known creator.?

But known for what?

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched someone create a piece of content designed to engage people at scale and then still wondered…

What do you do again?

This my friends is the biggest waste of time and energy you will have in your business.

Because likes and comments without building the right authority are pointless.?

The sweet spot for any content strategy is to cleverly link a real-life story to a business need that very subtly sells your product. People relate to the story element because something similar has inevitably impacted their lives, whilst constantly being reminded of the service you offer and the problem you solve.?

Accept that this is a platform designed to extract money from your ideal buyer and embrace that truth, rather than trying to hide from it. People don’t mind being sold to, as long as you can provide a bit of humour, sprinkled with a healthy dose of education along the way.?

For better or worse, the term Personal Brand isn’t going away anytime soon. But instead of seeing it as a reason to share the ins and outs of your bedtime routine or how angry you are at the PM getting free holidays…

Use it to become truly unforgettable in your space.?

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