Personal Branding

How Personal Branding will lead you as a professional?

“What is this Personal Brand? Do I need it for my career progression?” I often come across this question. ?Well, if we explore our life’s Wikipedia deeply we will be able to discover the meaning of the same.

Life teaches us subconsciously the meaning of Personal Branding which we normally ignore. Don't we market our feelings, presence to woo our partner? Don't we try to impress our partner with our dance moves? The feeling of -"I am the only right choice of yours baby" is called Personal Branding.

Personal Branding is an art of shouting out and say to the world that “My name is XYZ. Let's explore me." There are many hidden talents around us but only few get noticed, and the best way to achieve is to frame and execute Personal Brand strategy.

Let discuss some the Personal Brand Strategies which will enhance our career progression-

Connect the Touch points.

Engage all our touch points in an organization such as - our immediate boss, our peers,?our team members ,stake holders and all other functional heads (not only your reporting head). Engagement in the forms of sharing notable achievements with all hierarchy levels, seeking regular feedback and advice from key members of our organization, create an environment of trust where employees will talk about our trustworthiness and if we can do this then we are bang on the target of creating a successful Personal Brand for us.

Discovering our Outdoor Advertisement Media.

Outdoor Advertisement Media (Hoarding, Sign ages, Logos and many more) aids our inner feeling to connect with the product. It amuses our Purchasing Power.?Effective use of our own outdoor advertisement media establishes us as a brand in the industry. Outdoor Advertisement Tools like – joining a professional forum, catching up with Industry Biggies on High Tea session, sharing our knowledge through - professional seminars, interaction sessions at college campuses, mentoring paves our way to say “Yes, I am in”

Upgrading our Skills.

There is no amusement to view Burj Khalifa (world’s tallest structure) from the ground. Be a Burj Khalifa, and we can execute that by uplifting our skills. The era when automation and artificial intelligence is hitting us we can’t kill (virtually not organically) ourselves by sitting ideal. “We are growing in terms of money but not in terms of skills”. I have come across this famous quote on social media. I threw this question to many professionals and surprisingly 99 % respondents said that the quotation is right in their perspective (This data is purely based on my survey). This is really alarming!! If we want to avoid this situation in our life and to stand tall like Burj Khalifa then we need to acquire relevant skills (as per the industry standards), audit our skills on regular basis and most importantly execute it. So, stand tall in the queue and with our knowledge and view the world from the top.

Social Media Presence.

In today’s era mere exploring the social media is not going to serve our presence, we need to prove our existence. We all are aware of the fact that Social Media is a great tool to showcase our skills to the world; but when it comes to execution, most of us fall flat. Recently I was speaking to one of the influencer (on LinkedIn) who has grown his followers organically from mere 300 to 7000 in just 7 months of time. “I joined LinkedIn 10 years ago, and during these 10 years I was looking into it for searching jobs only. I didn’t get any response during these years. I was only interested in connecting HR professionals and Recruiters. My post views were range between 5 - 10 views per post. Then I analysed myself and framed my strategy of posting contents on LinkedIn. I showcased??what I am, what my interest is, what I am passionate about, what my skills and achievements are and overall what I am as a professional through my posts . I started getting results my posts rose up to 50K views in a single day from 5-10 views. I have started getting recognition as a Professionals, I made some wonderful connections apart from my functional areas. I have been pitched by many recruiters and HR for job opening (which I was eyeing to during these 10 years).”?He narrated his journey of his Personal Branding. We all can achieve that, it’s only to putting X- factor in our mind-set.