The Personal Branding Roadmap

Despite their differences, the frameworks presented guide you toward answering similar fundamental questions about who you are, what you stand for, and how you wish to be perceived in the professional world. However, understanding and defining your brand is just the beginning. The real challenge—and opportunity—lies in applying this understanding to your career and life, where a practical roadmap for implementation becomes essential.

Four Questions

crafting a personal brand through storytelling. using four guiding questions to shape this narrative-driven approach.

1. What is your story: who you are, what you’ve overcome, what makes you credible, your mission?
2. Who is your audience: who will benefit from your story?
3. What are your goals: e.g., establishing thought leadership, building credibility, connecting with the community, etc.?
4. What are your metrics: how will you measure progress on your goals?

Seven Pillars

the framework she leads her coaching clients through—one that encompasses seven key components: Purpose, Values, Clarity, Strengths, Energy, Legacy, and Ownership.

1. Purpose is about understanding why you do what you do. Asking questions like, “What gives meaning to my life?” can help us identify our purpose.
2. Values represent the guiding principles that shape your actions and decisions.
3. Clarity, again, emphasizes the importance of clear self-understanding and authenticity. ?
4. Strengths focus on recognizing and leveraging your unique skills and talents.
5. Energy pertains to the passion and enthusiasm you bring to your endeavors.
6. Legacy involves considering the long-term impact and imprint you wish to leave.
7. Ownership is about taking responsibility for your brand and its development.

Four C’s

This framework revolves around core elements: Clarity, consistency, content, and communication.

1. Clarity involves having a clear understanding of who you are and what you stand for.
2. Consistency refers to the need to consistently represent these values and attributes across various platforms and interactions.
3. Content focuses on creating and sharing material that reflects and reinforces your brand.
4. Communication emphasizes the importance of building relationships and effectively and authentically conveying your brand to others

The 5 A’s of personal branding:

1. Awareness

Awareness is all about getting your name out there.

This includes featuring yourself on your website, creating a blog or podcast to give away helpful information related to what you do and know best, and using social media networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to people who may be interested in what you have to say and offer.

If you don’t focus enough on awareness, all the other A’s are irrelevant.

2. Authority

Authority builds credibility and trust with your audience by providing helpful content, expertise, and advice in your niche or industry.

This can be achieved through creating helpful blog posts, writing books, speaking at events and conferences, and sharing case studies of successful projects you have completed.

When deciding which avenue is best for you and your personal brand, start with the most natural one.

Don’t let current trends take you down a path that leads to low-quality content or inconsistency.

Yes, short-form videos are popular and have good traction on many platforms, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create written content if you are good at writing.

Using your blog and expertise to contribute to large publications like Forbes is credibility you can leverage when promoting your brand.

3. Authenticity

Authenticity is about being genuine and true to yourself, creating content reflecting your values and viewpoint.

This will help bring in the right audience because they can relate to you and what you have to say.

It also allows them to connect with your brand on a deeper level and trust the information you are offering.

Being true to yourself will allow you to find your true fans who will be with you for the long haul.

4. Appearance

Appearance is all about how people perceive you and your brand, from how you dress to how you speak and interact with others.

Create a personal style that reflects who you are, your personality, and your character. This includes everything from the font on your website, and your personal branding statement to the wording you choose in your emails.

Remember, first impressions count, and it’s essential that you get this part right if you want to make an impact.

This will evolve over time, and you don’t have to have it all figured out right away, but be sure to stay true to your brand’s core values.

5. Audience

Audience is about understanding whom you are talking to, who follows you, and what they want from you.

It’s essential that you know your audience and their needs so that you can create content that resonates with them and speaks to their needs.

Take the time to learn more about who they are, what they like and dislike, and how you can help them by creating content tailored just for them.

By understanding your audience, you can create laser-targeted content that will keep them interested in your brand and break through the noise.

The 5 Ps of Personal Branding

1- Personal.

Sorry for the BGO (or blinding glimpse of the obvious), but your personal brand is personal. It’s about you. Don’t create brand confusion between you personally and who you work for, the company’s brand, one of their brands, or any other associations you may have. Yes, certainly, your association with other entities colors your own, but they are not yours. Borrow some brand equity if some of what that brand represents is something you also believe passionately (there’s another P for you). But make it about you. Hopefully your personal brand, and the brand of your employer, can coexist together but be unique. You should be able to replace the word “brand” with “reputation” and they still overlap and be positively accretive to each other. But your personal brand is yours and yours alone.

It is the digital reputation for which the marketplace (in this case the entire universe potentially) knows you. Don’t confuse others brands with yours. Don’t let others do it for you. Yours is yours.

2- Pointed.

This means you’re answering the question for yourself (in your personal branding) of “what do I stand for?” What do you want to be known for? What are your priorities? What is important to you?

Have an end result in mind for why you’re working on your personal brand. When I say “pointed,” that answers the question of “why am I doing this?” Pointed implies a very sharp tip, very unambiguous, not blunt but pointed.

3- Purposeful.

You’ve got an end result, you know what you stand for, and what you want your reputation to be, and you have the area you have some expertise in. Great. What is the plan (there’s another P for you) to make all of that purposeful? What are the journey, strategy, and tactics you’re going to employ towards that end?

If I’m at starting point A in my personal brand, and I have determined that I want to accomplish B with it, then charting the course from A to B is quite straightforward, but you need to be purposeful in the steps you take. One hint to do this is to engage a third party to help you think outside of yourself a little more strategically. This allows you to think clearly through your strategy and your tactics.

4- Prioritized.

At certain times and seasons, your personal brand will be your number one priority. Maybe when you first kick it off, maybe when you’re trying to establish that foothold, it is a very high priority. There’ll be other times and seasons, particularly as your brand gets some rhythm and achieves a toehold in the market, where it may fall down the prioritization list. That’s ok, but it needs to be prioritized as something that is important to you. Don’t mistake prioritization for the fact that it should always be priority one. Don’t become so egocentric, believing your own press releases, that your personal brand is always priority one. That’s the quickest way to undo a solid and substantive personal brand.

It does need some priority, but not always the top spot. It will change based on its life cycle. Your personal brand is informed by the other work and priorities you have. And the season that you happen to be in.

5-, Profitability.

If you want to, there are certainly possibilities to make money from your brand. If you’ve got something substantive to say, you can deliver value to the marketplace as part of your brand.

But I’m using the word “profitable” with a much broader definition. What are the intrinsic and measurable returns for which you’re looking? Do you just want to be seen as someone that has the competence and the confidence to answer folks’ questions? Do you want to be the resident expert? Do you want to be someone that is positively accretive to others lives? Do you want to actually make some money? What is the ROI that you’re seeking here, broadly defined?

That is the ultimate measurement of the “so what” question.

ABCs Model of Personal Branding

As

Authenticity:

The foundation of personal branding rests on authenticity: The ability to tap into your genuine, humble, and individual human qualities from which your identity, personality, and character stem. Most of us walk around without much thought to being “authentic.” We expect that others will take us as they see us. Some of us even boast, “What you see is what you get!”

But is it? Are you living authentically - using your values, beliefs, and dreams guide you? Are you letting others know you - truly know you - or are you hiding behind a shield of appropriateness and conformity?

By understanding and exploring your passions, interests, motivators, and challenges, you can better articulate your value to the audiences who need to see you as relevant. The goal is to have control over the brand you live, how it’s expressed, and how others assign you value and relevance. Authenticity is the critical component to developing successful personal and business brands that have longevity.

Accountability:

Personal branding is the process of articulating your value proposition to a target audience and building a compelling reputation. In order to effectively develop and communicate a solid personal brand, we need to know who we are, how we want to be perceived, who we need to focus our efforts towards, and what results we expect to receive. These are all important ingredients in this personal branding formula. Leave one out and it just doesn’t work the same way. Holding yourself accountable can be a very daunting task! Living up to someone else’s expectations is often easier - there are consequences to not following through. But we can easily let ourselves off the hook when it’s convenient to do so. Put reward/consequence systems in place to keep yourself accountable and stay on track.

Audience-focused:

In personal branding we strive to make ourselves relevant and compelling to a specific target audience - and that’s not everyone! Not everyone you work with or network with will get your jokes, find you compelling, or feel good about you. Targeting those clients, customers, and stakeholders who will find you relevant is critical and cuts down on your marketing efforts!

If your goal is to win over a colleague who insists on holding on to their first impression of you, when you were naive and unaware of your personal brand goals (and maybe you made some mistakes in how you treated others), realize that some people will never come around. Instead, focus on building brand relevance with audiences who hold opportunities for you (i.e. your supervisor, clients, vendors, key staff) and not on people who are harder to win over and have little influence on your future.

Bs

Bold:

While authenticity is at the heart of personal branding, in order to develop your own unique identity, you first must identify the genuine traits, skills, and values that make you compelling. It starts with understanding your values: What bold promises will you uphold? What do you stand for? What is so core to your moral and ethical fiber that if it were removed you would not be you? How do your values set the expectation others can have for you? Only after you understand your bold values can you begin to market yourself effectively to the audience who most needs you.

Beliefs:

Focusing on what genuinely makes you unique allows you to grow your brand from a place of strength, while understanding and managing weaknesses. At the heart of effective brand development is clarity on your beliefs - practicing what you preach; being totally clear about who you are, what you stand for, and what you do best. Not everyone wants to be a leader, a resource for others, or a team player. That’s okay!

Only after a critical and honest assessment of your foundational beliefs can you begin to map the distance between how you want to be known (desired reputation) and how you are known today (current reputation). Only with this understanding can you begin building the legacy you desire. The discovery process is very internal and introspective, but when you start from the core, you develop a brand that sticks - because it’s genuine and compelling.

Behavior:

People form opinions about us based on many things - their own biases and prejudices, as well as our behavior. How we act influences how others see us. And how others see us affects the opportunities we get assigned. In personal branding, we take control of our reputation (perception) in order to craft and manage our legacy. How do you want to be seen by others who matter (your audience)? What will it take to make that perception reality? How are you behaving in person and online.

The person who seeks to be known as approachable needs to be approachable - they leave their office door open, have good eye contact, and include others in the conversation. Similarly, the person who seeks to be known as credible backs up their bold value statements with action. Behavior is where we put action to our beliefs. Or not...

Cs

Credibility:

I mentioned the one formula in my program: The formula for credibility. It is really quite simple: Credibility = Values + Action. You need to make it very clear to your target audience what it is that makes you special; what it is that you value and believe in that are truly assets to your personal brand.

Then you need to walk the talk. You need to live those values in everything that you do in order to earn credibility. If you want to be known as honest and that’s something that you really value, then you’re going to demonstrate honesty. You’re going to be honest. You’re going to attract honesty and transparency. After doing this, you will earn credibility and a reputation for someone who is honest.

Communication:

Your personal narrative is the way you communicate, internally and externally about your value. If you’re filled with fear and self-doubt, that undoubtedly is reflected in how you come across to others. Becoming aware of how you promote and communicate your passions and values directly impacts how others will appreciate you.

Do you use the wrong narrative when talking to others (or yourself) about your plans and your vision? Maybe the reason people see you as difficult to get along with is because you complain about your work day, instead of celebrating the fact that you have a job and are contributing to the organization? We can easily look outward to find reasons and excuses for missed opportunities and to explain our shortcomings, but it could also be we’re telling the wrong message in the first place.

Consistency

In branding, we drive towards legacy - the reputation we create for ourselves today and the way we will be remembered by clients, patients, colleagues, and our community a long time from now. We pay attention to how our actions, marketing, relationships, and products reflect our values and our vision.

Building trust is how we build integrity and credibility. By stating our values and acting consistent with what we believe, our target audiences can learn to trust us. Trust affects how our audiences will feel about us. If we want our audience to feel safe, valued, loved, validated, and respected, we must build trust.

Across all mediums - from in-person networking to social media, from body language to image to your messaging and elevator pitch - are you consistently articulating your value and demonstrating action towards that value. That is how you build consistency for your personal brand.