What Is My Personal Brand? With 10 Personal Branding Tips

By Indeed Editorial Team

Updated 6 September 2022

Published 29 September 2021

The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed's data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.

Creating a personal brand can be beneficial for both your personal life and career progression. It can make you a memorable candidate when seeking a career change. Establishing your personal brand message helps you stand out from the competition and can build trust with your clients or employers. In this article, we discuss what a personal brand is and share 10 personal branding tips to help you create your own.

10 personal branding tips

It can be challenging to create a personal brand, so here are 10 personal branding tips:

1. Be authentic

The most important aspect of a personal brand is the mere fact that it is personal and unique to you. Stay true to yourself, if you try to craft a brand that isn't true to you, it becomes hard to maintain over the long term. Your audience, clients or employers can recognise when you're not being genuine and may lose trust in you. Distrust is detrimental to your personal brand as people want to make genuine connections with others.

In short, it's best to be genuinely you and connect with like-minded people than to portray an inauthentic version of yourself that creates connections that may not be genuine.

2. Talk about your interests

Build your personal brand around the things that interest you. Much like being authentic with your brand, if your brand is a true reflection of your interests and lifestyle, then it's much easier to build and maintain over time. Holding conversations and creating content about the things you already enjoy is much simpler than trying to chase an audience you believe to be more lucrative. If you align your personal brand with your interests and lifestyle, it's easier to live your brand, be authentic and create meaningful connections with others.

3. Use what makes you different

Identify the aspects of yourself that make you unique. Consider what makes you different from everyone else. A personal brand is about sharing your personal perspective with the world. Consider what experience or background you have that makes your perspective different from others. This is where you're able to offer value by sharing a unique angle with your audience.

For example, if you've worked in a particular industry since a young age and have seen significant changes over time, you could offer value by commentating on the trends you've witnessed. The more unique your personal brand, the more memorable it becomes.

4. Tell your story

Once you've thought about the unique aspects of your personal brand, craft them into a cohesive narrative. Telling people who you are and what you represent can be much more engaging through storytelling. Consider how your interests, personality and history can tie together into a story. Imagine you're writing a character description for a book and write a few different versions of your personal narrative. Crafting simple stories that represent your personal brand helps you become clear about how you wish to present yourself and means you're prepared to introduce yourself memorably through storytelling.

5. Prepare an elevator pitch

Knowing your narrative or story is important when developing your personal brand, but you won't always have enough time to tell your entire story when opportunities present themselves. It's a good idea to shorten your narrative into a brief pitch so that you're prepared to capture someone's attention when the opportunity to connect arises. Your pitch needs to be brief (about 30 seconds) and needs to succinctly explain who you are in a memorable way. Take the story you crafted previously and shorten it into one or two impactful sentences, then memorise it for future use.

6. Learn from others

Follow in the footsteps of role models you look up to. If there are celebrities or industry leaders whose personal brand inspires you, analyse what they do well and apply this to your own brand. If there is someone you admire, either at work or in your personal life, ask them for advice. You might learn from them by asking about how they crafted their brand, and they can offer valuable feedback about your brand and elevator pitch.

7. Be helpful

In the same way that you may seek advice from your peers while developing your brand, people may also come to you for help or advice. Be sure to seek out opportunities to offer assistance and help others when you can, as it's a great way to connect with those in your industry.

Being helpful is an important element for any personal brand. By sharing your knowledge, experience or time with others, you offer value to your audience. Establishing a reputation as someone who is helpful improves your personal brand image and creates opportunities to connect with your clients and potential employers.

8. Be consistent

It's essential that your personal brand is consistent, as your audience needs to know they can depend on you. If you make a commitment to your audience, make sure you follow through with it. For example, if you tell clients you're sharing a new blog post every week, do your best to stick to this deadline.

It's much easier to be recognised as an expert in a particular topic if you consistently share your view, advice and expertise on this topic. Whereas, if you're inconsistent or unreliable, your brand may become unclear or chaotic.

9. Focus on one thing at a time

When developing your personal brand, try to remain focused on one aspect at a time. If you try to do everything that you think your audience wants, you run the risk of becoming overwhelmed, and your personal brand may also become unfocused. Establish a goal and focus on just one goal at a time. It's easy to become distracted by other tasks or the next trend in your industry, but work on improving each aspect of your brand at a time before moving on to the next.

Related: What is Prioritising?

10. Connect in different ways

Reaching out to your audience through different methods of communication allows you to reach more people and spread brand awareness further. Some people prefer connecting via email, some prefer in-person meetings and others may prefer to connect on social media. Work on implementing your personal brand and story into as many communication forms and platforms as possible so that you're consistently delivering the same personal brand regardless of the means of communication.

What is personal branding?

A personal brand is the widely recognised perception of an individual. The impression that others have of a person can be made up of their experiences with you in real life, how others portray you and the information about you available online. Your personal brand comprises a combination of:

your professional and personal experience
personality traits and attributes
skills
personal interests
stories you tell
personal values and ethics

Without attention or effort, your personal brand develops organically over time but may become unfocused. However, with conscious effort, you can shape your personal brand to tell the story you wish to present about yourself.

Benefits of establishing a personal brand

Establishing a clear personal brand means you're able to influence and have some control over how others perceive you, including clients and employers. You can deliver a memorable story of who you are, highlighting your strengths and passions in the process. By paying attention to your personal brand, you benefit your personal and professional life in many ways, such as:

Building better relationships

Through establishing your personal brand, you can identify who you are, what you stand for and what you want. By knowing these things, you can attract and connect with like-minded people more honestly and build mutually beneficial relationships. Stronger relationships can mean better cooperation with colleagues, more opportunities with clients and more pleasant work interactions.

More career opportunities

Identifying your personal brand can help you make more intentional decisions about where you network and who you network with. By defining your goals and establishing what you need to do to progress in your career, you can make conscious steps towards achieving your career goals. It may also open up new opportunities you hadn't considered before.

Greater connection with clients

Whether your audience includes personal clients or potential employers, developing an authentic personal brand allows people to feel they better understand you and can connect with your values. Authenticity and confidence can help to forge valuable connections and can improve the volume of sales you receive from clients or career opportunities from prospective employers. Great connections may also create new opportunities, as clients can be more likely to recommend you to their colleagues.

Improved name recognition

Your personal brand defines who you are and promotes that message to the world. Taking control over this process, networking and sharing your message ensures more people hear of you, recognise your name and understand what you represent. Name recognition can create positive associations between you and your services, attracting more clients.