Personal Branding for Beginners: Why Having a Strong Personal Brand Matters

Not all branding is created equal. With the growth of social media, personal branding matters more than ever. And it's likely to remain that way. Having a personal brand allows you to cut through the noise and differentiate yourself from the crowd, which is crucial in our 24/7/365 information-overloaded world.

Bottom line: Having a strong personal brand matters.

To dig a little deeper, we're sharing top reasons why you need to have a strong personal branding in the age of digital media and how to accomplish this.

Add Humanity to Your Brand

Imagine this: There was once a time when people would buy products from people, in person. From your local shop to your local restaurant, you could be greeted by an owner or a member of their staff, by name. It's what differentiates local communities from big box stores, and your online brand is no different. If you're thinking, "Personal branding does not fit my industry," take a lesson from Gucci where personal branding is not the norm in the luxury goods industry.

Gucci achieved sales of roughly $11 billion—an increase of 31 percent on a reported and comparable basis. The results also exceeded those from 2019, making it an all-time-high performance." Why? Well, it's all about showing your face, or the family, and with the Ridley Scott film, House of Gucci, the brand’s profile was raised worldwide, contributing to this chunk of growth.

To make your brand stand out among the literally millions of others competing for customers in your space, cultivating that personal relationship—that humanity—with your customers is key. And you don’t have to go to the lengths of producing a feature film. You can build that sense of belonging we’re all craving in our often-sterile feeling world by simply sharing YOU in your branding because, after all, YOU are who customers will come to trust before spending their hard-earned dollars on your products. Start by crafting your story (more on that later) and sharing a photo of yourself in action working on your brand. It’s that simple.

Authentically Share Your WHY

Stories are relatable. Statistics are not. It's easier for a person to connect with a person and make it relatable than for a brand to do the same without a personal face and just using numbers. The main way you can be relatable to your customers is through sharing the WHY behind you and your personal brand through the use of brand-related stories.

“Storytelling has become one of the key phrases behind any modern marketing strategy and it’s clear that people want to hear and see more engaging narratives,” says Steve Spender, MD of Headstream.

But here’s the catch: Just any story won’t do. According to a report from Headstream, brand stories land with customers 66% better when they’re about regular people (including you), because regular people are more relatable. Stories about brand customers are next in favorability at 38%. That’s a pretty big divide as to the effectiveness of stories, so make sure your brand stories hit the relatability mark.

Establish Yourself as an Authority

Establishing yourself as someone who is knowledgeable and a source of legit information and knowledge in your space—an authority—is key to creating a strong personal brand. After all, you’ve created a brand, so it’s not a huge jump for you to share your level of expertise with the world.

People don’t want to buy from brands they can’t trust to understand and then fulfill their needs, so put in the work to achieve authority status:

• Formulate a leader’s point of view in your space.
• Create a methodology for what you do that instills trust in your customers. When they know what will happen time after time, they’ll trust you and your brand more.
• Offer consistent content to not only educate your customers, but to also show you know what you’re talking about in your space.
• Make efficient use of social media platforms and email content to increase your reach of authority in your space.
• Become a connector between your customers and other sources of beneficial information related to your brand and product offering. Serve as a one-stop-shop for what they need

Cut Through the Overly Saturated Messaging

Like we mentioned, your customers are bombarded with all types of messaging ALL the time—from the minute they wake up until the minute their heads hit the pillow at night. So, it’s no wonder they can feel literally soaked in a downpour of messaging noise, which can be overwhelming, to say the least. To strengthen your personal brand, make sure your messaging will stand out from the rest, again, through the use of stories.

The evidence to back this up is solid: If people love your brand story, they are:

• 55% more likely to buy from you in the future
• 44% will share your story (bringing in more potential customers)
• 15% will purchase what you’re selling immediately.

And while facts, alone, can get lost in the messaging downpour, Jerome Bruner shared in his book, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, that when stories and facts are combined, people are 22 times more likely to remember those stories. 22 times is a pretty powerful result and a compelling reason to include some facts in your stories. Remember: Stories rise above the messaging downpour. Stories sell.

Final Thoughts About the Power of Stories in Personal Branding

Since stories—the correct type of stories—are an integral part of strengthening your personal brand, here are some additional reasons you should seriously consider including more stories in your branding:

• Our brains look for stories in content to make sense out of that content. No story, less understanding.
• Stories are memorable. Think back over your life: Do you remember more stories or more facts? We’d bet stories is the answer.
• Stories connect us to each other and to other communities and groups we might not be as familiar with including socioeconomic, racial, religious, ethnic, social, vocational, and so on.
• Stories are how we think, make decisions, understand the world around us, formulate and share our social values, and connect most deeply with others.

Pamela Rutledge, Ph.D, M.B.A. nicely summed up the power of stories in strengthening your personal brand:

“Stories are the pathway to engaging our right brain and triggering our imagination. By engaging our imagination, we become participants in the narrative.”

Creating a strong personal brand is not a one-and-done process. A strong personal brand must be continually nurtured, tweaking the process as needed along the way, so ask yourself these questions about your own personal brand to see how you’re doing and where any adjustments need to be made:

• To what degree is humanity a part of your brand? Are YOU included?
• How are you currently using stories in your personal brand? What types of stories are you using?
• Do your customers look to you as an authority in your space?
• Is your messaging standing out from the saturated downpour of constant messaging?

Building and continually nurturing a strong personal brand is crucial, and while it might feel overwhelming, it can be achieved through thoughtful, flexible, diligent, and consistent efforts, putting you and your brand at the front of the line in today’s ever-evolving and often ultra-competitive marketplace.

Need a roadmap to achieve this kind of brand clarity or see what other services we offer that might hit the spot when it comes to your business needs? Click here to contact us today.