Most people mistake personal branding as to build better product, but it is actually to build better perception of yours among others. That’s because when you are online, your presence is important and people will judge accordingly whether you like it or not. So you really need to care about other’s perception about you as a brand. And most people also think personal branding is difficult, but if you believe in your skills and ability – it becomes easier for you to sell your brand. The basis of personal branding is that success doesn’t come from personal development or hard work. Instead, personal branding proponents claim that success comes from self-packaging with needed skills.

First everyone should understand that personal branding is just not a buzz word or a way for self-promotion today. It is process by which we can market ourselves to other and this can be done not only by famous celebrities, but also by every individual online. In other words, your personal brand is who you are, what you do, and your leading quality in the eyes of your ideal target market. Through social networks or social media you can get in touch with tons of people and this network will help you build your brand. Today there are ton of social media tools available to help you achieve incredible heights in no time and each one should understand the process to master it.

I really like how Mike Quindazzi & Vala Afshar are using power of social & content to build the thought leadership. If you will go through their profile these are few common things that you can learn:

Both Mike Quindazzi & Vala Afshar are consistent in there updates. Both have a defined niche & are regular in cross sharing as well as in interactions with similar niche people. The quality of content is well analysed & extracted from whitepapers/research-reports.

You can also build your personal brand & thought leadership. With that in mind, we shares suggestions & tips to master personal branding to achieve your desirable success.

10. Select Niche

Personal brand in nutshell, is nothing but who you are and so it becomes important for you to select a niche for your persona. To separate yourself from the rest of the crowd, create your own niche that increases your visibility and preserve your reputation. Your selected niche should involve the application of one’s name to various products. For example, celebrity real-estate mogul Donald Trump uses his last name extensively on his buildings and on the products he endorses (e.g., Trump Steaks). When branding yourself bear in mind that you must create a strong and reliable brand.

9. Identify Your Positives

Never be weak at your mission, you need to build up goals that can be achieved in a particular time. And for that you need to identify your positives and forget what is negative. Set up you goals and write down your mission statement along with a development plan on how to go about. Your statement must tell everyone what you do and who you serve. Note down some inborn skills that match up to your personal mission. Perfect, cultivate and grow these talents to move ahead.

8. Be Precise and Clear

It is obvious that you want all the business you can possibly get your hands on but that is not how to grow a strong and reliable for long time. You need to specialize. You cannot certainly be all things to all people. You must be precise and clear about that one particular niche that will serve your audience neatly. Don’t run behind ten different things and lose your precious clients. Accept the fact, if you might be good at one particular thing and perform that well, so that you never miss any opportunity to grab your audience. It is ok to be narrowed down than to be dumped.

7. Establish Yourself In Chosen Niche

The key to productively branding yourself and doing it successfully is to first establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Once you have done that concentrate on who you are and what you stand for within your selected niche. Your next step will be getting the word out through a variety of social media channels that are viewed by the people most likely to be interested in your message.

6. Let People Locate You Easily

Now that you established in your niche, you should allow people to locate you easily. Create social profiles at Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, blogs and more, so that you are spread all over, so audience can locate you easily. But make sure you maintain your social profiles, otherwise your whole brand can go for a toss. Use business cards and email letters to strength your brand identity. Highlight your personal brand message with professional marketing communications tools. Every email message gives you a direct chance to connect your personal brand with a new company or individual.

5. Build Your Reputation

Building strong reputation is the most important thing you could do to maintain your brand. Create your own personal branding website with your domain name, so that when web surfers and other employers search your name, they get information about your career history, personal information and educations qualifications. Build a solid personal brand with online activities which will further promote your personal mission and emphasize your career success optimistically.

4. Explore Your Audience

Audience is what we need the most to build up personal brands, they are the people that would pay attention to your work and also spread the good work around. So if you trying yourself to wrong hands, and then certainly it will be a waste of time. You must locate what consumers and companies will be interested in what you have to offer. Your audience should be your niche group of people and you must try by all means to give them as much value as you can sooner or later.

3. Locate Your Competitor

This field today is too competitive to rest on your laurels. You should make sure that your name remains in consumers mind when they need you, may be in next six month or later. You cannot assume that they would remain your loyal buyers if you fail to keep your relationship current with them and your competitors will grab your buyer. So locate who is your competitor and stay ahead of them without trying to break their status.

2. Monitor Your Brand

A personal brand is just like an exotic sports car, where you cannot afford to let it run at top speed without any maintenance. If you do so, it would burn itself up. Likewise, in personal branding you got to regularly monitor your brand to keep it relevant, alert, emotionally connected with audience and to be different from the competitor. It is all about seizing every opportunity to meet someone new and maintain the pace with it.

1. Power of Content Marketing

People enjoy reading fresh and relevant content, which is unique or in some way special to them. So to do this, you should customize your pitch to fit their preferences. Using social media – Twitter, Facebook or Social bookmarking sites, you can spread your information online and make connection with like-minded people. Write articles and blogs that can augment audience’s knowledge about your brand in the industry. You should explore the power of content marketing & define a content calendars for platforms like linkedin pulse.

Of course the most important factor here is trust! You must build trust with your audience, just think about service provider in your own life – be it your manager, your hair stylist or your account – all get your business because they carry good relationship with you, and that counts in so far as the service they provide. Try building personal rapport with the things you and your audience have in common. Bottom line is trust; your consumer/buyer must trust you emphatically!

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for more updates and queries.