The other day, I was running a workshop in a large organisation and we were talking about the idea of influence and how your personal brand is so crucial to building your influence.
Regarding building your personal brand, whether it be in your organisation or in your industry, I think there are driving factors to consider:
1. Take ownership
You need to take ownership of your reputation online. If you haven’t bought yourname.com or yourname.com.au or yourname.co, I would recommend you buy it. Even if you say “I’m not even going to build my own website,” I think it’s really important to own your own name. We just had our son Jonah, and we’ve already bought jonahboyd.com. It’s crucial to own your name, so you can control what people say about you online.
I would also recommend setting up your www.Linkedin.com profile. Get a professional headshot and complete the whole profile. Don’t leave it half complete like most people. Gather a few ‘Recommendations” on your personal page also, because it’s always nice to get some social proof of your ‘amazingness’.
2. Create a Word Cloud
What are the words that represent you? For me, I would write down words like fun, engaging, insightful, presentation skills, influence skills, productivity, emotional intelligence — basically, different ideas and words that would represent your skill set, personality or character. This is about writing down a bunch of words that would represent who you are. When you write down these words, it creates a really nice captcha list of what you might like to put on your website, so that you can actually build that website or linkedIn profile and build your brand. If you don’t want to build your website, then use these words to set a framework for how you might engage in your work on a daily basis.
3. Publish Your Ideas
There are so many ways you can publish your ideas these days, whether it be on LinkedIn, your personal website (I trust that you’ll go out and buy it), or Facebook. Publish your ideas on what you believe about work and business, and that will start to position you as an expert in your industry. Whether you want to work in an organisation or even run your own business, it essentially about positioning you as someone with authority. When people start to see you as someone with something intelligent to say, they will listen to you, which will build your personal brand and influence.
Question for you: What words would you like to be known for with your personal brand? Please write them in the comment below.
I’d love to understand what your personal brand would be.
Always remember: come and see me to live a life of influence, make an impact, and to be inspired.
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