Brand You

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Personal Branding in the automobile marketing  field is one of the most exciting opportunities there are for aggressive, ambitious sellers of automobiles, who strive to be the best.

Because of the emotional nature of buying, owning and driving an automobile, Branding Yourself as an expert in the field allows you to take advantage of the digital world we now live in, by funneling all of your, customers, friends, family and most importantly self-generated leads to a Branded Website… that you own.

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A brand is anything—a symbol, design, name, sound, reputation, emotion, employees, tone, and much more—that separates one thing from another. In the case of McDonald’s, the golden arches became part of the brand. Those arches separate their product from all other fast food restaurants and they’re a recognizable symbol even with kids.
Branding on a business-level is common, but today branding is becoming just as important on a personal level. After all, you might work for a business that works with other businesses, but it’s people working with people and that’s what makes business relationships valuable.
 
WHY SHOULD YOU BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND?
Building a recognizable personal brand opens professional opportunities.

Cr

eating a vision for yo

ur future and implementing that vision can lead to:

  • A better job
  • Better contacts and clients for your company
  • Industry recognition
  • And more

 

If you’re looking for a better job, you want your potential boss at your ideal company to associate your personal brand with something that she needs on her team.

 

 

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.

If you were to build your personal brand strategy around a Facebook page or Twitter account you would be giving control of the tree trunk to those entities. We’ve all seen the changes Facebook and Twitter have made. They’re often for the better, but they leave people scrambling to make adjustments.

And to top it all off, you don’t really own the content you create on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. When you publish content on your own domain, you are the owner.

We recommend getting an exact-match domain for your brand name. There is a general bias toward exact-matching domains for brands including personal brands. People generally trust a website URL that matches your name as close as possible.

Here are the steps to buying your personal domain.

You can buy your professional domain and sit on it, but that won’t do you any good other than securing it so that no one else can claim it. The prudent thing to do is to build a professional website. This gives you a platform to communicate with your target audience on a platform where you have complete control.

With a blog, you can provide fresh, relevant content that appeals to your target audience. You can showcase your expertise, experience and personality on an ongoing basis. With a targeted blog strategy complete with blog promotion, you can attract your target audience to your blog posts and to your website where they can read your content, get to know you and become interested in what you do.

And while you can use IFTTT with your old content, the real power of IFTTT is with the new actions and new content you create.

Setup the following actions as a minimum with your IFTTT account:

  • New WordPress Post to Twitter
  • New WordPress Post to Facebook
  • New WordPress Post to Google+
  • New WordPress Post to LinkedIn

How To Build Your Brand Through Outreach

Assets like your website and blog act as the hub of your personal branding efforts. They are the places of truth where people can go to get information about you straight from the source. But it’s difficult to build an audience if you only use your efforts on those two channels.

To build your brand and move toward your professional goals you need to go where your target audience is and you have to get their attention. Outreach is the act of providing value to those that have established audiences filled with the people you want to reach. You provide value and in exchange they give you the chance to sell yourself to the audience.

In this chapter we’ll show you how to use outreach to grow your audience while increasing opportunities that can lead to professional advancement as you work toward your personal branding goals.

 

 

Now we can get into social media. There is a lot of opportunity to make connections on social media that can lead to professional opportunities. You can connect with people that could make potential employers, employees, business partners, clients and more.

 

 

Finally, online advertising is a way for you to both protect and promote your brand. The pricing for your specific name will usually be fairly low unless you have a name that is close to a popular topic or brand name.

Build your online platform

It doesn’t have to be YouTube.

Build your own online platform such as a blog or website that you own, then amplify your content and engage with your audience on social networks. Use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter or even Pinterest and Instagram. You have options. Find what social network resonates with you.

The secret. Don’t wait to be perfect. Just start.

Here are 26 tips for creating a powerful personal brand online.

  1. Be authentic
  2. Launch your platform online with a blog or website
  3. Create content
  4. Define your audience
  5. Build an email list
  6. Focus
  7. Memorable design
  8. Help others
  9. Seek out online influencers
  10. Join online groups
  11. Use keywords and phrases that people will use on Google to find you and your topic
  12. Learn to use Linkedin effectively
  13. Get to understand how media works both online and offline
  14. Network
  15. Opine – State your opinion
  16. Photo – create a visual brand with a great caricature or photo of “you”
  17. Ask questions
  18. Recognise people who have helped you – Shine the light on others
  19. Create a memorable slogan that expresses your mission and purpose
  20. Teach
  21. Understand and use emotional triggers
  22. Develop your unique voice
  23. Get to understand the essence of influence. Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is a good place to start.
  24. Examine and analyze your analytics to see what works and doesn’t
  25. Forget about you and remember its all about your readers and viewers
  26. Have zeal (also known as passion)

 

  1. Build your platform.  If you are going to have a personal brand you will need a website in order to create your virtual platform.  Your website should be your name.  You will also need social media accounts that represent your brand.  You will use these platforms to share your voice.
  2. Identify your uniqueness and your strengths.  Think about the characteristics and strengths you’ve built in your career.  If you are stuck think about that “one thing” that everyone says you rock at.  Still stuck?  Ask others.
  3. Own your space. Once you’ve identified your uniqueness and strengths – perfect it.  Learn all that you can and become the expert in that area.  You can never stop learning.  Read, absorb and teach.
  4. Share your knowledge.  It’s not enough to learn it, you have to teach it and share your knowledge by helping others.  Do this through videos, social media, writing both online and offline.   This is where you prove you know your stuff and gain exposure from doing so.
  5. Be yourself.  Find your own style.  You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing and just follow the crowd.  Use your style and uniqueness to attract the jobs and clientele that you desire.  When I think of this tip I’m always reminded of Gary Vaynerchuk and how he build is brand by doing videos sharing wine reviews and tips.  No one else was doing and now look around hundreds of people are following in his footsteps.   Find your own style and create  new set of footprints for others to follow in.
  6. Identify your values and set your priorities.  It’s important to have a clear picture of your personal and professional goals, both short and long term. This will help you in not only identifying the most important things to spend your time on, but will also have something to align new projects with.    Use your values and priorities as a compass that guides you both in action and your decision-making process.   This will ensure you stay on track.
  7. Craft your personal brand persona.  This will help in creating your brand.   Your persona can be created by identifying three things:
    • Your emotional appeal.  What are your personality features?  This can be as easy as saying you have a crazy sense of humor or that you are obsessively organized.  Take a few moments, why do you think people are attracted to the brand of you?
    • Describe yourself.  When it comes to your brand who are you and why do people enjoy working with you?
    • Identify your specialty.  What do you do and what do people want you to do for them?Use these three questions to create a strong personal brand persona that you can always refer to when it comes to creating materials that support your brand.

Building a personal brand takes time and effort, but it’s worth it.   The need for a personal brand will continue to increase.  It’s the one thing that no one can take away from you and it can follow you throughout your career.   It’s a leadership requirement that lets people know who you are and what you stand for.

you probably know what personal branding, but do you understand the importance? You might be wanting what personal branding is and why it’s important.

Personal branding is the process of developing a “mark” that is created around your personal name or your career.  You use this “mark” to express and communicate your skills, personality and values.