Who Are You? The What, Why and How to Develop Your Personal Brand [Podcast]

Welcome to the new age of marketing where you are the brand. You can run and hide but you can’t escape the need to build your personal profile.

We all know people buy from people. People also tweet with other people, they connect on LinkedIn with other people, they live video stream, Instagram and Snapchat with other people as well.

When a potential new client contacts us to do business, the first place we go to learn about them is the internet. We’ll start with a Google, Facebook or Twitter search, then immediately click through to LinkedIn.

In a matter of seconds we can find out who the person is and if they are who they said they are in the contact form. We can find out where they work now and where they have worked over the past 10 – 20 years. Within seconds, we know if they have a blog, if they have kids, where they went to school and the list goes on.

Yes, you may be sitting there reading this thinking: “Pam, you’ll never know that about me because I would never post all of that information.”

I want to ask you why? Why would you not want me to find out the best information about you? Why not ensure your digital persona is a true representation of who you really are?

Plus, even if you choose to not share much of this basic information, it’s still available via other sites and people you associate with. Your name, photo, family information, associations and more will appear in a simple search via other people and organizations you are associated with. When other people and organizations take photos of you and post the information to their social channels, it becomes public.

It’s becoming a requirement – not an option – to develop your personal brand. If you want to be trusted and rise above the noise you need to connect with people as human beings, not just a logo.

Building your personal brand doesn’t happen by jumping on Facebook or creating a fancy Twitter background or highly edited profile photo of yourself. It’s also not just a matter of using the right tools to make your videos look good, or learning how to play the various news feed algorithms on all of the top social networks. It’s not a matter of tricks.

You don’t build your personal brand in minutes or hours, you build your personal brand over days, weeks, months and years. You must earn trust, establish credibility and authority.

You have to know who you are. You have to know who your audience is and how you can serve them.

Even if you’re just getting started online, it’s important you start somewhere. It only takes a seed – it’s how you nurture your personal brand that will bring success.

Take a listen to episode 147 of the Social Zoom Factor podcast for seven fundamental steps to build your personal brand.

Take a listen and be sure to subscribe to the entire series on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud.

In this 23 minute podcast you will learn: 

• Seven fundamental steps to build your personal brand
• How to determine your personal branding goals
• Why you are your brand
• How to develop your own personal branding strategy
• Why you must be self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses
• Why personal branding is a requirement, not an option
• Why you need to stop making excuses and start building your personal brand today
• The difference between authenticity and transparency
• Why you need to know who you are and what you stand for
• Why you need to know your audience and what they need from you
• How to be aware of your digital body language​

Resources mentioned: 

How to Subscribe to Social Zoom Factor Podcast 

This post originally appeared on Pam Moore’s blog.