The Five Pillars of Personal Branding

Kayla Stringer

Bernard Kelvin Clive of The No Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding for Career Success once wrote that personal branding is the combination of skills and talents to create significance by forming “an impression, a perception and a reputation in the minds of others.”

Many people live their entire lives never recognizing their full potential, their purpose or worse - neither. Personal branding is a culmination of how you perceive yourself and how you want others to perceive you.

Building an effective and stable personal brand takes time and dedication and is important in today’s society for establishing who you are and what you bring to the table in your particular market.

I’ve established five important factors to consider when building a personal brand and why they are important.

1. Clearly identify yourself to others.

Who do you want to be? What do you want to be known for? These are difficult questions, but once you’ve identified the answers for yourself, you can begin to identify the brand you want to build. Choose a character trait that combines your abilities with your beliefs. Whether that’s aggressive or passionate or whatever it may be. Use that trait to drive the character you want people to recognize when they think of your brand and what it stands for.

2.  Manifest your personal growth.

Personal brands, much like corporate brands, evolve with time and development. The key factor in manifesting your personal growth is to evaluate where you began and set personal goals for yourself to measure where you are headed in the future. A demonstration of your personal growth builds credibility of your skills and reliability of your personal character in the minds of others. 

3. Build a reliable reputation.

Perhaps the most important aspect of building a personal brand is getting people to buy into who you are and what you stand for as an individual. A reliable reputation means the perception others have of you isn’t swayed from one person to the next. People associate your professional abilities and your personal values as one unit, creating one reputation. The reliable part is up to you. How you build that unit defines the association people have in their minds of your brand. Building a reliable brand is useful for credibility with future employers, colleagues or even friends. Be someone you’re proud of and someone that you would surround yourself with.

4. Understand your value and promote your uniqueness.

It’s been said to me a hundred times - you know when people ask you about the “it” factor. That’s what you have to find with your personal brand. What’s your “it” factor? What makes you shine? What makes you different? What makes you better? Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is half the battle. When establishing a credible personal brand that people want to buy into, you have to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and use them both to your advantage. But, you may ask, “How can I use weaknesses to my advantage?” Turn them into strengths. Educate yourself on your weaknesses and use them as a defense to make yourself more marketable and to continue learning in your field every day. If you can’t write press releases well, read a couple that have been sent out to different media outlets and write a few samples of your own that you can give to a colleague to edit for practice. Play on your strengths - you have them for a reason. Give yourself credit where credit is due, and use your strengths as a marketing strategy to promote your uniqueness - your “it” factor.

5. You are your brand’s voice.

At the end of the day, brands are effective in communicating professionalism and responsibility. They also need to have the individuality of a human voice. Aside from the etiquette of branding and how it should be used in real-world settings, give your brand a voice that has your personality and your own special touch. Whether you do this with a vibrant logo or you build an app that intertwines your unique rhythm with your professional capabilities, remember to be yourself. Like Dr. Seuss said, “There is no one alive who is youer than you.” 

Your Personal Brand

Mary Catherine Banister

During my senior year of college, I took a required (and pivotal) class in the public relations program – it was called Style and Design in Public Relations Messages. I knew the class was going to be tough – we would be learning HTML code, using Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, and writing feature stories (with filmed interviews) every week. What did all of this lead up to? The creation of my very own website, completely coded and designed by me, myself and I. It was a huge task to be completed in one semester, but I was excited to get started.

I soon found that one of my biggest challenges for my website would not be the code or the stories or the personal information I needed provide. No…it was something more - my brand. How did I want to portray myself to not only my peers and professors but also the public relations professionals who I would share this website with when I began searching for a job? This question made me think about my personal brand and the reputation I wanted to maintain as a professional.

I decided to make my website very eye-catching – I used large photos and a cute, bright green theme throughout. This style is who I am. I did not want to keep the simple, plain templates that quite a few of the other students used. I wanted to stand out, and I did! I also used personal language in an effort to seem friendly and inviting because I wanted my viewers to get to know me a bit from simply visiting my site.

Developing your personal brand does not have to be about websites, business cards or other material items. In fact, the most important brand you want to create is the impression you make on others during face-to-face interactions, through emails and phone calls and even on social media. For example, if I am working with a journalist for a story and we exchange pleasant phone calls and emails, but then I ignore him at a public event or he notices an inappropriate tweet that I send, what is his opinion of me going to be? The negative certainly outshines the positive, which can lead to a poor professional relationship that not only hurts me but also my place of work.

So, be aware of the personal brand you are upholding, even at times when you do not necessarily think you are sending a message to others. Be yourself. Shape the way you want people to perceive you through the positive ways you interact with them, and your brand will stand out and keep people coming back for more.