Brand building isn’t just meant for large-scale businesses or start-ups. In today’s super-connected work environment, how you do your work goes together with the personal results you deliver. Sometimes this comes in the form of your trademark approach to solving problems, or how you specifically manage and connect with your teammates. All these different factors build towards your overall image inside and outside your professional circles.

The importance of these factors can be understood in one holistic term: Your Personal Brand.

What Your Personal Brand Means

For businesses, a brand is something that the company strives to achieve in each action it takes in the market. With Nike, it’s their overall commitment through sheer athletic effort encapsulated in their slogan “Just Do It”; with Apple, it’s their consistent exploration of new innovative technologies through their mantra to always “Think Different”.

Your personal brand is not so different. While you might not have it locked down to a catchy phrase that goes well on t-shirts or billboards, your personal brand is often expressed in some sort of narrative regarding what you believe in, how you stand for certain things, and ultimately who you are as a person.

Recently, Women in PR North America hosted an in-person panel conversation about how you can future proof your personal brand. In this post, we are sharing some personal branding insights, and some photos from our event by Michele B. Knight Photography.

Panelists included: 

• Talia Beckett Davis, Founder of Women in PR North America
• Jennifer Knight, Owner of Jennifer Knight Consulting
• Mary Charleson, President of Charleson Communications and FiveMinuteMarketing.com
• Sarah Mawji, Global Brand and Senior Media Consultant.
• Sophie Warwick, Co-Founder of The Thoughtful Co.
• Alyssa Smith, Communications Manager at Vancouver Airport Authority

With so many other PR experts in the online space, how can you stand out in the digital marketplace? If you don’t have any social proof to showcase your abilities, your potential client or future employer may choose the next best thing online. Our panelists had some amazing insights to share and our audience members asked some very tough questions.

Related: Join the Women in Public Relations Facebook group here.

Your Personal Brand in Action

While this might have been important for entrepreneurs and freelancers who stake their business alongside their reputation, they’re no longer the only ones that need to refine their brands. These days even individual employees working at larger firms are being encouraged to develop their own sense of a personal brand to better align within the specific culture that each company is trying to cultivate.

If you’re ever considering starting a new job or transferring industries, a personal brand can help you signal to prospective employers’ different aspects of your work ethic, your collaborative styles, and even your communication skills, in a more engaging way.

Even in your current position, a personal brand can help anchor your values and beliefs, which can help you gain traction with new clients or promotions.

How to Sustain Your Personal Brand

As the market continues to evolve, brands are likely to shift how they communicate their current campaigns as well as the products they have on offer. What great brands do that helps maintain their longevity is continuing to stick towards the foundational elements of their brand while being flexible enough to communicate with different audiences. Your personal brand ideally will follow a similar structure.

Ensure Your Understand Yourself Now

A key aspect of your personal brand is to begin with the obvious: yourself. You might have an ideal personal brand that you’re aiming for, but without fully embodying it you’ll likely just be making things difficult for yourself.

Observe how you work now and how you find yourself interacting with others professionally. Try and find a way to break down these aspects into their core attributes. There won’t be an exact way to phrase any particular thing you believe in, but as long as it is genuine it should suffice as an adequate brand foundation.

Explore What Others Perceive You As

An internal analysis is only half the equation when it comes to personal branding. While it’s important to never let yourself be influenced too much by what others think, in this case, it’s integral you understand how your personal brand is being perceived by others. You also want to ensure that you are controlling the conversation and developing thought leadership content on a regular basis. You could do this yourself with our guidance inside the Public Relations Academy or you could hire a PR professional from our membership to do it for you.

Keep in touch with your professional peers and always try to analyze how your performance affects and is affected by others. In real-world settings, being aware of the external and the importance of networking, takes time to understand, but will be invaluable in building up your personal brand.

Keep Your Brand Updated

As you continue to hone your abilities internally and showcase them externally though thought leadership content, it’s key that you find ways to remain agile in how you approach yourself and others. While we’ve mentioned brands stay true to the fundamental aspect of their business, there are times that even certain foundational elements evolve over time. Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign started off as a “take no prisoners” approach to the 80s exercise craze, but has since transformed into an ethos that encompasses ideas of strong will, determination, motivation, and the athletic spirit.

Your personal brand will demand consistent work not just to develop but to maintain. Remember, the process remains unique to you, and the best time to start crafting your brand is today so that you can build a career or business that’s future proof.

If we all realize we must work towards building a future proof personal brand, why aren’t we taking action? If this is something you want to work towards, join us inside the Public Relations Academy or attend our upcoming PR Planathon event.

Imagine if…

• You knew what your online reputation would look like if you continually pitched your brand to high-profile media outlets.
• You had a plan to repurpose your content (and maybe even wrote a book).
• You were being called upon as an expert and quoted in the media regularly.
• You’ve doubled your income and hired a team because your products and services are finally selling!

What if it was all done with you!?

Let us help you fast-track your publicity plans and create visibility better than your dreams. Join the Public Relations Academy!

While you’re here, you can download this FREE guide to plan your content strategy in the next 72 hours.

Register here: https://www.publicrelationsacademy.com

---

About Women in Public Relations

The Organization of Canadian Women in Public Relations Ltd. (Women in PR Canada®) is an influential network of leading business women striving for excellence in the field of public relations.  American Women in Public Relations (Women in PR USA®) is a division of The Organization of Canadian Women in Public Relations Ltd. Together; our organizations form the networking group Women in PR North America®.