How to Cultivate Your Personal Brand and Communicate Your Point of View  

The world is a different place than it was for our parents and grandparents. The Internet, social networking sites, and ubiquity of mobile phones have fundamentally changed what and how we consume content, how we connect with one another, and even how we work.

These technologies are also impacting the culture and economics of businesses where we see the rise of employees working from home, people working for themselves, and hybrid models of the two. This shift is also reflected in the rise of co-working spaces and distributed teams at companies, because people are able to work anytime and from anywhere as long as they’re connected to the Internet. One Intuit report predicts that by 2020, 40% of the workforce will be freelancers.  The idea of working with a company for a lifetime is not the norm.

The Internet also provides a bombardment of information. Keeping this in mind along with the fact that there are more people competing in the marketplace of ideas, two questions arise:

• From a company point of view, how do you decide who you’re going to work with?
• From an independent contractor standpoint, how do you stand out among the competition?

The Need for Personal Branding

The answer lies in personal branding and social currency. While social signals and personal credibility have always been used as filters to help people and businesses determine who to hire and work with, the game is changing. Many factors contribute to this including the devaluation of higher education degrees and the extremely low barriers for people to represent themselves however they want online. In a crowded marketplace, where there are so many people and ideas vying for attention, how does one evaluate the experience and skills of a candidate? The need for personal branding and social currency is heightened and more important than ever. The phrase “your network is your net worth” rings more true than ever before.

How to Cultivate Your Personal Brand?

As you’re defining your personal brand, keep in mind the following:

Start with Awareness
With all of this talk of personal branding, where does one begin? It starts with awareness. Awareness of oneself and the marketplace. It’s easy to jump right into a checklist of everything you need to do to build your personal brand online – setting up a LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, etc.; however, you should take a step back and ask:

• Why am I doing this?
• What am I doing it for?
• How is this going to impact others?

Having a strong sense of why your craft is important to you is the foundation on which you can start defining and building your personal brand. This will set the tone for everything else you do and serve as a guide on your journey. When you’re aligned with your craft, you’ll intuitively know, because the feeling of time and space will disappear. Unlike a job where one goes through the motions to get a paycheck, a craft is a higher, more fulfilling professional calling. The “brand” is the personality and point-of-view layer on top of your craft.

Since we are talking about a craft within a marketplace (because we all do want to get paid!), you can’t ignore the marketplace itself either. You have to reconcile your craft with what other people want. Keep in mind that you can’t be all things to all people, so it’s important to find your niche. You have to synthesize your brand with your target audience. Who is your target audience? Are you relevant to them, and will they care? Are you able to help them achieve their goals through your craft?

Point of View
To stand out with your personal brand, have a point of view. This is your unique perspective that overspills into every aspect of your brand that differentiates you from your competitors. Point of views become synonymous with brands; however, they are more than positioning statements or taglines – they are the fibers that make up your brand fabric. It’s how you see the world, and what you see as important. Everything about your brand is reflected by your perspective — from what clients you want to work with, to what you think is important in your industry, to the culture of your company, to how you communicate your brand.

Also, to stand out in the marketplace of ideas, the more polarizing of a POV you take, the better. Boldly have a vision that people will either love or hate. Dancing in the middle with a POV that’s safe and comfortable will easily get lost in the noise of the Internet.

Looking at art, it’s easy to see strong point of views from artists. This is revealed when you can look at a piece — whether photography backdrops from katebackdrop, painting, music, or film —  and you immediately know who created it. That person’s fingerprint is part of the art. Your craft is your artwork. You have your own unique fingerprint that can be embedded into everything you do too.

To uncover your compelling point of view ask yourself these questions:

• What would you say if you weren’t afraid?
• How do you differentiate yourself from what’s in the marketplace?
• What can your perspective add to the conversation in your industry that hasn’t been said yet? What do you have to say and why are you saying it?

Embracing your point of view will not only help you stand out, it will also serve as a backbone and guide for everything that you do as you build and grow your personal brand.

Discovery through Content
Having a point of view isn’t enough given the digital landscape we live in. You have to share your point of view online to have it discovered by your tribe/customers/target audience. This is achieved through narrative, storytelling, and content.

Steve Rubel, the Chief Content Officer of Edelman, : through direct engagement, search, and serendipitous discovery through social media). When people are logging online, . When people search your name, what do they see? While not all of search results you can control, you can affect search through great content.

Don’t worry though, you don’t need to be on every platform on the planet. You need to be on the platforms where your target audience is, the ones that make the most sense for your brand, and the ones that will be most impactful. Start with what your goal is, and what platforms you can excel at. When it comes to deciding what platforms to establish your presence online on, it’s better to go for quality over quantity.

Think of each piece of content as a small chapter in your brand narrative, the compilation of all of your brand stories. Does it have your point of view baked into it? Does it add to your brand story? Is the visual imagery consistent with your branding? The chapters you share online about your brand comprise more than a long conversation with your tribe – it’s your relationship with them. How does it make them feel? How does it help them? How does it fit into their lives? 

Dealing with Fear
The last piece of the puzzle is dealing with fear. We are human after all and even if you have found your craft and defined your personal brand, it can be scary to fearlessly share your point of view online for the world to see – or worse, have no one see!

Know that you have a voice worth sharing. No matter what hesitations you have or what may hold you back, you may have something valuable to share with the world.

If sharing your point of view scares you, that’s good. Fear can be a good indicator of what you should go towards. Lean towards your fear (it’s not going anywhere, anyway!). Accept being uncomfortable. This is where the magic of change happens. Instead of shying away from what scares you, tackle your fears head on and embrace fear as tool to help propel you forward. The more you step out of your comfort zone, the less will scare you. It starts with one step at a time and each step gets you out of that safe, comfort zone…for you and your personal brand.

To Sum Up:

• If you’re looking to further develop your personal brand, the most important thing is to stay true to yourself.
• You have a unique and compelling point of view; you just need to embrace it.
• Then, fearlessly share it everywhere you can and in every detail of your online (and offline) presence.

It can be scary, but if you don’t do it, who will? This is your opportunity to shape your narrative and what people find out about you. Make your story as fabulous as you are!