Shape Your Brand

Personal branding coach Aliza Licht – who also wrote Leave Your Mark – details how strategically and proactively shaping your personal brand brings professional success.

Your Brand

Developing a personal brand helps you understand – and sell – yourself in terms of your skills rather than the position you hold right now, Licht writes. She suggests starting by assessing your current brand: How do others describe you, and how do you think of yourself? 

We all lose touch with ourselves sometimes.
Aliza Licht

Draw a Venn diagram of your brand today. Choose three primary areas of interest, such as marketing, PR and fashion. Give each interest its own circle. Write the aspects you like best about each interest within their circles, such as fashion week, personal development or social media. Note the areas of overlap – where your interests occupy more than one of the circles. This will reveal the brand you want to embody.

Licht provides several recommendations to help you cement your new brand. First, craft a narrative that illuminates the best of your accomplishments. Write down how you achieved important goals and milestones and what you learned in the process. Your story adds to your brand by letting others know your expertise and the skills that helped you reach your goals.

Our public perception is based in part on what we communicate and what we don’t.
Aliza Licht

Share your wins with your bosses and on social media. For every share of a triumph, celebrate at least five other people’s successes. Be loud and proud about what you do well, but, Licht warns, don’t get carried away. Don’t put others down and pay attention to how people react to your words. If you come across as arrogant, own your mistake. Stay consistent in how you present yourself pubically.

Define your beliefs, values and purpose to guide your narrative and help you make consistent on-brand decisions. Write down your purpose, such as to help others in their careers. List your core values, such as being a good leader and having integrity. Note down brands, companies or personal heroes you want others to associate with you as well as connections don’t want, such as your previous brand, past mistakes or past employers. Write down your ultimate goal or the best place your brand could take you. Also, consider what could hold you back from reaching your ultimate goal.

Trademark your name and website domain, so people can easily search for and find you online. Develop an email signature that provides your company name, your job title, your cell number and a link to your website.

Social Media

Social media accounts for professionals are a must these days, Licht notes. They allow you to share your expertise and gain valuable connections. These accounts let others know what you’re up to, what you’ve accomplished and what you want to work on next. Craft a strong LinkedIn bio that reflects your experience, passions and aspirations. Take an on-brand photo and display it on all your social media platforms.

Set your social media goals: Do you want to build a more extensive network, share expertise or both? Next, pick your content: What do you want to talk about? A successful social media account features content that will attract the followers you desire. Licht suggests organizing your content first based on the facet of your brand that you’re promoting and then into subcategories such as inspiration, education or humor. For example, for office culture content, you could post funny memes, educational statistics or personal “how-tos.” Create a signature look for each category, so followers can identify which subcategory is which.

Use platforms such as Canva to organize your daily, weekly or monthly posts. Schedule time to generate ideas and to create and edit content before posting. Determine how you want to sound to your audience. Depending on your brand, you may, for example, want to avoid using emojis in your professional writing. 

Examine what others with parallel personal brands post to help you determine how to stand out from your competition. Experiment, try different tools and pay attention to posts’ feedback.

Establish a boundary around your personal life. Don’t share everything about yourself online or at work.

Rebrand

Top executives, CEOs and celebrities experience near-constant scrutiny. Old tweets, Facebook posts or interviews can resurface and wreak havoc on anybody’s career.

Damn, it’s hard to be on the internet sometimes. There are so many ways to get in trouble.

Get ahead of the curve and become “crisis ready” before disaster hits. Go through your history and take note of how you come across to others to assess what they might say about you. Understand the risk level of any past transgressions. Consider how you can counteract tough questions about past missteps. Identify people who will come to your defense. Never react to criticism without pausing to think first.

If you put your reputation at risk, you may need to rethink your brand. Ask trusted people in your network for feedback on what you should do next. If necessary, create a new narrative for your brand. Update your website and other online platforms to reflect your new image.

Social capital is the direct result of the personal brand you have built.
Aliza Licht

Follow through on what your brand promises. For example, if someone helps you get a new job by praising your reliability, and you quit after only a few short months, you damage your reputation and harm the person who recommended you. Make sure you can live up to your brand before accepting any opportunity. Only you can maintain the integrity of your brand. 

Positive Energy

In this practical guide for beginners, Aliza Licht explains how to take control of your image, spread your brand message, engage potential supporters and employers, and recover from any off-brand disasters. At times, Licht’s contagious enthusiasm outstrips her expertise, but she offers solid tips to those grappling with branding concepts and social media for the first time. Licht clearly believes that her audience needs cheerleading and provides that in abundance. Those more familiar with the personal branding and online world will likely find Licht’s approach not entirely up to their requirements, but everyone else will benefit from her knowledge and positive energy.