5 Rules of Personal Branding

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Hello, this is Pam. I hope that everything is safe and sound and working from home has not driven you completely insane just yet. It’s certainly added a lot of pressure to those who not only have to work full-time but also have to homeschool their kids and deal with the various aspects of home confinement. I get it. We all do what we can. In the meantime, stay healthy and be safe.

Today I’m going to talk about something different. 52 Limited is a Portland-based marketing recruiting firm. They launched a virtual get-together that they call ‘10 minutes with 52.’ Three days a week they invite different experts to talk about various topics for 10 minutes at a time before you start your day. What a lovely idea. I was invited to talk about “Personal Branding.”

Based on my experience building a digital presence for my personal brand, here are the five key lessons I shared to help you build your personal brand.

5 Rules of Personal Branding

1. Personal branding on the Internet is not about a logo or the name of your company. It’s really about positioning.
2. When you think of your personal branding statement, don’t think of who you are and what you do. Think about who you are to your clients and what you do to help them. That will help you write your positioning and tagline.
3. In addition to having a headline to describe what you do for your clients, make sure you have a sub-headline. The purpose of the sub-headline is for Search Optimization. If you do content marketing, for example, just say content marketing. No need to dress that up to make it fancy, like referring to yourself as a digital marketing maven. What does that even mean? That doesn’t mean that you can’t differentiate yourself or your offerings. You still can. You do Content Marketing for small businesses. That’s a differentiator. You can provide Content marketing audits in 48 hours. That’s a differentiator. Your Content Marketing approach is unique because you use AI to run the audit. That’s a differentiator. You can still talk about your uniqueness without using fancy terms that may hinder SEO.
4. For digital personal branding, you also need to take into account digital destinations. By that I mean social media channels. How would you describe yourself on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media platforms? What would you say about yourself given the character limitations of these platforms?
5. Another consideration is your marquee banners on these platforms. What images should you use to show who you are? I understand that’s a personal preference. Again, make sure you use the marquee banners as the extensions of your headline and sub-headline. Also, the images you choose do matter. Do you want to use icons, photo stocks or your own photos? Everyone does differently. Make sure that it follows your brand guide, colors, and fonts.

Really, there are many elements to consider for personal branding when building a full digital presence. It’s exhausting. Seriously…

Quickly, I’ll use myself as an example to talk about these 5 rules of personal branding.

Here is how I describe what I do for my clients on my website: Increase revenue through sales and marketing alignment

My subheadline on my website: Strategic Planning/Account-Based Marketing/Customer Journey and Sales Integration

To be honest with you, I want to add content marketing, but it’s getting too long, so I sprinkled the term content marketing into various pages and my blog to help SEO. So there are other ways you can do it if you can’t add certain services to your subheadline.

Here is the statement I use for my Twitter: Accelerating marketing’s contribution to sales via strategic planning, workshops, & keynotes. Author of Global Content Marketing & Effective Sales Enablement. (So again I use a couple of keywords: content marketing, sales enablement).

Here is the statement I use for my LinkedIn: Accelerating B2B marketers’ contribution to Sales: Content Marketing | Sales Enablement | ABM | Keynotes | Workshops| Consulting (So I use some of the keywords to describe what I do).

Ok, a quick summary to wrap these 5 rules of personal branding:

1. When you think of your personal branding, have fun with logo design and the name of your company. Have a blast!
2. After that, think about who you are from your clients’ perspectives and what you do to help them.
3. Have a sub-headline for SEO optimization on your website. Be very clear about what your offer to optimize for search
4. Make sure your statements on social media platforms are consistent with how you describe yourself on your website.
5. Pay attention to your marquee banners on social media platforms. The images are also opportunities to communicate who you are and what you do.

Personal branding is a lot of work in the digital era. There are many, many fronts to cover. I literally just described the beginning of a personal branding journey. Once you start on that journey, you’ll have more questions. Reach out and we can chat.

Oh, by the way, I am doing “Ask Pam Anything” Hours on 4/13 9-10 am PST, 4/14 4-5 pm PST, and 4/15 8-9 pm PST.

You can register here.

Come and ask me anything about B2B Marketing, Career Development and other marketing topics. I’ll do what I can to answer your questions and make it actionable. Come join me, simply go to pamdidner.com and click on the webinar page to register. I hope to see you there.

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Before you leave, make sure to check out the previous podcast episodes.

Stay safe and healthy. We will talk again next week. Take care!