BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

By Nic Haralambous
Entrepreneur Coach

I want to help your business create a collaborative culture. Book me to present a keynote or workshop to engage and inspire your team. 

Why bother?

Not everyone wants or needs a personal brand. This is a very important departure point. Should you create one at all? It takes a lot of time and careful thought, planning and execution to effectively build a brand that you can benefit from. 

So ask yourself if your business needs your personal brand? (In the latest episode of It’s Not Over I talk to Lauren Dallas, the founder of Future Females about this topic, scroll down and give it a listen). 

You probably need a personal brand if people are buying something directly from you, coaches, for example. However, a personal brand can help a restaurant secure more bookings, a legal firm or an accounting practice find new clients, and could even help your retail brand build a community. 

It isn’t all glamour all the time though. You need to feed the beast and the beast never rests. You give up some level of privacy and once you have a successful personal brand, that’s where your leads may come from so killing your brand could kill your business. 

It’s not something everyone needs to have, so think carefully before diving in. 

Get to know yourself

Are you quirky? Are you fun? Are you serious? Are you well researched with a deep sense of responsibility to your area of interest?

These may seem like frivolous questions but they matter because not all promotional platforms are made equal. Some are for work conversations, some are fun but can be tailored to work and business, some are visual with little text while others are deeply focused on the art of writing amazing prose. 

You have to analyse your skills (writing, audio, video, visual imagery) and figure out your tone. I am often aggressively optimistic and intensely informative in my tone. I don’t do anything in half measures in my content. You could be sarcastic, humorous, informational, laid back or serious. You could be a combination of these or none. 

But you are uniquely yourself and that’s what you have to hold onto. Yourself. 

To build a personal brand, the first and most important thing that you need is yourself. You have to be the most version of yourself. Not the best, the most. 

Once you have figured out who you are and how you portray yourself, you need to pick a platform.

Authority + Interest = Brand

Once you have figured yourself out, you’re going to need to do a bit more self-work to really understand what your true area of authority is. This matters because you can’t build a personal brand around everything. You just can’t. I know you want to share that picture of your eggs benedict on social media but tell me, HOW EXACTLY, does that help you build your personal brand as the leading marketing executive in the country? It doesn’t. 

If you’re trying to cultivate a reputation as the leading anything in any area then you need to focus on your area of authority. For me, it’s entrepreneurship. That’s my core area of authority. So I mostly talk about things to do with entrepreneurship on LinkedIn and Twitter. Even my podcast helps to push this narrative. 

I then sat down and thought about the areas of interest that overlap with my area of authority. I am pretty obsessed with my mental health and I’m sure many other entrepreneurs are too, so I talk about that. I struggle with exercise so I talk about that. Hiring people is hard, so I talk about that. Finding new customers is tough, so I talk about that too. My area of authority is the focal point but my areas of interest create diversity and allow me to showcase different parts of my personal brand. 

Pick a platform

Twitter is not the same as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not the same as TikTok. TikTok is not the same as Instagram (even though Instagram wants you to think that). None of these are the same as your blog which is not the same as your Medium or Reddit, Quora and YouTube. 

Each platform offers up different tools, tricks and algorithms for you to learn and adopt. Each platform is going to require a new and potential unique set of skills to master. That’s why it’s important to first figure out who you are and want to be when it comes to your brand. 

If you are quirky and like dancing then TikTok is for you. If you take beautiful photographs then Instagram might be the place. 

Authenticity + Transparency = Longevity

If I had to pick the single most important thing about building a personal brand it would be the concept of authenticity. You cannot lie your way to a sustainable personal brand. I know there are a lot of people out there who will disagree with me but in the end, the most authentic people are the ones who will win in the long term. 

The liars, fakes and frauds get found out eventually. Don’t put yourself through that level of pain. From the very start, undertake to be authentically yourself and transparent wherever you can. 

I write about entrepreneurship and mostly only write about my own experiences (authenticity). I am also very vulnerable online when I talk about my mental health, my failures and the lessons I have learned (transparency). It’s easier to maintain this kind of personal brand than to manufacture a personality that just isn’t me. Eventually, you lose track of which version of yourself really matters.