August 5, 2022

Personal Branding: Building your Online Presence

Juliet Hinga

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In this day and age, a personal brand is one of the most important things to have. A personal brand showcases your skills and passions all at once and defines who you are and what makes you different.

Personal branding is creating an identity for yourself for the outside world and to market yourself as an individual. This process involves developing a consistent look, presence and messaging, both online and offline. Your personal brand should be how you are defined when you are not in the room.

Today’s world is very competitive with everyone trying to fight for a seat at the table. It is important to find your competitive edge and showcase it both offline and online. Why showcase your brand online? The world is digital, everyone is trying to build a personal brand online because this is where the bulk of the audience is most of the time.  A strong presence online is important as it goes a long way in boosting engagement with your audience, building your credibility, and maintaining your reputation.

How do you Build a Strong Brand Presence Online?

Sharing content online allows you to craft an online persona that reflects your values and professional skills. Even if you only use social media occasionally, what you create, share or react to feeds into this public narrative. How you conduct yourself online is now just as important as your behaviour offline, especially when it comes to your professional life.

Here are some tips to guide you when creating your personal brand online:

  1. You need to start by determining what is important to you by creating your brand story. What do you want to be known for? How do you want your online audience to perceive you? What will make you stand out against the competition? As you create you brand story, you must remember that your online brand needs to be consistent with your personal brand offline.
  2. Share your ideas and thoughts online by creating and communicating your story consistently. As you do this, ensure that you focus on reality instead of perception, this goes a long way in making you authentic.
  3. In today’s world, there is no shortage of ideas, everyone has an idea and a good one at that. To ensure you stay ahead, you need to be in control of your P.I.E (Performance, Image and Exposure). Performance refers to the quality of work while image is who people think of you, essentially your personal brand and exposure is making sure people know who you are and what you stand for.
  4. As you tell your story online, ensure you engage online with your audience and like-minded connections. This helps you expand the visibility of your personal brand online and also grows your brand presence online.
  5. Networking. Just as networking is important for your offline brand, it is also important for your online presence. Follow, interact and connect with friends, colleagues, like-minded people, network online with people you meet during events and conferences.

You may think that branding only applies to organizations and big brands, this is not the case. The truth is, if you create a strong personal brand, it can differentiate you from the competition and create a certain level of trust with potential clients and employers.

Article by Juliet Hinga

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