Building a personal brand! It’s like the ‘thing’ all expert marketers are telling you you need to do…
I heard it first over a decade ago, combined with the advice that I needed to build my list as well.
Funny.
What does one do first? You can’t have a personal brand without a mailing list? And what good is a mailing list if no one cares what your personal brand stands for. It’s like the age old question…What came first, the chicken or the egg?
How about this theory….They ‘arrived’ at the same time?
Let me explain….
I discovered this formula for building a personal brand years ago from a book I read. It stated that you must have strong focus on a topic that fires you up. Or a niche that you want the world to know about. And your personal brand is developed from that.
1. It Starts With Focus – When you are laser targeted on what you want to be ‘known’ for, your passion grows. You don’t stray from your mission and everything in your being tells you that this is the right niche for you. You are focused. You know where you want to be and the plan to get there becomes much more clear.
2. You Then Develop A Position – Which means essentially, you form opinions on that focus. I started to form opinions and develop my position by blogging. I have been writing a blog since 2003 and have never ‘stopped’ blogging. This allowed me to give my opinion (and still does) on marketing topics and has been my focus since then. The more I’m ‘heard and seen’ the more trust grows and brings us to the third and final step in building a personal brand.
3. You End Up Becoming An Authority – Think about it. You have been talking, blogging and sharing your opinion for years and have kept your focus. Becoming an authority is the natural progression. Because people have trusted your opinion for so long, you have developed a sense of authority on that original focus. This isn’t sexy because it takes YEARS, but it’s the right way to build a lifetime personal brand.
And here’s the best part….Your mailing list actually follows you along for the ride. You start building your mailing list while you build your personal brand, and that’s why it’s so important to practice both list building and personal branding NOW!
Don’t wait another minute…The world needs to hear what you are passionate about!
Yep, the only downside is it “takes time” love this blog post I’m sure there are lots of people who need to know this stuff. Sharing the message out to Twitter! 😉
Thank you sir. Appreciate that very much. And yeah, exactly…the ‘time’ is where most people stumble. And there is no quick way to make it happen unless I suppose you have an unlimited budget lol