Blog > How Personal Branding Can Help Boost Your Career Prospects

In marketing, a brand is a name, symbol, or other distinctive marker that organizations use to set apart their products and services from those of competitors. For businesses or nonprofits, branding is considered a key element of a public identity that fosters trust and loyalty. A personal brand does the same for an individual.

That is, your personal brand is the public identity you create and nurture for yourself, highlighting your uniqueness to set yourself apart from everyone else.

What is personal branding?

The process of creating and promoting a unique identity and reputation is called personal branding.

Personal branding involves showcasing your education and skills as well as your strengths, values, aspirations, and personality to set you apart from the crowd. It also involves deploying strategies to communicate your professional values to your intended target audience.

Your target audience may include current and potential employers, colleagues, and peers in your chosen field. Entrepreneurs, consultants, and service providers such as freelancers will have potential and current clients and customers as their target audience.

Your personal branding will also help you reach a wider audience, including journalists, bloggers, media channels, and other influencers, whose support you may need along the way.

Here’s why you should care about personal branding

There are many reasons why you, as a career-minded person or entrepreneur, should care about personal branding.

Personal branding makes it easier to differentiate yourself and stand out in a crowd

If you are seeking jobs in a competitive market, or seeking career progression in larger organizations, creating a personal brand will help you stand out from among other candidates with similar qualifications and experience. A thoughtfully developed personal brand enables you to highlight what makes you unique. Your personal brand clearly shows what value you bring to the table. It highlights—without you or anyone else having to point out—why they should choose you over others.

A personal brand supports career advancement

A strong personal brand will enhance your visibility and credibility in your chosen industry or field. Even if you are at the very beginning of your career, you can begin building your personal brand by signing up to LinkedIn and getting your own LinkedIn profile. This is something even a school leaver can do.

Whether you are looking for internships, entry-level positions, or positions to climb up the career ladder, an effective personal brand will help attract opportunities. These days many employers are looking for candidates online. If you have a LinkedIn profile, career advancement opportunities, including leadership roles, promotions, and new job offers, are more likely to come your way.

For people in mid-career positions and senior positions, an effective personal brand with an active LinkedIn profile, personal website, and a few carefully chosen social media accounts will bring many offers and opportunities. You may get invitations to events, speaking gigs, and other interesting and exciting ways to further boost your personal brand.

The immense value of a personal brand will continue to grow as you progress in your career over time.

Personal branding facilitates professional networking

You may already know the value of being able to present a business card to someone who does not know you. That little rectangle piece of paper helps establish who you are, including your qualifications, what you do, and the level of responsibility you hold within your organization, in addition to providing your contact information. Similarly, your personal brand also facilitates networking, by helping you create a compelling and memorable impression on others, whether they meet you in person or check your activities online.

You can use your personal brand, and the professional networking platforms to build and strengthen relationships with those who know you, including your colleagues, superiors, mentors, industry influencers, and potential employers and clients.

You can also use your professional networking profiles, together with your personal brand, to establish and maintain new contacts among those whom you haven’t personally met. For example, if you ask someone to connect with you on LinkedIn, they would check your profile to get an idea of your personal brand and then accept or ignore your invitation.

Read: Job Seeker, Ask Yourself: Why Do I Need a LinkedIn Profile?

Personal branding enhances your career and business opportunities

Developing a well-crafted personal brand will help pave the way to many career and business opportunities over your lifetime. These may include job opportunities, freelance work, consulting assignments, speaking engagements, collaborations, and partnerships. Whether you are going to be a professional or an entrepreneur or find your own path in life, a personal brand will help support your success.

If you want to establish yourself as an influencer or thought leader in your industry, sector, or specialization, a well-crafted personal brand can help you achieve this goal.

Personal branding supports reputation management

Reputation management is an ongoing process for influencing and shaping the public perception of a person, brand, or company. For individuals, reputation management is about staying ahead and being proactive about what others get to know about you and your activities.

Effective personal brands nurture loyalty and a following through curating—finding, filtering, and sharing—content that is useful for their audience. This approach allows you to showcase your expertise, and share your unique points of view. Doing so helps you manage how others see you and shape their opinions of you in your professional field.

You can foster trust and further enhance your reputation by taking time to actively engage with your audience. Being genuine, sincere, and authentic will always bring your audience around, even when you have made mistakes or errors in judgment.

When you already have an established personal brand, you get to proactively manage your reputation and online presence. This is especially valuable when adverse things about you are mentioned in social and traditional media. You may have seen celebrities and politicians putting out their own points of view in response to gossip about them and slandering statements others posted online. Your personal brand helps you tell your side of the story and clarify things. It also helps you engage with your audience by genuinely responding to the many questions they may raise. Instead of it being a disaster, personal branding channels may help you boost your reputation even more.

A strong personal brand can lead to greater career satisfaction

Your life, and even work life, is not just about money and power. To lead a fulfilling life, you also need to find meaning and satisfaction in your career, and in the work you do.

Creating and maintaining a strong personal brand that is well aligned with your values and interests can make way for greater career satisfaction. This is because your personal brand will attract opportunities that enable you to discover people and projects that resonate with your goals and passions. When this happens, you will find more fulfillment in your work life.

Your personal brand evolves and adapts according to your career progress

A personal brand does not and should not remain static. It must evolve and adapt over time as you grow older, and climb up the career ladder gathering new skills, experiences, and accomplishments. Use your personal brand to maintain a consistent professional identity over time and adapt to changes in your career path.

You can use your personal brand to demonstrate that you are changing as necessary in line with evolving industry trends.

If at any point in your career, you pivot in a different direction, your personal brand can be adapted to suit those changed aspirations and circumstances. This is another benefit of having a strong and well-recognized personal brand.

Developing your personal brand enhances your self-awareness

Building a personal brand requires you to self-reflect and ideally conduct a personal SWOT analysis to understand your strengths, weaknesses, values, and goals. You will be researching both your competition and your target audience for whom you want to portray yourself with your personal branding efforts. In the process of defining your brand identity and creating consistent branding elements such as your personal story and the elevator pitch, you will become more self-aware about who you are and your current and aspirational standing in your profession.

Read: 11 Steps to Develop Your Personal Brand

Personal branding is an investment in long-term personal and career growth

Consider the time and effort you spend on creating and maintaining a personal brand for yourself as an investment in your long-term success and growth in your personal and professional life.

Career-wise, you can use your personal brand to position yourself as an expert in your chosen field, a thought leader, and an influencer. Doing so will expand your access to new opportunities including new projects, job offers, and other career-defining events, invitations, and collaborations.

Even those who have reached the apex of their careers may want to use their personal brands for personal growth. For example, if you have retired from full-time work, you can engage in a long career as a consultant, trainer, or adviser. You can use your personal brand channels to make that pivot successfully. And if you decide to write a book, or write a blog to share your experience, expertise, and wisdom from your long years as a professional, your brand channels can help you do that effectively.

In summary…

Your career aspirations, and manage your reputation over time. Your personal brand will also help you achieve career satisfaction and success. Cultivating a strong personal brand for yourself will help you effectively navigate your career path, seizing opportunities for professional and personal growth and development.