Personal Branding: How to Do It

Ways to Develop Your Personal Brand

In my last blog post I talked about personal branding and how important it is. I left you hanging by not telling you how to develop your personal brand in the way you want. That’s what this blog post is about. Unfortunately, successful personal branding isn’t something that happens over the course of one week. You’ve got to put in the time if you want to control how you come across to the rest of the world. This blog post talks about how to develop your personal brand. So, let’s get started!

Power Comes With Good Personal Branding

I read a very good personal branding article that was published by Entrepreneur. They mentioned that celebrities were the ones who were able to survive when the economy collapsed. There’s power in becoming a celebrity. This power results in industry recognition, thought leadership, sales and sustainable personal/career growth. For the rest of this blog post, I’m assuming you want to become a celebrity in your industry. Your personal branding is what’s going to get you to celebrity status. Sure, you want the benefits that come from becoming a celebrity. Seriously, who doesn’t!? However, you don’t reach celebrity status just by updating your LinkedIn profile once a year. If you really want to develop your personal brand, you need to dedicate some time and effort to the cause. How much time? That depends!

How Much Time Does Personal Branding Take?

That’s an awesome question! I read a very interesting article about this topic. In his article about personal branding, Yooniko gave a breakdown on how much time to spend when determining how to develop your personal brand. Depending on what you’re wanting to accomplish, you’ll most likely fall into one of these five categories. Here’s a summary of what he said:

1. If you don’t want to be invisible online – You’ll probably want to spend about 20 minutes working on your personal branding each year.
2. If you want to do something, but don’t really see the value in truly developing your personal brand – You’ll probably want to spend about 20 minutes on your personal brand each month.
3. If you want to develop your personal brand, without spending much time – You’ll probably want to spend a little time each day.
4. If you are truly interested in pushing your personal brand forward – You should probably spend 10-20 minutes each day.
5. If you take your personal branding serious and want to become a real thought leader – The sky is the limit!

Yeah, I get it that you probably don’t have three hours each day to spend on personal branding. I certainly don’t have that much time for myself! But how serious are you about becoming someone really important in your field? Answer that question and then decide how much time you would be willing to spend each week to make that desire a reality. My personal branding blog posts, and most of what I write, are for those who fall into the last two categories… especially the very last category. These are the people who really care about developing their personal brand and careers. If you fit in one of the first three categories, I’d be happy to talk to you and give you direction on how you should invest your time. If you fall into categories 4 or 5, the rest of this blog post is written for you.

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Where Should I Invest My Time for Personal Branding?

Invest your time in the places that will bring you positive exposure. In my last blog post, I told you to do some investigation and see where your peers and competitors are. What are they doing to gain exposure? That will help give you insight on where you could spend your time. Regardless as to whether or not you’ve done that research, here are some things that almost everyone out there can do to help their personal brand. For the majority of professionals, the following tactics will work well for you if you’re serious about your personal branding.

Where should you invest your time to develop your personal brand? #personalbranding Click To Tweet

Establish Your Hub

Invest in a website – You can easily get a good personal website for less than $1,000. That’s the “out-the-door” cost and includes hosting/domain for one year. That boils down to about $1-3 per day for a year. $1-3 a day to boost your brand and exposure sounds pretty good to me. And once your website is live, you should only need to maintain the domain and hosting cost. That’s less than $1 a day after the first year. How many deals might you get in one year, because of the exposure you will gain? If you truly want to develop your personal brand, you should seriously consider investing in a personal website. Your website should be the central hub of your marketing. Whether you have a blog, social media, YouTube, PPC advertising or something else, they should all tie in with your website. Here are some examples of commercial real estate professionals who are leveraging their own websites to enhance their personal brand:

• Larry Crumbley, CCIM, CPM, SIOR – Larry is a CRE agent with Fickling & Company in Macon, GA. He has taken the initiative to develop his own personal website. He uses his website to promote his listings, qualifications, specialties, resources and blog posts. He was also ranked as one of the top retail leasing brokers in 2015, by a report produced by CoStar. If you search for “Commercial real estate Macon, GA,” his personal website shows up on the first page of Google!
• Brian Fleming, MBA – Brian is a senior advisor with NAI in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He uses his website to showcase his bio, services, newsletters and blog posts. Brian is about to launch a long-term personal branding campaign, which will rely on active promotion through the leading social media platforms, email marketing and his website.
• Troy Golden – Troy Golden has a website that completely focuses around tenant representation and giving insight for those who are trying to lease office space in the Chicago area. Troy freely shares his thoughts and advice throughout his website and blog.
• Howard Kline, Esq – Howard has done an amazing job with his website. He is a real thought leader within the CRE industry! How did he do it? He created a website and uses it to regularly put out CRE related videos, podcasts and articles. He is also active on social media, which is great for developing his personal brand.
• Gail Bowden – I’ve really enjoyed watching Gail develop her personal brand. She regularly shows up in press releases and news stories. She has also created a personal website, which she uses to promote her listings, blog content and other relevant information. Like others who take their personal branding seriously, Gail is active on social media.
• Mark Chase – Mark has a passion for helping tenants and buyers within the restaurant real estate sector. He has negotiated hundreds of restaurant real estate transactions and he uses his website to showcase his credibility. He also does a great job showing up on Google for restaurant related search terms.

These professionals are using their individual websites to help with their personal branding. Sure, there is always more they can do to enhance their branding, but the website piece of the puzzle is in place. That’s great!

Beyond the Hub

Whether or not you invest in a personal website, you have more resources available to you to develop your personal brand. Here are some bullet items for what you can do:

• Social Media – It’s not a fad. According to a report on Statista, there are well over two billion users on social media. Find where your target audience is on social media and engage with them. Get seen!
• Email Marketing – Build your email list. Get a base of loyal readers. Give them great value for free. When you have something you need to pitch them, let them know. According to this article by Outbound Engine, email marketing for 2015 resulted in an average ROI of 4,300 percent. This is a powerful tool to use.
• Blogging – Actively blogging is one of the best ways to rank well on Google, establish yourself as a thought leader and generate leads. Those are just some of the benefits. If you aren’t blogging, you better have a really good reason. This tool is too valuable to not use.
• Videos – Some people are great with video marketing. Perhaps you feel that creating valuable videos is easier for you than creating some other type of original content. If so, great! Video marketing is personally something I’m very interested in using in the near future for my own business. According to SearchEngineLand, YouTube is the second largest search engine and the third most visited website in the world. Videos can provide an awesome avenue to develop your personal brand.
• Networking – Physically meet other human beings. This is huge for your personal branding. Let people know what value you can provide. Develop face-to-face relationships with peers, competitors and potential clients. Seek out speaking engagements or opportunities to share your knowledge with others who are involved in your industry.

Final Thoughts About Personal Branding

Remember when I said you should figure out how much time you’re willing to invest in your personal branding? Well, stick to that amount of time, or increase it, as you’re able. I’ve talked about a number of things you can do to help develop your personal brand. Those items above aren’t an all inclusive list, but they can help you get started. If you want help with your personal branding, I’d be happy to talk to you! Simply click the button below!