In an age where remote work is becoming the norm, how can you stand out from the crowd? While showing your personality can be much harder, you can use personal branding to set yourself apart. Whether you are making connections on LinkedIn or on a video interview, personal branding can give you the edge you need to make your mark. How do you start the process of branding yourself? Keep reading for four top tips to set yourself apart with personal branding…
Figure out your niche
When developing your personal brand, you should first figure out the niche you belong to. The more you are able to segment your niche, the better you’ll be able to target your audience moving forward. To find your niche, ask yourself questions like:
- What are my passions?
- What are my interests?
- What types of projects have I loved?
- What am I certified in?
- What are my skills?
Find your target audience
Once you’ve figured out your niche, the next step is to determine your target audience. To do this, you should create buyer personas, or fictional people who represent the ideal person you want to target. When creating buyer personas, no detail is too small. Figuring out things like what your persona likes to do in their free time, what types of restaurants and bars they frequent, and even the types of cars they drive can help you determine how to market yourself to them.
When targeting your audience, it’s crucial not to make the mistake of casting your net too wide, so to speak. You want to figure out a narrow enough group that you aren’t trying to become a jack-of-all-trades.
Create content
Creating relevant content is a non-negotiable part of personal branding nowadays. With the popularity of social networking platforms like LinkedIn, posting content is the minimum you need to do to keep up with the rest. To really stand out, you should take it an extra step and actively create content yourself.
Whether you are writing about your field, recording a podcast, or attending webinars that you summarize, creating content in your field is crucial to stand out with personal branding.
Network like a pro!
You always hear how important networking is – and that’s for good reason. Networking can open the door to new opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise had, like job positions or highly competitive interviews.
A great way to maintain a network is by building out your social media. As mentioned above, your LinkedIn connections can be a great resource if you are keeping up with them. Carve out a few hours into your schedule each week to respond to your connections posts to start building a relationship with them.
With such a highly competitive professional landscape, personal branding is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from the rest and get hired.