When you’re looking to create a career that you love, it’s so important for you to be able to follow a plan. If you don’t approach your work with intent or direction, then you may just bumble along. While coasting can work for some people, it’s not always the best when you’re ambitious and are looking for success. If you know that you want to reach a certain level, or if you want to get a promotion or pay rise by a set time, then you need to really push for that. It’s not going to happen on its own. And that’s where your career plan comes in. Because you can start to work out what you need to do in order to grow and get results. As part of that, you should also be thinking about building your personal brand.
The idea of a brand is often something that we associate with big businesses. You can look to the likes of Coca-Cola or McDonalds and think, yes – I know that brand. But you’re just you, so why would you be branded? Well, when you create your own personal brand, you’ll often find that you look more polished, that people can tell who you are and what you’re about – that you’re known. And when you’re trying to grow your career, this can be gold. So let’s take a look at how you’re going to do it.
Understand Who You Are
To start the process, you need to make sure that you know who you are. Not who you want to be, or how you want to be seen – but who you truly are. Think about your personality and interests and who you truly are. You need to know this in order to come up with the right personal branding for you.
Define Your Core Values
The second part of doing that is for you to think about what your core values are. You know who you are and what you’re working for, so think about the things that define you. When you can come up with your core values, this can then help you to shape your brand and showcase who you are and what you stand for.
Choose Your Brand Assets
When you’ve thought through those key sections, you should then make sure that you bring your brand to life. So, what kind of colors represent what you’re doing? What sort of fonts or logo do you want? Sometimes, working with a branding specialist here can help you to bring it to life.
Network
Now, one of the most important things that you can do for yourself, is to network. Networking is invaluable for your branding. If you want to be able to meet new people, discover new opportunities, and also look to boost your publicity and popularity, you have to put yourself out there. So try to connect as often as you can.
Create A Website
You may not work for yourself now (or plan to), but if you’re building a brand is for you to create a website. You can see it as an online portfolio or resume that you can use to put yourself out there, raise awareness of what you’re doing, and even be headhunted with too!
Brand Everything You Do
The next thing that you’re going to want to do here is make sure that you keep everything branded too. When you think of those huge brands that you know, everything they do has the logo and looks ‘on brand’ – and you need to do that too. When you prioritize brand compliance, everything you do will consistently be stronger. So get your website, blog, resume, portfolio, and anything you create all on-brand, and you’ll look more professional as a result.
Grow As An Expert
Finally, you’re then going to want to make sure that you are positioning yourself as an ‘expert’ in your field as much as you can. Hopefully, having a personal brand in the first place is going to allow you to do this. But you also need to put yourself out there. Networking will help you with this, but also aiming to be interviewed, to write articles, to speak at events – this will build your brand and get you known. And as a brand, you may find that you’re more in demand and it will help you to grow your career.
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