Wondering what all the fuss is about with personal branding and whether it even applies
to you in what you're trying to achieve with your own career?
I'm going to break everything down for you in this video.
Welcome back, or if this is your first time here, welcome and hello.
My name is Kat Elizabeth.
I am an actor, online entrepreneur, and video creator who is obsessed with all things personal
branding.
There is a lot of personal branding talk these days.
It's a bit of a buzz concept and it seems a little bit overdone, and so it can be really
hard to tell the difference between the BS and stuff that's really going to help you,
so in this video, I'm going to break down all of the what, why, and how of personal
branding, plus I have a special freebie for you, so make sure that you stay right till
the end.
So let's start with the basics.
What even is a personal brand?
Well, it's actually pretty much the same as any brand, a brand of product or a company
or a business.
It is how your audience really perceives you.
It's kind of like a promise of what you are doing, who you are and what you're selling,
and how that affects the people that you're trying to influence.
Times really have changed.
There was a time when you would go and shop for the thing that you needed at the nearest
shop that you were able to walk by on the street, or people would hire you because you
had a great CV and then you presented well in a resume.
But it isn't like that anymore.
If you're trying to get a job, you know that you are being judged on so much more than
your resume and the clothes that you wear when you walk into that interview.
People are looking you up online and seeing what they can learn about you before you even
get to the interview stage.
The same goes for working with service-based businesses or shopping around for a product.
It's not about what's the most convenient and local.
We read reviews, we look at social media profiles, and we ask our friends.
It's what people are saying about that brand, not what the brand is saying about themselves
that tends to have the biggest impact.
And so really your personal brand has only a little bit to do with who you are and what
you're telling people you're about, but more about your actions and what people have been
telling their friends and family about you and what you delivered and how they perceive
you.
You could literally be the most talented person at something, and yet it wouldn't even matter
if you don't have a personal brand that actually reflects it.
I mean, if you are extremely talented at doing something and yet your website looks like
crap, you dress sloppily, and you are late to every meeting and unreliable, well, then,
your talent actually means nothing because people are very unlikely to hire you based
on everything else they've seen of you, which is why we need to make sure that our personal
brand is just as amazing as the quality of the work that we create.
The fact is we're spoiled for choice these days.
If you need to hire someone, let's say you need a graphic designer to hire, there are
tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of options out there that can be found in
different ways, so it really isn't just about who is the best graphic designer.
We are looking to connect with them, what they represent, their personality, their price
point, the work that they've already done, and whether it feels like it aligns with our
own brand.
We are making all of these choices based on factors other than the fact that they are
a good graphic designer, and that is what is happening with you and your personal brand.
You cannot just rely on your talent or the last job that you had to guarantee your next
lot of work.
You have to make sure that the perception that people have of you, everywhere they're
finding you, everywhere they see you is consistent and has integrity.
It really aligns with who you actually are.
Question of the day.
Are you intentional about your personal brand or are you leaving it up to chance?
Let me know in the comments.
All right, so how do you actually build a personal brand?
Well, it starts with answering some questions or really having an understanding of things
like who you are, what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and who you're trying to
serve.
Beyond answering those questions, we've got things like the technical and the visual.
Do you do things like your domain name makes sense?
Do you have matching social media handles?
Are the photos of you in line with your personal brand?
Are the reviews that people are writing about you connecting with your personal brand?
So really building a successful personal brand does not happen overnight because it can't
come from just having an amazing website or the perfect Instagram feed.
It's about what we do every single day so that people start to know who we are before
they even see us.
They start to recognize our work, they know our tone of voice and our personality, and
they're telling other people about us, so to build a personal brand, you need to start
by answering those questions and obviously have a strategy around it, but the key is
then showing up every day and delivering on your promise.
Which brings me to my final point, which is really about the true key to success with
personal branding.
It all comes down to integrity.
People can sense a fake brand, a fake person, a fake product a mile off.
We have ... our BS meters are pretty, pretty strong these days because there's just so
much of it on the Internet especially, and so the key to longevity in any sort of career
or business or side hustle is really about being able to deliver on what you say you're
going to deliver day in and day out and doing it with integrity.
Once you can do that enough that it starts to really sink in, that is when people start
to truly trust you, because as I've said before, just having pretty looking websites and social
media feeds is not enough.
That is the superficial layer of a personal brand, and I think it's where we often get
caught up in.
So when you're starting a new business, it can be really easy to go, "Oh, I need to make
sure that my website's perfect.
I'm going to have a really cute little social media, bio, I'm going to have my email signature
that looks really on brand.
Cool.
I've got a business."
No.
You don't have a business until you have clients who then talk about how fantastic you were
or customers who've used your product and can review it in a positive way and then start
telling other people about it.
Your personal brand speaks for itself.
It can't rely on you telling everyone how great you are.
When it's truly strong, you can just sit back and know that your work is enough because
you've been doing it for long enough.
I hope that makes sense.
Now, I don't want you to get discouraged because it's easier to build a personal brand than
you actually think as long as you've got a plan, you actually are doing what you're doing
with integrity, and that everything you're creating is really from a place of wanting
to offer value as opposed to just wanting to make money, and then you just have to rinse
and repeat, show up every day, and keep doing that, and before you know you will have a
strong personal brand.
Now, I mentioned a freebie and I am coming good on my own promise.
I have created a personal branding checklist that is going to help you work through all
of those stages of personal branding that I mentioned from answering the right questions
about who you are and what you do, setting the right goals, writing your bios, choosing
the right social media handles, colors, logos, literally everything.
The only thing that's not in it is your ability to show up and actually come good on your
promise, but I'm going to help you do all of that groundwork so it's so much easier,
so if you want a copy of that, head to the link in the description box below and you
can download that for free.
If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up.
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Share it with your friends that you think might benefit from having this, and if you
got something out of it, if you're feeling a little bit more confident about knowing
what to do with building a personal brand, then please type personal brand boss in the
comments below.
I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks as always for watching and I'll see you next time.
Bye for now.