Week 11: RealWORKS

The topic of this week was to exploring the Falmouth University employability service – Real WORKS – and thinking about my personal brand and how that may align with my studies and future aspirations.

I completed some of the exercises and as I am already in an established career in the industry I decided to focus my thinking on the personal brand piece. I haven’t defined or taken steps to build a personal brand for myself in the last few years since I changed careers and I think this is something I could gain a lot of value from.

Entourage Marketing focus a whole part of their business on supporting individuals to work through the process of defining their Personal Brand. They separate out the terms ‘personal brand’ and ‘personal branding’ into two definitions:

A ‘Personal Brand’ is:

‘A widely-recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.’

(2021)

‘Personal Branding’ is:

‘The conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.’

(2021)

So essentially, my personal brand is the story i’m looking to tell about myself and my personal branding is the action I take to tell it (2021).

It was interesting to read about the value of my personal brand supporting my perceived value in my current role as well as in other companies. This isn’t something I had considered previously. Personal branding is something I have worked on in the past, but usually when I have been thinking about changing jobs or careers. With this in mind, I decided to structure my thought process and think about how I define my personal brand and steps I could take to build a strategy around it; both internally and externally.

This exercise was very thought provoking and at times, uncomfortable. Thinking about things I profess to do well and my attributes, I thought about what my peers would say if I showed them the list. I think i’m going to, to see if they have a different perspective. This might be a useful way to start to consider how my personal brand is viewed by others in comparison to how I view myself.

In her Forbes article, 10 Golden Rules Of Personal Branding, personal branding strategist Goldie Chan says that you need to carve a niche and be consistent in your presentation of your brand (2018). As with marketing any product, you have to be able to clearly communicate what is great and unique about it to the people you would like to buy it. One thing that is difficult about this for me is that currently, I don’t know where I want to focus my career. This process has made me feel a little anxious about putting a stake in the ground somewhere and I don’t yet feel ready to do it. As I get more practical experience throughout the course, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to decide which content and skills to focus on and also where to build my profile in order to ensure I am seen by the right people. I will need to continue to look at this over the next year as I explore the various fields and ensure that my personal brand and professional goals are aligned.

Reading around, I also found a great article by Casey Botticello on Medium – The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Personal Brand in 2021 – with some really useful practical guidance which I will refer back to. In particular, it contained some steps to take to develop a per-platform content strategy and build a network. Another big challenge I see in personal branding – echoed by a number of my course peers on our forum for this week – is the time investment vs return. Creating content online, building a network and community and engaging with others could easily turn into a full time job in itself. Balancing time spent on these sorts of activities will be crucial, along with deciding which platforms and content is most valuable. This is something that will require some more thought and will be very challenging to do well until I have better defined my brand.

However, there are some things I can do to start right away. I have updated my existing social media presences on Linkedin and Twitter to reflect the recent changes in my career. I have also separated my personal and professional accounts and raised the privacy settings of my personal accounts to avoid confusion. My goal to: create an online portfolio of work that showcases my skills is also a great way of starting to create my brand and give me a range of content to select from once I have a better idea of my focus niche, so I will continue to work on this until I have a clearer view.

References

BOTTICELLO, Casey. 2021. ‘The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Personal Brand in 2021’. Medium [online]. Available at: https://medium.com/digital-marketing-lab/the-ultimate-guide-to-creating-a-personal-brand-in-2021-dfee8fb0666a [accessed 29th December 2021]

CHAN, Goldie. 2018. ’10 Golden Rules of Personal Branding’. Forbes [online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2018/11/08/10-golden-rules-personal-branding/?sh=63bbf67b58a7 [accessed 28th December 2021]

HESS, Amanda. 2018. ‘What Happens When People and Companies Are Both Just ‘Brands’?’. New York Times Magazine [online]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/magazine/what-happens-when-people-and-companies-are-both-just-brands.html [accessed 27th December 2021].

PERSONAL BRANDING. 2021. ‘Definition of a Personal Brand vs. Personal Branding’. Personal Branding [online]. Available at: https://personalbrand.com/definition/. [accessed 29th December 2021].

Full list of figures

Figure 1: ‘Personal Branding Exercise – Part 1’. 2021. [screenshot of a document produced by the author].

Figure 2: ‘Personal Branding Exercise – Part 1’. 2021 [screenshot of a document produced by the author].

Figure 3: My Linkedin Header. [screenshot by the author].