The Six Steps to Personal Branding Success

Over the past few months I have been doing a lot of research regarding Personal Branding. Many people have their own interpretation of what Personal Branding is and how you can obtain success in that area. Well I too have hopped on that bandwagon and have developed what I call “The Six Steps to Personal Branding Success”.

These six steps are a comprehensive approach to developing your personal brand and creating a plan to ensure that it is relevant and successful. Over the next six posts, I will break each step down in depth to help you to achieve Personal Branding success.

Ladies and Gentleman, The Six Steps to Personal Branding Success….

1. Discovery - This is not only the first step but it is the most important step. This creates the foundation for your personal brand and will help you to understand who you are and what you want your brand to say to the world. This includes discovering what drives you, your goals, and what you want to do in life (personally and professionally).

2. Evaluation – This stage is where you take what you’ve learned about yourself and begin to evaluate what you’ve discovered. This will include understanding what you are good at, what you will need to improve in order to be successful, and any areas that might hinder you from reaching your goals. I also encourage you to gain understanding of how you are perceived by your current network. It is a very humbling experience, but once you realize your strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to begin the next phase.

3. Development – Once you have figured out what you want to do and understand what value you can provide, then you can begin to develop your Personal Brand. This is where you determine what you want your brand to say. I help you to develop a Personal Brand Statement (PBS) and create your Personal Branding Kit (PBK). This stage requires a lot of work, but if you can accomplish this stage, the next two stages are a lot of fun!

4. Communication -Once your brand has been developed, now you must begin to communicate it to the world. This is where you become your own publicist and you begin to focus on “self promotion”. It’s about getting people excited about your brand.

5. Visibility – Now that you have built a brand that you are comfortable sharing with the world, it’s time to take it to another level. This is the stage where your main focus is to get your brand to work on your behalf – even when you are not present. This is where your credibility is established and you no longer need to constantly self promote yourself, because now your network is doing it for you. I call this stage the “Google Me” stage.

6. Maintenance – At this point you are a successful, well known brand. However, in order to stay successful you make sure that you continuing to stay relevant to your target market. This will require you to listen to what your market is saying about you and how they perceive you. This is where you will need to assess your goals and determine if your brand is helping or preventing you from reaching your goals. If the answer is preventing, then you must act accordingly to fix the problem.

My six steps are not rocket science nor does it require you to be a brain surgeon to achieve success. However, these steps will require you to put in a lot of hard work, time, and dedication. I created these steps so that you would feel empowered and take ownership of your brand. I don’t want to tell you what your brand should be; I want you to determine that by going through each of the steps.

Next post, I will take you through the first step- The Discovery Stage. I hope you’re excited to start building your personal brand!

Here’s to your personal brand success!