Personal Branding: key steps for an effective strategy

Aarticle by Diego Ingrassia – “Finding the balance between emotions and reason“ – WORLD TRAINING – MARCH 2018_HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

It has been more than fifty years now since Andy Warhol said, with extraordinary prescience, ‘in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes’. Today, what might have seemed only the outlandish prediction of a visionary genius has become reality. The spread of the Internet and social media, together with a changed scenario in the world of work, have made it not only possible, but in some ways indispensable, to master web communication techniques aimed at promoting one’s ideas and professional goals. Personal Branding means setting up a strategy to identify and define one’s strengths. Trying to clearly describe what our distinctive trait is, what makes us original, different in some way from all those that a distracted glance might lump together in the same container. The next step is to effectively explain why we have decided to undertake a certain activity and how we do it.

Social media have the power to put us in contact with an almost infinite network of people: this is clearly a great advantage but at the same time exposes us to the risk of dispersing our efforts in an environment that is too vast. It is therefore necessary to learn about the characteristics of the different networks and to define the right communication strategy for each of them. Acquire skills on how to build a network of relationships through effective messages capable of conveying a coherent image of ourselves (brand identity), and to make us empathise with other people.

And this is precisely the most important aspect, which requires careful reflection, if we are to avoid the risk of undertaking this activity in a superficial manner, producing obvious and banal results. The idea of being able to ‘sell’ one’s own image is a formula often used by those who want to make it clear in a concise and incisive manner what personal branding is, but it is a good idea not to take this statement literally, also because in any marketing strategy it is always possible to grasp different approaches between the ‘promotion’ of a brand and the ‘sale’ of a product. Just as it is necessary to understand what the differences are between a strategy built to enhance a corporate brand and the promotion of a person’s image. The first and most obvious is that in the first case we are faced with a person-object relationship, in the second situation we are instead faced with a person-person relationship.

Let us therefore return to the two important concepts illustrated above: building a coherent image (brand identity) and empathising with other people. While it is possible to establish some analogies with the strategies that are used to promote a brand, we must consider that the mechanisms of recognition and identification that come into play in the person-person relationship are very different. The values, motivations and deep symbolic aspects that are evoked, and which are leveraged to create empathy, must be handled with greater care and sensitivity, modulating the nature and intensity of the message if we want to connect with other people.

Let us therefore see what are the most important steps we need to follow to set up a personal branding strategy:

– Highlight our distinctive trait: if we want to stand out in a business we should try to highlight the distinctive elements that characterise us. Our style, ideas, the particular way in which we approach our endeavours.

– Indicate our strengths: what are our best assets (skills, competences, aptitudes, specialised preparation, training, studies, etc.).

– Show seemingly marginal aspects: often what is intriguing are the details, details that are apparently insignificant and less directly related to the context. They can convey a trait of originality and help to ‘humanise’ our descriptions, favouring the empathic process.

– Select the medium: the medium (one or more) through which one decides to communicate is an important choice on which depend relevant evaluations on the communication strategies to be adopted.

– Choose a language and style of communication: the language is closely linked to the chosen medium, as is the style of communication; it is very important to take this into account but without giving up on enhancing one’s own style and spontaneity.

– Building a network of relationships: the internet and social media, as we have seen, are extraordinary promotional tools available to anyone; however, we must always remember what their function is: they are a means through which to build a network of relationships, because in the end nothing pays off more than word of mouth

– Convey emotions: allocate a space to tell wishes, dreams and plans for the future: stories and emotions inspire people.

Understanding the importance of ‘self-branding’ helps us to stimulate creative reflection on the image we wish to convey. Acquiring new skills to manage this activity, which was born and has developed within the world of the Internet and social media, also produces beneficial effects in the sphere of traditional relational networks: too many times in the course of our professional experience we have encountered extremely good people who were relegated to roles that were not up to their abilities, and this only because they were not able to promote themselves within the organisation.

Instead, this type of commitment helps us to improve our all-round communication skills (from verbal and non-verbal communication to web marketing), in order to enhance our image or that of the company, to maximise personal performance and make full use of all the resources at our disposal.