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The moment someone googles your name, they want to know how you convey yourself to the outside world. While your job is what you do, your personal brand is who you are. Your personal brand is how you’re seen online — from a Google search, in media publications, and across social media platforms. Your personal brand is more than just your professional reputation. It’s how you’re recognized for your characteristics, your unique traits, and your key differentiators.
In the digital age, a strong personal brand is required for leadership roles, networking opportunities, and advancement both personally and professionally. Your personal brand must be authentic, credible, and sustainable. Without a clear brand, it’s difficult to market and communicate your elevator pitch to the outside world of recruiters, executives, board leaders, and other key decision-makers (or even potential clients). Just as your resume is now a strategic marketing document that must communicate your value and potential (and no longer merely a laundry list of job functions and responsibilities), your personal brand is where you show up online and on paper.
Your personal brand requires you to be present through the three C’s: clear messaging, content creation, and consistent effort. Clear messaging generates a more cohesive personal brand that helps you stand out and apart from the competition. When your brand is clear, it’s easier to create content that gains attention from a targeted and curated audience. Consistent effort keeps your brand relevant.
To have clear messaging, you need to know your unique value proposition. The following questions can help unlock your personal brand: What makes you different? What do people know you for and what do you want to be known for? What are you most passionate about professionally and personally? What’s your mission statement? How do those values connect to your work? Who is your target audience?
If you’re unsure of how to create clear messaging, head over to your firm or company’s biggest competitor. Observe what they’re doing to build their brand, build their content, and build their marketing channel. You can gain a lot of insight into what they are doing right (or doing wrong). This can help you restructure your content, improve your own marketing methods, or even help you dominate your niche. Competitors are often a terrific source of inspiration, growth, and ideas to help you differentiate yourself.
Remember, you’re more than just a lawyer at an Am Law 100 firm or a general counsel at a Fortune 50 company. You’re a trusted advisor, a business partner, a strategist, and a relationship builder. You build consensus and collaboration. You create opportunity for efficiencies and think of ways to achieve better and faster results for your clients. There are various adjectives you can use to describe yourself as you’re building your personal brand.
Sure, you may think of your firm or company as part of that brand, but if you left your firm or company today, what would you want to be known for? Where would you go next? Would your audience change? How would your next employer find you? How would that next client know what it is that you’re an expert in? This is precisely why you need to focus on what makes you unique beyond what you do for your company or firm.
When it comes to creating content and showing up consistently on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, think about the power of storytelling and what you want to share with your audience. Where does your potential audience hang out? What would they be interested in? What problems are they currently facing and how can you help solve them? What would be your resolution or actionable advice to that audience?
As Gary Vaynerchuk says, “If you’re not putting out relevant content in relevant places, you don’t exist.” That means, if you own a law firm, you should have a personal LinkedIn page as well as a LinkedIn business page for your firm. Both should be easily discoverable, and the brand positioning should be crystal clear.
Remember, don’t forget that your personal brand is personal — it’s about you and your credibility to the outside world. Create a clear message of who you are and what your unique value is. Know who your target audience is. Create content that will generate interest from your audience and don’t forget to show up consistently to stay relevant.
Wendi Weiner is an attorney, career expert, and founder of The Writing Guru, an award-winning executive resume writing services company. Wendi creates powerful career and personal brands for attorneys, executives, and C-suite/Board leaders for their job search and digital footprint. She also writes for major publications about alternative careers for lawyers, personal branding, LinkedIn storytelling, career strategy, and the job search process. You can reach her by email at wendi@writingguru.net, connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Twitter @thewritingguru.
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