14 minute read
1. Personal brand. Part I. The first steps in creating your own personal brand
Subject title Personal brand Part I. The first steps in creating your own personal brand
Purpose of the activity To provide participants with information about how to create personality image in various situations and means of communication.
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Duration 2–4 hours.
Location and tools Writing tools, chairs, projector.
Number of participants 10–20 participants.
Acquaintance/ team building methods At the beginning of the session, participants are invited to stand up freely and distribute in space. Light, relaxing, neutral music is then turned on (selected by the leader) and participants are invited to imagine that they are in a conference where their goal is to make as much contacts with others as possible and to make them take an interest in you. Participants are invited to freely exchange contacts, talk about themselves and be interested in interlocutors. Participants are also notified that the task ends when the music stops playing.
15 minutes are given to complete the task. After that, all participants sit in a circle and share their impressions. How did you manage to introduce yourself? What did you learn about the interlocutors? Which interlocutors were the most memorable?
Practical tasks
The Dilts Pyramid of Neurological Levels
Each participant is invited to describe the following points individually:
1. ENVIRONMENT. What environment surrounds me and how do others see it?
2. BEHAVIOUR. How do I behave and how do I transmit it to others? How do others see this?
3. SKILLS. What capabilities do those around me notice? How do I present it?
4. VALUES AND BELIEFS. What are my values and beliefs and how do I transmit them to the environment?
5. IDENTITY. What personality do those around me see in me?
6. VISION. How do those around me identify my mission?
This task is based on Dilts’ pyramid of neurological levels – a concept that helps to understand human behaviour and actions at different levels and perspectives.
Vision
Identity
Beliefs Values
Skills
Behaviour
Environment
End of session reflection methods At the end of the session, the task that was completed at the beginning of the session is repeated: participants are invited to stand up freely and distribute in space. Light, relaxing, neutral music is then turned on (selected by the leader) and participants are invited to imagine that they are in a conference where their goal is to make as much contacts with others as possible and to make them take an interest in you. Participants are invited to freely exchange contacts, talk about themselves and be interested in interlocutors. Participants are also notified that the task ends when the music stops playing.
15 minutes are given to complete the task. After that, all participants sit in a circle and share their impressions. How did you manage to introduce yourself? What did you learn about the interlocutors? Which interlocutors were the most memorable?
How did the presentations at the beginning of the session differ from the presentations at the end of the session?
THEORETICAL INFORMATION
WHAT IS A PERSONAL BRAND AND WHO NEEDS IT?
The personality’s brand existed many years ago, even when marketing specialists have not yet used this concept. In ancient Greece, for example, it was believed that if the author’s name was not mentioned on the vase, that vase was not valuable. Everyone can create their own personal brand. In America, children learn to bravely manifest themselves while they are still in kindergarten and European culture, meanwhile, still teaches that it is necessary to live quietly, still and drawing no one’s attention to yourself. Your personality’s brand is what you talk about, how often you talk about it, and also what those around you talk about you. The most difficult part is managing the opinions of those around you, but it largely depends directly on how the person himself/herself presents himself/herself to the environment.
The hardest part is managing the opinions of those around you, but it largely depends directly on how the person himself/herself presents himself/herself to the environment. If you have decided what your positioning is but keep it a secret, you have no self-positioning. You must talk about your professionalism. You need to talk about what you like, what are your priorities, where and for what purpose you take action, what you do and how you do it, where and in what area you are valuable, but do it all within the framework of your self-positioning vision. If you’ve positioned yourself as a journalist and suddenly, after three months of training, you’ve announced that you’re a designer, it is unlikely that your audience will be able to adapt so quickly and shift their focus. There are many examples of positioning errors in business history. For example, the Colgate company, which decided to launch a line of nutrition products using the same brand, but this project was very unsuccessful.
When creating a personal brand, all the same rules apply as when creating business brands. The first question: who needs it? Successful people are those who understand and imagine very clearly where they are moving and what they want to achieve. Brands persist for a long time. The further your planned horizon is, the more accurately you will imagine where you want to see yourself in a year, in three or in ten years time, and the easier it will be to create a personal brand. The longer the distances of pursuit of your goals, the easier it will be for you to build the trust of your audience.
A magic bullet for developing a personal brand: Do what you want to do and not do what you don’t want to do.
Only then will it be easy for you to keep talking about your actions and only then will it not drain you but on the contrary will inspire and strengthen you. In answering the question “Why do I need a personal brand?” you have to imagine what will happen when while working hard you will gather an audience of people who will not be indifferent to your work. These people will appreciate your activities and values, which will make the process of finding people and opportunities ten and hundred times easier, will create opportunities to speak out loud about world events and to publish social ideas.
Keep in mind that a personal brand is a regular longterm game that will require you to learn to “pedal” continuously for two to three years. However, this is an investment in yourself and it will definitely pay off. After
all, in the process, this activity gives you the loyalty of the people who are around you. With a strong personal brand, you can create a wide variety of activities that will be associated with you. These activities will surely have the best results because people will trust you. And what matters is not what project you created, but that this project was created by you.
The second question: who am I in general? The modern world is full of labels and when people find out about you, they are already attributing to you some of their beliefs or prejudices. The first big mistake is when people are afraid to answer the question “Who am I?”.
For example, I am a volunteer for a youth organization and a public relations manager for social projects – I was introduced like this before an interview, and then during the interview itself I add: “By the way, I also create handmade pillows. If you need them, you can feel free to contact me”.
Such situations confuse people, do not help build trust, create a patchwork of facts in their minds, and ultimately make it unlikely that people will remember anything. People don’t have time to interpret who you are and if they don’t understand your life emotional story (which needs to be related to your activities at the moment), you will simply lose them.
The main rule of communication:
People hear what is being said to them and do not hear what is not being said to them. A personal brand is all that people think of you and what they say about you when you leave the room. A strong and full-fledged brand is when a large number of people talk about you and they more-or-less say the same things. A feature of mass consciousness: one does not have time to interpret the nuances. One cannot be an expert in all categories, but he/she must make a clear decision everywhere. Therefore, when making a decision, a person relies on a simple principle: one can trust what is widely known.
What does a personal brand consist of? 1. External image. The most important thing is to know for sure that you feel confident in the image you have created.
2. Direct contacts. For some reason, most forget about direct communication. How many people surround you? 10? 100? And on social networks – thousands? Be that as it may, it’s important to remember that those 10 or 100 people in your immediate environment can either greatly enhance or greatly weaken your personal brand. 3. Public communication. These are all your public performances, lectures, comments.
4. Surroundings. This is your circle of like-minded people. 5. Online communication. That’s all you communicate on your social networks.
Everyone sees about 100 meters of content per day. If the content one creates is vague and uninteresting, the followers just back down. Another issue that is important to focus on is the casing, the packaging of the product itself. It’s important to fulfil what you’re talking about. And you must answer the question “What makes you different?” or “Why do customers have to buy from you?”
After answering the question “Who am I?” you should also come up with an answer to the question of those around you “Why do I have to buy precisely from you?”. And here many people start to feel greed like in an anecdote about a monkey who at the same time wanted to be beautiful and intelligent, fun, reliable and innovative. But in reality this is not the case. You need to answer yourself the following question very clearly: “What activities and projects am I ready to give up? What am I focusing on? What is my superpower?”
Brand and product are like two legs In order to move forward, you need to move your legs one after the other, first the right one, then the left one, then the right one again, and the left one again. The right leg is a product. We develop the product (in this case, expertise and experience) and then strengthen the brand (in this case, how we talk about ourselves, how we present our expertise), then we focus again on the quality of the product, and then again on how we position it and ourselves. In this way, these two parts must move forward and develop simultaneously. A brand cannot be successful if the product is not of good quality – if you and your products do not develop. Due to the created image deception, which will not be based on truth, eventually you will be severely punished. However, a somewhat exaggerated and strongly emphasized experience and a high level which you will present to the environment in your personal brand presentation can help you develop and form a clear direction.
Marketing is like a bicycle. For a brand to develop, you need to constantly pedal. If you stop pedalling, it is likely that there will be a movement out of inertia for some time, but eventually the bike will stop. It cannot be said that “I made business cards, a pen with my name on it, I also wrote an article for some magazine, presenting there myself as an expert, and this means I’ve created a brand for my personality”. All this is just a small step.
If you have decided to develop your personal brand, you have to constantly “feed” it in small and purposeful communication steps in order to get as many people as possible to know about you.
HOW TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE NOT YET PREPARED FOR PUBLICITY
We have never had as many opportunities as we do now. Never. However, no one has become happier since then, and on the contrary, we all feel very lost. The world is going through two major crises: a crisis of attention and a crisis of confidence. We only have three seconds to capture attention – it’s nothing. We do not trust anyone because the world is overcrowded with fake knowledge and fake people. After all, so many people you’re trying to resemble, turn out to be fake.
Another crisis – crises of expertise. Every smartphone holder wants to be a star. Every Instagram account owner wants to be an influencer. We stopped thinking about real life and began to live the lives of pseudo-successful people that they demonstrate on social networks. These people teach us how to live by displaying their vivid life stories.
The main disease of the modern world is depression. Why do people get it? “I am not good enough for this world. I am not progressive enough, not smart enough, not fast enough, things are not going well enough for me at work, in the family or in relationships with others. Dear ones, please relax. Everything with you in this world is fine. The real world is coming back. People are tired of virtuality and want live communication, real, imperfect, perhaps, less successful people with whom they would sincerely like to have a good time. You are probably precisely that kind of person and that is amazing.
The main feature of modern communication is that we live in an era of transparent walls. This is an era of live mode. You could say: but after all, I haven’t achieved anything yet so I could talk about myself, but in three years I will create something significant and then I will start talking about it out loud. However, nowadays, the process itself is more important to people than the result. Nowadays, we have a lot of opportunities to tell about what we create and share the fruits of our labour, but people trust you more when they see for themselves the process of how you develop your product. That is why the most popular restaurants now have open kitchens – customers want to see how food is prepared. They want to see how the product is formed. They want to see how your personality and expertise develop.
However, you are not yet prepared for publicity if you: 1. You are not yet ready to invest in your professionalism, because it is hard daily work when continuously learning and improving.
2. You are not prepared to take personal responsibility for what you create.
3. You are not prepared neither for attention nor criticism. It’s easier for you to stay in the background.
All of this shows that the time has not yet come for you to go public. Forgive yourself for feeling unprepared yet. Accept the fact you have nothing to say. Everything is fine with that. Accept that and stay in silence.
COMMUNICATION CHANNELS WHICH CAN BE USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PERSONAL BRAND
Online channels:
1. Social networks – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedln, Youtube, TikTok…
2. Send your description to various publications and offer your comments as an expert in a particular field.
3. Suggest to publication editors to create your own expert articles section.
4. Comprehensive and useful comments in publications on relevant topics with your references.
5. Offer yourself as a speaker at the conference.
It is very important to be able to talk about yourself in
the offline world as well – to introduce yourself to new acquaintances so that you will be remembered.
Verbal communication of your roles: 1. Greeting. Say your name loud and clear, pause before and after saying the name so that the listener could focus and take note of the information being said. Remembering people’s names is hard. To make people remember you, say your name and surname clearly, loudly, and slowly.
2. Basic information about the work and the project.
3. 3–4 facts about achievements. These are short, relevant descriptions of yourself or the organization that build trust in you as an interesting interlocutor and person (e.g., “We work with 200 foster homes across the country”, “I wrote a book about teenagers facing greater challenges”, our start-up was included in the list of the most innovative start-ups last year, etc.).
4. Mission and purpose. In order to be remembered, you need to be able to evoke emotion. Tell us about your mission, about the mission of your organization, tell us what you believe, what inspires you.
At the end of the conversation, don’t forget to discuss the next steps, how will you communicate with new acquaintances. Add each other to your friends lists right now during the event. It’s better than just giving your business card that will get lost in the bag later. These are the first aspects that are important to know when developing a personal brand. Act, experiment, express yourself, create your personal world around you. Most importantly, always remember that a personal brand is by no means the choice of the right mask. First of all, you need to feel comfortable when being in the image you are creating. After all, why are we doing all this? We all have one main goal – to become happy people. If you are a closed person, if you find it difficult to start talking about yourself, if you need to force yourself to do so, you have to answer yourself honestly: “Do I need it at all?”
