2. Personal brand. Part II: 6 steps in creating your own personal brand

Subject title Personal brand Part II: 6 steps in creating your own personal brand

Purpose of the activity Provide participants with information on the steps about the steps of formation of personality‘s image and personal brand.

Duration 2–3 hours.

Location and tools Computers, tablets or smartphones, projectors, chairs, writing tools.

Number of participants 10–20 participants

Acquaintance/ team building methods At the beginning of the session, participants are divided into groups of 2–3 people. Each participant is invited to choose one personality he/she follows on social networks and and tell other participants in the group about this personality in detail by answering the following questions:

• What fascinates you about this personality?

• What is this personality’s lifestyle?

• How does this personality position himself/herself?

• How does this personality make money?

• What makes this personality different from others?

• What is the life story of this personality?

Practical tasks Participants are invited to divide into the same groups in which they completed the first task, only this time to analyse each personality, taking into account the six steps of personality’s brand formation presented in the theoretical part. Participants can complete the task individually, in consultation with other participants from time to time, or come up with a way to complete the task in a team. Task of Step 1. For what purpose does the chosen personality develop his/her personal brand and publicize information about himself/herself? What is the meaning of these actions from the perspective of this personality?

Task of Step 2. What are the key social roles positioned in a personal brand strategy? What are the archetypes according to Carl Jung?

Task of Step 3. Analyse the soul of the brand of the chosen personality. What is the brand’s positioned mission and values, beliefs and mantra, experience, legend, emotions, competencies and uniqueness?

Task of Step 4. What is the customer segments of the brand’s customers?

Task of Step 5. What information about personality is found in search engines?

Task of Step 6. What idea and presentation is the personality constantly repeating?

Participants have 60 minutes to complete the task.

End of session reflection methods After completing the practical task, each participant presents his/her personality analysed according to six steps to the whole group of participants. Each participant also shares what he/she learned during the session and how he/she intend to apply it in his/her daily routine.

Notes to the leader There may also be cases where participants are interested in creating and developing their own personal brand (especially if they are older young people). In this case, instead of analysing the other personality’s six brand formation steps, you can suggest focusing on building and analysing your own personal brand.

THEORETICAL INFORMATION

In the first session, we’ve learned to understand what a personal brand is, what its purpose is, and what tools can be used to create and position a personal brand. And in this session, we will focus on specific steps which are important to consider and perform when forming communication with your target group.

STEP 1. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND WHO NEEDS IT ALL.

The very first question you need to ask yourself when starting to develop a personal branding strategy is this: “For what purpose am I doing this?” In answering this question, it is important to understand the specific added value and tangible benefits of the personal brand that is being developed. There can be various benefits: a strong associative relationship with the organization is established, successfully developed charity project, greater attention to yourself as a specialist and/or consultant, coach, etc.

There is no point in creating a personal brand just because everyone does that. After all, this process, when implementing it consciously and with the necessary dedication, takes a lot of resources – time, effort, finances, and so on. If you don’t clearly understand what it means to create and implement a personal brand strategy, you can simply burn out very quickly.

STEP 2. DEFINE YOUR SOCIAL ROLES.

So, after understanding what it means to build your personal brand, you can move on. In the second step, it is important to define the social roles that will be needed. For example, there are good marketing, sales, and other professionals. But certainly not everyone has developed a personal brand. There are others – who are distinguished by their particular characteristics, which is unique to this particular personality and thus attracts others. For example, a runner-an investor. So when creating an interesting story about yourself and engaging others in a personality’s life, it is important to single out social roles. Roles can be such as: an expert is what others pay you for and personality is what sets you apart from others: hobbies, interests, lifestyle.

A few questions about yourself In order to single out certain social roles you are positioning, you should answer a few questions that will demonstrate what you really like, whether you will be able to talk about it at conferences, meetings, events, etc.

• The questions would be the following:

• What do you like to do?

• What are people willing to pay you for?

• What is the scope of your personal story?

• Are there people in your environment who would support you?

• Do you use all the resources when developing your brand (social networks, new platforms, communication skills, etc.)?

• Does your image meet the needs of a personal brand?

• What are several main key individual roles of your personality (e.g., specialist, athlete, dancer, friend, sister, mother, etc.)?

• How do you cope with your current roles?

• How ready are you to constantly “pedal” in these roles?

Typically, approximately 3–4 roles are named at this stage. The importance and relevance of each of these roles in your life on a scale from 0 to 10 should be further assessed. It happens that a role can score a lot of points, but at the same time you may realize that you cannot talk much about that role. Then it is important to honestly answer to yourself why one or the other role is not suitable for active personal brand development

STEP 3. ANALYSE THE SOUL OF THE BRAND.

The foundation of a personal brand is trueness. Only on the basis of trueness can everything else be built. From the very beginning, it is important to understand the mission and values, then the beliefs and mantra, and finally the experience, legend, emotions, competencies, and uniqueness. Usually people tend to start from the end, i.e. they seek to single out their uniqueness, the target group, but forget to touch on the basic elements and foundation of branding. Values and mission. What do you do? How do you do that? What do you believe?

Example: Alexander Morozov seeks to create opportunities. What is he doing? He created the youth organization Young Folks in Latvia, where every young person can find an activity that reflects his/her needs. He believes that young people will not go the usual way and will discover their true selves only if they learn to make conscious choices by trial and error. How this is reflected in his work: he has retired from a high, well-paid job to create a youth organization, attracts young people, develops international projects and opportunities for young people who do not work or study anywhere and is always open to communication with teenagers and young people. Brand’s mission. What you create is not for yourself but for others. What will you leave after you? What do you create and give to the world?

Beliefs and position. People come to find out what you think on one issue or another. Often people do not express their position because they are afraid of not being accepted. Indeed, indifference is the main enemy of a personal brand. If you don’t have a single hater, you are a very strange brand. It is likely that in this case you do not even have a brand. It is important to accept the fact that people may agree or may not agree with your position. Either way, people will remember you.

When you become a known person, there will always be someone who will say “what an idiot, he/she made something public again”. And let such people be. Most importantly, you know for yourself to whom you do what you do. There are people who are yours, and there are people who are not yours. These people who don’t understand you are simply not close to you. Release such people, let them live in their world, and you live in your own. It is normal. When you travel by planes, you will occasionally encounter turbulences. When you travel by ships, you will occasionally encounter with a large swell. It is also the case with publicity, when you share your life, achievements and opinions in public, you will encounter with haters from time to time.

Example. Colin Kaepernick is a former American footballer who did not stand up during the performance of the US national anthem, thus expressing protest against the brutal treatment of blacks by police officers. He was fired and everyone he worked with terminated contracts with him. The only company, which continued its cooperation with Colin Kaepernick was Nike. And what’s more, Nike made Colin Kaepernick its new main face precisely because he had his own clear position. In the end, he won. See what the brand did a year after this scandal. This is a very good example of how one person and one company can change the world without fear of haters.

Video about this Nike story: https://youtu.be/j93zH0p5r-0 Prepare your clear position on all key topics that can become risk points, as well as all the most important topics in your country and the world. Feminism, LGBT, climate change, wars… By being in a public space, you can be sure that in one way or another you will get questions on all of these topics and if you don’t have a clear answer, you can get lost in such situations.

Mantra. These are phrases you keep repeating until everyone remembers you. Until people 100% remember who you are, what you do, and what you aim for.

Examples. Disney – “Fun for the whole family”. They repeat it constantly. This brand has movies for the whole family and tickets for the whole family to Disneyland. Nike – “Just do it”.

Legend of a brand. How did you become who you are? How did you survive the defeats, how did you doubt yourself? What people have influenced you the most? Finally, how did you win? If there have been only victories and no defeats in your life, people may take pleasure in you and let you go because watching you is no longer interesting. Example. Instagram goddess Kim Kardashian constantly

talks about her psoriasis and posts photos with spots on her face and body. In this way she shows that she is alive, she is sick just like others and that not everything is good in her life. It may annoy someone, but even these people will be interested to watch it.

Your uniqueness. Form: presentation, emotion, outer “packaging“. Content: profession, unique knowledge, position. A person who possesses his/her own brand always knows who he/ she is. You need to be able to say briefly who you are, even if someone wakes you up in the middle of the night.

Competencies. There are five levels of experts: company-level experts, local stars, rising stars, industry “rock stars”, global stars.

Buyers are willing to pay to global stars 13 times more than to an average professional. How to become a global star? Answer: charisma and a strong personal brand. In this case, expert knowledge alone will no longer be enough, a full-fledged image will be needed.

Stick to your personal line of expertise and ignore unfamiliar topics. You can have your point of view on all the current issues of the world, but you don’t have to express it because self-expression that is too broad weakens the brand.

Emotions. Over time, people forget what you said or did. They only remember the emotion they experienced together with you. People who are going to take part in the Oprah Winfrey show know that they will cry even if they were not planning to do so. Think about the emotions the audience feels after you.

Brand typology These are the basic archetypes of Carl Jung, adapted to the brands by Carol Pearson and Margaret Mark. After getting to know them, choose the archetypes that are relevant to your personal brand and describe how you position or will position them.

1. The Innocent: strives to be happy.

7. The Regular Guy or Gal: seeks to belong to a social environment.

2. The Explorer: seeks to experience an independent, adventurous life.

8. The Lover: seeks to build loving and inspiring relationships with the people, activities and places. 3. The Sage: seeks to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world. 9. The Jester: seeks to have a great time and lighten up the world.

4. The Hero: seeks to achieve excellence and become the best. 10. The Caregiver: seeks to take care of others.

5. The Rebel: seeks to overturn what isn’t working. 11. The Creator: seeks to implement a unique vision and product.

6. The Magician: strives to make dreams come true. 12. The Ruler: seeks to build a successful company or business.

STEP 4. ANALYSE YOUR CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

Once you define your social roles, the next step is to analyse your customer segments.

Generally thousands of people follow public social networking accounts on Instagram and Facebook. These followers do not buy a product, do not participate in projects, they create an image of publicity. A completely different part of the customer segments cooperates with you and buys the product.

This is why it is important to clearly define your social roles in order to create the necessary communication. On the one hand, it will help gather the masses of people around you. On the other hand, it will help you keep yourself as an authority in the eyes of those who will be willing to invest their time, money in the social projects you engage in, and buy the goods or services you offer.

It is also important to find out where this particular target group of potential customers and partners is concentrated and to focus most of your attention right there.

STEP 5. GOOGLE YOURSELF.

Check out what the first pages of the search show. Do you see positive feedback from your colleagues, or possibly photos from parties with alcohol? It’s best to do this from someone else’s phone or computer, as your own devices will only show the best things about you. Review what can be removed from social networks. View all tags, reposts, photos you are tagged. Verify all the social networks you no longer use.

There is such a concept of “social ecosystem”. You think you are so amazing because you create your own image yourself. In fact, there are people who create it for you. What does your grandmother or friends write about you after the party?

Example. The story of John Rockefeller, the world’s first dollar billionaire, is very interesting in this regard. How did the first public relations specialist Ivy Lee create his brand? When Ivy Lee began working with John Rockefeller, he was called the main miser of America. When Rockefeller died, the following message was published in all newspapers under the following headlines: “America’s main grandfather died.” That’s the fruit of a good job with a personal brand.

STEP 6. BECOME A WOODPECKER.

You have decided: “I am an activist who fights for animal rights. I fight for the exploitation of animals in any form.” And here you begin to repeat it always, in all circumstances, at every meeting, you start every message from that, you ask to be introduced as an animal rights activist and you repeat the same message like that woodpecker who tediously keeps hammering at the same point. It is impossible to overdo in this step. It may seem to you that people are tired of listening to you, because you have been talking about the same thing for the third year in a row. But you’ll be surprised to learn that only you get bored of it. At best, people will hear it once or twice: someone during a webinar, someone will read about it in a newspaper, someone during a conversation in a restaurant, someone from an acquaintance. And in all these circumstances, a complete full picture must be formed. For this picture to form, you have to emphasize the same meanings everywhere.

For notes, ideas, observations