It’s becoming exceptionally difficult these days to separate yourself from the idea of your brand, whether that’s in a personal or professional sense. So – why not embrace it? Do everything that you can to brand yourself in a genuine and intentional way, rather that having luck, fate, or circumstance decide it for you.
Five ways in particular to take control of your branding is to focus on working with signs, making your social media presence known, creating a blog, interacting with people and things accordingly, and going for long-term results. By paying attention to those five pillars, you’re well on your way to being in charge of how you’re seen by the world.
Sign Me Up
You need symbols and images if you’re going to have a solid brand, and that means you need to work with great signage. Your signs can be graphic, or they can be physical, but they should always be consistent with each other, and they should be consistent between sets of media. Hiring a graphic designer to create the image, and then a professional printer to make any physical manifestations of your brand, should be one of your top priorities.
Make Your Social Media Presence Known
No matter if you’re working toward a personal or professional brand, using social media to brand yourself is extremely important these days. The better you understand how to present yourself on the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, the more control you’re going to have over how you’re viewed from an outside perspective. Look at people who have successfully used these methods to their advantage, and then figure out how you can use similar techniques to prop up your image.
Create a Blog
When you create a blog, you create a version of yourself. Your word and image choice. The way that you approach topics to write about. Even how the blog is organized. Every aspect of your website is a part of your branding process, and you should focus on making the details represent you as well as possible at all times.
Interact Accordingly
The way that you interact with people is also a way that you brand yourself. This means in person, with how you talk and how you dress, and digitally, with respect to things like how you have online conversations. The more attention you pay to your interactions, the better you will create your personal brand.
Go For Long-Term Results
In the end, branding is about long-term results. You are the ultimate expression of all of your interactions with the world, and so even when you make a few mistakes, or even when you do things slowly, it will all add up in a way that allows people to judge you positively or negatively based on this history.