ABSTRACT:
Today's competitive modern culture has made it very difficult to tell apart between ourselves among others. Nowadays Branding has reached a fresh level and it is not simply companies who apply to make their brands but something a person should do to allow them to develop yourself as a brand. Marking your identification as not the same as others is thus getting importance. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to provide a better understanding of how individuals can form as their own personal brand. This paper suggests the benefits by growing themselves as their personal brand and also implies the possible approaches for it and can also allow them to understand the possible wat it can be done by choosing the sole strategy or a mixture of these.
Keywords: Benefits, Personal Branding, Strategy
INTRODUCTION:
Personal branding is the procedure whereby people and their professions are designated as brands ([7] Lair et. al. 2005). The image of your brand is a notion held in someone else's mind. The term "personal brand" is believed to have first appeared in the August 1997 problem of FAST COMPANY Journal within an article by management guru and publisher [21] Tom Peters. Peters composed, "We live CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To maintain business today, our most significant job is to be head marketing consultancy for the brand called You. " [3, 4] Dan Schwabel, one of professionals on personal branding, describes it as "the process by which individuals and internet marketers distinguish themselves and stick out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their particular value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leveraging it across platforms with a steady note and image to accomplish a particular goal. "
Personal branding requires managing this belief effectively and influencing how others perceive you and what they think of you. Building an traditional personal brand is an evolutionary and organic process which should emerge from your seek out your identification and interpretation in life. It is about getting clear on what you want, giving it all your positive energy, doing what you like, and enhancing yourself continually ([16] Goldsmith, 2009).
To become a successful personal brander, it is required a person should remember to define, connect and protect his brand. By creating an individual brand a person can certainly stick out in the audience in this overly busy business development world. Branding yourself both as a specialist and as an interesting person. Why interesting? Because it isn't good enough only to be considered proficient at what you do; you also have to be memorable.
OBJECTIVE OF THE ANALYSIS:
The objective of the study is to provide a better understanding on how individuals can form their own personal brands. With this notion in mind we build two research goals:
1. to comprehend the advantages of developing a personal brand
2. to understand that how do a technique be adopted for growing personal brand
SCOPE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ANALYSIS:
The scope and significance of this study is based on the significance that growing yourself as your own brand will help you to distinguish yourself one of the similar group. Furthermore, this paper can help us to understand the targets of building yourself as a brand by highlighting the huge benefits from it. This newspaper will also make an effort to suggest the best possible technique to develop personal brand via different methods.
METHODOLOGY:
To understand the objectives of this research, the info collection is performed on the basis of extra data available from Journals, Articles, Newspapers, Literature, and other materials available with the related subject. Since, few researches have been done upon this topic. So, with the aid of extra data available through various options, objectives and great things about creating a strong brand along with the strategy to be utilized for framing an individual brand will be highlighted.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
To further classify the meaning of personal branding, [20] Brown (2010) has generated how to distinguish terms such as reputation, personal brand and individuals as these often are baffled to be synonymous. However, each one of these factors are of great importance while creating your personal brand; at the same time you should be able to distinguish them. If you design your personal brand with the right concept you can somewhat control what people think and speak about you behind your back. The relationship between these three factors, character, personal brand and reputation is illustrated in following figure ([20] Brown, 2010):
The later portion of this books review can look at relevant ideas to support our two research targets.
OBJECTIVES OF PERSONAL BRANDING
Many creators have discussed the actual fact that we need to distinguish ourselves in the current competitive work environment. [8] McCorkle et al. (2003), outlined the objectives of self applied marketing, in which special emphasis was given to developing job search skills to be able to attain your professional goal. A skill can be defined as "an underlying potential that may be refined through practice, such as communication, evaluation, creativity, intuition, leadership, decision making and planning" [5] Waller and Hingorani (2006, p. 2). [8] McCorkle et al. (2003) divided skills into two categories: self-discipline related and support skills. Self-control related skills can be described as the knowledge achieved. Such skills are developed through school projects, part-time careers or volunteer works. Assisting skills are standard such as social, communication, imagination and decision making. These skills may also be achieved via the same methods.
Again, there's been a great talk which skills are most significant to have no matter business you are in. One study mentioned the below ranking being the most appropriate for marketers:
1. Communication
2. Sales
3. Analytic/Statistical
4. Head/ manger/ self-starter
5. Direct marketing
6. New product introduction
By using skills likewise mentioned previously and combining these with your talents, worth and passions you will be able to identify yourself and permitted to guide your job decisions. A personal brand will differentiate you from your co-workers and competitors in the same manner as corporate business does indeed ([22] Arruda, 2003).
BENEFITS OF PERSONAL BRANDING:
[9] McNally and Speaks (2012) consider the primary benefits the fact that you will get to be more of who you are and what you are, not less. By growing your individual brand, you get to live your principles, be acknowledged and get credit not only for what you do but also for what you believe. Building and nurturing a winning brand will gain you in many ways as it will allow you to:
Understand yourself better
Raise your confidence
Increase your visibility and your compensation
Thrive during economical downturns
Expand into home based business areas
Attain more interesting jobs and tasks ([22] Arruda, 2002)
[2] Clare (2002) also contributes a couple of advantages to the list if you will manage your personal brand effectively he means that you will beside the above mentioned, differentiate yourself from your peers and reach your own private and professional goals. Regarding to [17] Montoya & Vandehey (2002), effect is really what personal branding is focused on. He in addition has created a list of what is considered to be the very best effects of possessing a great personal brand:
Confers "top of mind" status
Increases the expert and credence of decisions
Place you in a management role
Enhances prestige
Source of Attraction
Adds recognized value to what you are selling
Earns recognition
Association with a trend
Increases making potential
Thus, if it is possible to incorporate some of the above benefits or even all, having an individual brand can force for promotions, raise sales or increase the conception of your competence which results into increased compensation, prestige, way to obtain attraction and so many more. So we can say that a personal branding will provide you with power to impact people's decisions, purchases or even attitudes.
STRATEGY:
Majority of researches agree that the personal branding process is same as the merchandise or commercial process ([13] Shepherd, 2005). In today's society it is even motivated to consider yourself as a product and actually discover and develop your unique qualities as something and use those attributes as nn details ([7] Lair et al. , 2005). Despite the fact that an individual brand must be strong and believable, the most crucial is to start with a good foundation in order to keep it persisting. According to [17] Montoya & Vandehey (2002), these three essential elements are:
1. Emotional Impact: a great personal brand generates a good and strong response in people in areas like confidence, admiration, trust and fondness.
2. Repetition: the key goal of personal brand is to develop its meaning and characteristics in the brains of people. It is therefore important to ensure that people understand your brand as reliable; to make sure that this remains effective.
3. Time: Aiming for a long term exposure because of this a long-term solution for creating a solid and stable belief.
Developing your brand is insufficient, what required is to identify yourself from others. Here, strategy takes on a job. [16] Goldsmith (2009) details four stages which an individual needs to proceed through when building a strong, yet more believable brand.
Phase 1: Creating and defining your personal ambition. The first phase means assessing your individual vision and mission and expressing them and making them obvious for others.
Phase 2: Define and formulate. Predicated on all your ambitions, brand targets, website and special features, formulate your individual statement. The basic idea of this formulation is the fact it will help give a clear view of yourself and your personality.
Phase 3: Creating a well-balanced action plan. At this time, taking personal ambition into consideration, an integrated and sensible action plan should be prepared. It is about translating your personal ambition and brand into manageable and measurable personal objectives, milestones, and improvement actions in a all natural and well-balanced way.
Phase 4: Implement and Cultivate your brand. Personal brand does not have any value if you don't make it possible. So, maintain and create your brand effectively.
[17] Montoya & Vandehey (2002) in addition has defined a successful way in building you barnd, under the label, 'The Eight Unbreakable Laws and regulations of Personal Branding'. He has summarised those regulations as follows:
The law of Specialization
The legislation of Leadership
The rules of Personality
The laws of Distinctiveness
The regulation of Visibility
The regulation of Unity
The regulation of persistence
The regulation of Goodwill
Communication Tools:
The main aim of developing your personal brand is to set-up 'top of the head' put in place your audience. Thus, to do this objective there must be some strategy behind to help you in which way to go. Here, communication tools play an extremely crucial role. Deciding on the best tool is therefore very important. If you have a large desire to have developing a strong personal brand, you need to have a far more developed strategy than those people who do not have the same motive ([12] Werner-Runebjork, 2004). There are very different tools to tackle when implementing your individual brand. These are the following:
Word-Of-Mouth marketing: this tool is very powerful for promoting your brand. [21] Peters (1997) has stated its importance. [3, 4] Schawbel (2009) firmly support this as he argues that is the most significant part along the way of getting your brand out as it contains what your most important connections such as friends, family, business companions and acquaintances are hearing of you. Nowadays, usually businesses have a tendency to succeed or are unsuccessful based on recommendations. Furthermore when world is connected today, it also establishes if people become famous or infamous ([3, 4] Schawbel, 2009).
Networking: Nowadays, people are becoming technology savvy. Usage of facebook, twitter, sites, interpersonal networking has increased to significant numbers. Yet another way of differentiating yourself as a brand and so that it is more noticeable is by using different social networks and websites by using internet ([14] Elmore, 2010). [3, 4] Schawbel (2009) has described networking like an occurrence, where we come across with friends, family and fellow workers in our everyday routine.
Virtual Application: It really is equally important to regularly update your job application and make it no problem finding, by combining it with other social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. In this way, people can follow you up. Through exclusive resumes, you also add videos or even diplomas, that may allow people to get a genuine feeling of who you are ([14] Elmore, 2010).
Personal Branding can be done by choosing any one from the two practices, i. e. , Analog personal branding or Digital Personal branding tactics; or may be a combination of both. What counts is the type of audience you want dialogue with. Digital personal branding is taking form through elderly e-marketing tools like Web sites and e-mail, and newer systems like Linkedin, Plaxo, Twitter and Facebook ([1] Vitberg, 2009).
The table below will show how different tactics that can be adopted while developing your individual brand.
SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM VITBERG (2009), ANALOG VS. DIGITAL PERSONAL BRANDING-A NEW TWIST ON PERSONAL MARKETING PLANS
Making a good impression is very necessary on most occasions. While you meet someone for the first time that person will form an instantaneous impression of you ([24] Arruda & Dixson, 2007). Facial expressions, your build, dress, smile, body postures, how you use your hands and eye, everything matters as they all form an integral part of your communication and contributes to your brand personality ([15] Wee & Brooks, 2010).
CONCLUSION AND INTERPRETATION:
Nowadays, when competition is cut-throat there can be an utmost dependence on separating yourself from the similar people. Thus, the requirement of developing yourself as your personal brand is important. After learning and understanding the ideas developed by previous research workers, now we will try to provide a much better understanding about how individuals can form as their own private brand.
Objectives/Benefits of creating a personal brand
The analysis has indicated that we now have several significant aims/benefits of creating a personal brand. The main purpose is to distinguish you from others. Another goal for developing your personal brand is that it will definitely increase your specialist and credence if it is possible to work and portray your brand right.
We also have grasped that professional dressing will create a significant appearance for your personal brand. It also helps in upping your confidence or self-esteem. To conclude, we can say that the below stated points are the main issues regarding the targets/benefits of developing a strong personal brand:
Better communication skills will enhance your chances to get a leading position
Increases your reputation among your audience
Creativity will allow you to stand out among your competitors
Strategy to build up a Personal Brand
The most crucial finding was that the strategy used when developing a personal brand does not follow any specific order and the procedure has ended an indefinite period of time. Every review has suggested that first rung on the ladder you should take id defining and figuring out your core competence/ unique property which makes you not the same as others. While associating yourself to your competence, it is important to remember to your website that you are capable of more and not bound to your central competence.
There are different routes available that you can reach to your audience by putting into action your brand and make it come alive. Mouth communication is also necessary as it pertains to develop your personal brand. Depending on your personality, you'll be able to tell the entire world 'this is me'. However, it also required to interact with people to be able to keep up a good reputation.
It has also come to notice that consumption of internet to set-up personal brand is also increasing. Your internet sites and folks you go out with will allow you to really get your personal brand visible. Also, how you dress will make a mark among the people about your seriousness and commitment towards work. You need to understand that whatever you say make a difference your brand, both in a negative and positive way.
Social network online is also great way to get in touch with new people which may grow to be your clientele. The globe is becoming digitized and using digital advertising is can be quite fruitful for you. A single blog, tweets, or Facebook webpage is designed for millions of visitors at a time. The method that you present yourself and your thoughts is important.
IMPLICATIONS FOR Professionals:
In today's current situation, hardly any people are in fact alert to and spend their time on producing their personal brand. Becuae of the strong competition, people try to differentiate themselves from others. Creating a strong brand therefore, is very importance; and in near future it'll be highly required.
Developing an individual brand is neither too much nor very time consuming. The main requirement is that you ought to know of the initial domains of yours. Other than this, you should be able to find the right communication tool to allow you to stand out.
This analysis has determined that with great communication tool you will be able to increase your network and brand visibility. Socializing and conference as many people as possible will also donate to increase your audience. Always make an effort to make a good and positive impression as this is exactly what you leave after interacting with the folks.
Social network online are also a sensible way to speak to people. You need to be conscious while updating your status or continue online. If you tackle yourself as a brand and practice all different skills, your individual brand can be stronger and you will keep up with the standard of your brand.
