Frequent Errors in Managing your Personal Brand

Let’s assume that you are one of the professionals who decided to invest in their personal brand development – process which is fully aligned with your revised career objective. Maybe you already went through a personal branding lab with a specialist or on your own, exploring your personal brand mission, your values, your personal brand community, your  current professional reputation. You explored all the possible communication channels that fits your communication style and you already established a few strategies for developing your personal brand in the following 12 months.

No matter where you are in this process, you are optimistic and keen to dedicate daily time for managing your personal brand – in case you have not decided to ask an agency or a personal branding specialist to do this for yourself.

So, what could go wrong?

If developing your personal brand is what you need in order to achieve your career aspirations, here are a few errors which you would like to avoid.

A. In case you decided to manage your personal brand on your own:

1.Lack of personal branding routine. Personal branding related actions like preparing your social media communication plan, strategic networking online & offline or public speaking calendar etc. are not yet part of your routine so you know what they say – if they are not in your calendar, will not happen! There will always be distractors, operational details which will fight for your attention and actions! In order to notice progress your effort should be consistent. So be honest and ask yourself every morning – What am I willing to do for my personal brand today? What about every day this month? And build your routine.

• How many articles would you like to publish this month?
• How many interesting posts on your social media channels do you plan?
• How many short videos?
• How many public speaking interventions online and offline ?
• How many meetings for strategic networking purpose? Etc.

Decide what works for you and what doesn’t and stay committed to your objective, actions and success measurements!

2. No planned budget for personal branding. You started so optimistic, you were so active on social media, you managed to be more visible and your community started to react: you had positive feedback and it seems that you are doing what should be done in order to increase your personal brand visibility and spreading your authenticity.  But wait, that big project came and this mess up all of your plans for promoting your brand, you just couldn’t find the time to feed that process – there are comments from your audience not answered, requests from potential event organizers not taken care of, engagement on LinkedIn from your connections… ignored.

So – why have you started if you cannot ensure a consistent process? This creates disappointment and disengagement!

Consider your time as a resource and this should be part of your budgeting process for managing your personal brand in 2021. What about budgeting for outsourcing some of the activities from your personal brand communication process for intervals when you predict you will be very busy making business? For example:

• Budgeting a social media communication part time or freelancer;
• Budgeting for a video production team who can help you with all the video materials you need;
• Budgeting for SEO and other online marketing campaigns for your personal brand!
• Considering attracting contributors, motivated to generate more content under your personal brand umbrella. Why not?

Good planning and budgeting will keep the interest alive and will be a good investment! So do not ignore this possibility! Managing “YOU.LTD” requires time, focus and budget!

3. Reactive no proactive communication. You had a plan when you started, a personal branding strategy and your defined career aspirations. This allowed you to execute your plan, to be proactive with your community, to follow a certain path based on your strengths and opportunities. To be in control with your personal brand administration. But soon you forgot about your approach, you started impulsive communication on so many topics that people will have difficulties to identify you with the “labels” you would like to be recognized on your market. Your communication is defocused and reactive, does not follow any plan and this is fishing in troubled waters. Go back to plan! Any communication plan to address your niche, your brand community, expressing your authenticity will be the most reasonable thing to do in this point!

4. No measurements for your personal brand development. So you have a plan, you even budgeted your personal branding effort but how success looks for you? How do you plan to measure this?

•  It will be the number of followers on all your channels?
• It will be the subscribers on your website/personal brand community members number tracking?
• It will be the number of new customers/sales number increase?
• It will be the coverage of your services beyond your country borders?
• It will be the yearly personal branding perception survey results run for your community 
• It will be the number of public speaking invitations received/Q?

You decide this! No measurements looks like driving blindfolded. Measurements will also help you to identify which will be the area that may deserve an increased personal brand budget for your next fiscal year.

B. In case you decided to delegate the process of managing your personal brand to an agency or consultant. What could go wrong?

As a certified personal branding strategist I have worked with many customers in the past 5 years – most of them being excited to follow their professional dreams, to invest in their personal brand process; they attended personal branding programs and agreed on personal branding strategies & execution plan, they allocated resources – time & money. On some occasions the focus disappeared suddenly when their career objective became a moving target from various reasons internal or external – losing interest for the whole process.

So if your career objective has changed, how could you still take advantage of your personal brand  process & strategies already planned? How can you protect your investment and move further with what is still valuable to you?

 As a professional who worked in the past with various PR agencies in order to support my personal brand development – make sure your vision is aligned with the way they see your personal brand. Do not let them transform your personal brand into something which will

not match your authenticity. Avoid being pushed into activities which are not relevant for your personal brand, which are just time consuming or are not addressing your top segments of your personal brand community.

For a PR agency (I mentioned PR because there are just a few Personal Branding Agencies only in the world – besides the one I manage🙂  every dream could be possible … if you have the proper budget. So, make sure the budgeting discussion reflects your expectations and possibilities in order to be able to maintain a regular process and not just some specific interventions.

In the end, we all pay the price of our personal branding errors and this is how we learn faster. But in my opinion, in today’s world, the highest price paid is the one for no action at all when it comes to communicating the world what makes you special as professional! This article reflects my own experience as a personal branding strategist and I hope you will find this helpful for your 2021 personal branding strategy!