5 Ways to Discover your Personal Brand
A Personal brand is something everybody has whether you like it or not, it’s what makes you you. My journey of re-branding myself has served me well professionally, socially, and in my digital presence.
With a clear understanding of your own personal brand, you can create a profile that accurately represents you
In her book, Becoming, Michelle Obama writes about the importance of having a personal brand and her journey to defining her personal brand. She wrote that:
“if you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
Traditionally, your personal brand might be described as your reputation. It is defined as how other people perceive you. Since people are sure to perceive you one way or another, then you do indeed have a personal brand.
My research indicates that you can influence what people think about you since their decision is based on what they see and hear from you.
4 factors that determine your personal brand.
- What is your speaking style? Do you speak loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to irritate others? Barack Obama is known to be an orator. he speaks very clearly and slowly to make sure he captures people’s attention. Gary Vee is a known motivational speaker even with his vulgar language he still has a following because he doesn’t suger-coat his message.
- Is your dressing style casual or formal? Do you dress officially all the time or you are always smart casual? Do you dress for the occasion? Many of us are in full suits during the week and transform over the weekend to skinny jeans, ripped trousers, and spaghetti tops. Steve Jobs was known to only wear black polo neck shirts and blue jeans, and it goes with his brand image.
- How do you treat people? Is how someone treats people of walks of life important to you. Do you believe people are treated equally or people should know how to stay in their lane depending on their economic, seniority, or other description?
- What kind of people do you associate with? Who is in your clique? I had a discussion with my daughter about her friends and she also pointed out that even adults have cliques. Even if you have not yet achieved success, you will be perceived as successful if you are always with successful people.
“You are the sum total of the people you surround yourself with”
5 Ways to Discover your Personal Brand
To discover your personal brand, you have to be introspective and know your personality traits as well as how you appear to others.
- Self-awareness: First know yourself before you create a brand you would like others to recognize you with. Your brand should be an all-rounded 360 view of who you are. Social media has made it easy for us to tell people about ourselves.
These days what you post on your social media will be used to judge you before the person ever meets you. It is always good to be authentic. When creating your brand, you have to be more intentional in what you post. During my process, I asked myself the following questions.
- What are my values? I want people to know me for my honesty, integrity, fun-loving, and knowledge. I will share honest opinions on issues that interest me or trends in your circles.
As much as 89% of consumers relate to brands that share the same values as them. (Fundera)
- What are my goals? I want to create wealth, be financially independent, and share my knowledge with people of like minds. To do this am sharing informative blog posts on personal growth, investment, and money.
- What is my story? If people google my name what will they find about me? Am I passionate about customer service, I know insurance, I like baking, I like to travel locally and internationally, Am I a proud mother? Am interested in wealth and good living.
- What are my hobbies and interests? During my weekends I spend it reading, writing, baking, hiking? with friends, family, and colleagues.
Review: Do you know what people your colleagues, acquaintances, friends think of you. To re-brand, it’s good to have a starting point of what your current brand is.
We spend most of our time at work with colleagues, acquaintances, and bosses. They would be a good source of unbiased feedback on how they perceive you.
What I did is go through my job appraisals with my bosses, colleagues, and acquaintances. This gave me an idea of how am perceived. I highlighted what is consistent in what people say. I noticed descriptions that were specific to an event or issue. this was very interesting and informative.
I discovered that people find me organized, but forgetful. I was analytical, but also fun and interesting to have conversations with. am pushy and demanding but always give customers a solution that works. Anyone who knows me can also comment below on what they think of me. Am still discovering.
- Listen: Listen to how they introduce you to people who don’t know you. What do customers, friends, and family call you for?
- Is it to tell you what’s going on because you probably don’t watch the news?
- Is it to ask you for a resource, because you have a good network?
- Is it to ask you for your opinion on something you are an expert on like insurance, money, and investments?
- Is it to get your advice because you give sober advice on issues about parenting, relationships, and life.
If you listen and analyze your conversations with people around you, then you can discover what they think about you.
4. Ask: Ask people to tell you what they think about you. This may not give you very objective results but it gives you an idea.
Ask them “when you think of me what adjective do you come up with” Most people could not come up with only one word. so I settled for a phrase, others just described me with full sentences.
What I realized from asking this question, is that people either tell you what they have been wanting to say to you but didn’t know-how. or they will only tell you what they think you want to hear.
This was an emotional process because you should be ready to hear the worst of what people think about you. Yet, I was also surprised at some of the best descriptions of my personality traits.
Another way to ask is through your coach. He can give people a survey and ask them to answer some open-ended questions. This will give you unbiased answers because people are more honest with strangers and find it easy to talk to someone else about others.
- Tests/quiz: You can take a test online that will assist you get to know your brand.
- Glassdoor Personal brand quiz
- Anna Vatuone personal branding quiz
- Big Brand System brand personality test
Conclusion
To be honest none of the quizzes I took actually came close to what I think my brand is. I guess I have some work to do on creating the brand I would like to have now and in the future.
It may seem that you can’t determine your personal brand because it’s hard to control what others think of you. With the constant emphasis that you should just be yourself no matter what. Creating the brand, you want may seem like a daunting task. However, you can still be true to yourself and still coin out the brand that represents you efficiently professionally as well as socially.
Do you agree that taking a personality quiz will give you an accurate representation of your personal brand? Share why (or why not!) in the comments!
Quite inciteful…