How to Develop a Personal Brand: Essential Steps and Tips

As an executive, you're a key decision-maker. Your staff looks to you for guidance, and customers and vendors see you as the face of the organization. While your executive title instantly demands respect, people place as much weight on your beliefs, opinions, and values. All those factors combine into your personal brand.

For many executives, developing a public personal brand doesn't come naturally. Their overall focus is on the organization, not boosting their reputation. However, many executives become public figures, so figuring out how to develop a personal brand is necessary. In fact, the earlier you begin working on your personal brand, the better.

Understand the Importance of Personal Branding

Your personal brand reflects who you are and what you believe in. It's the essence of your core values and the unique qualities that differentiate you from other executives in your industry. As a leader, setting yourself apart from other executives is vital, and personal branding helps you accomplish that.

The most prominent leaders are known for both their leadership capabilities and their personal brands. For instance, Steve Jobs was a determined perfectionist willing to take risks. Elon Musk has an uncompromising 24/7 work ethic. Barack Obama gives inspiring speeches about seeking change.

Whether or not you agree with all of their visions, their personal branding is clear. Those distinctive traits attract interest and earn respect from other executives and leaders as well as the public.

Conduct a Self-Assessment of Strengths and Weaknesses

Everyone has their own superpowers and a few shortcomings, so think about yours. Maybe you're an intelligent public speaker who thinks fast on their feet. Or perhaps you're a fixer — someone who can spot a problem and devise an instant solution. As for weaknesses, maybe you have trouble delegating tasks, so you're no stranger to long nights at the office.

Once you define your strengths and weaknesses, you can outline your unique value proposition. Your value proposition will form the basis of your personal brand, differentiating you from other executives and defining your purpose as a leader.

Determine Your Target Audience

Your organization's products and services target specific customer groups, and you'll take the same approach in your personal value proposition. Think about the audience you want to reach in your executive role. Your primary audience may likely mirror your company's customer base, but you also want to attract others — fellow executives, thought leaders, political figures, and people who think like you.

Learning how to develop a personal brand statement is key to any branding strategy. Your statement must be concise and convey the essence of your vision in a single phrase. Think of it as a personal mission statement.

To see a personal brand statement in action, say you are the CEO of a meal prep company. You believe in shaking up the food industry through creative, nutritious recipes anyone can cook. Your personal brand might be "Empowering families to eat healthy."

Your future public messaging stems from your personal brand statement, so think carefully before settling on yours. You want it to resonate with yourself and your intended audience and align with your employer branding policies.

Build an Engaging Online Presence

Most leaders go online to build their personal brands. The internet is often the easiest way to reach your targeted audience and doesn't require extensive monetary resources.

Start by creating a website. A simple website explaining who you are and what you stand for can become the basis of your online presence. You can use your website to share personally written blogs to establish industry credibility and branch out into other topics that reflect your unique value proposition.

Another valuable online resource for personal branding is social media. Pick a platform that best fits your brand, and work on building a following there. Share a few of your resume highlights in your social media bio to demonstrate your credibility.

Create Valuable and Engaging Content

Content is essential to any personal branding strategy. When you're not marketing yourself, attracting followers is harder. However, you want to employ a content strategy that aligns with your brand vision and resonates with your audience. If your messaging doesn't interest your audience, they'll just scroll past your latest blog or social media post.

One way to stand out is through CEO storytelling. You've already reached the top as an executive — but how did you get there? You can inspire others and build your audience by talking about the obstacles you faced and how you overcame them. 

You don't have to limit yourself to autobiographical content. Share other stories that align with your personal branding, such as a recent work problem. Keep your audience interested through valuable content that's relevant to both your and their own life.

Network Strategically To Expand Your Reach

To develop your brand beyond the internet, try joining professional associations and organizations that align with your values. Meeting people in person can help you build stronger connections in your community and with other leaders.

You can find professional groups through industry associations and local community websites. An obvious choice is your local Chamber of Commerce, or you might find more specialized groups through LinkedIn.

Maintain Authenticity in Your Branding Efforts

Staying true to your value proposition is part of a convincing personal brand strategy. If you suddenly change your views, you may unsettle your followers. Keep a consistent, on-brand messaging strategy to avoid inauthenticity.

It's the same for companies. For instance, take Best Buy. The store is famous for selling electronics. If Best Buy added fine art oil paintings to its product lineup, that would totally shake up its audience and might make the company seem less authoritative in the personal electronics space.

Measure and Evaluate the Success of Your Branding Efforts

Set and track a few key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate your branding efforts. For your personal brand online, you can measure website clicks, blog post views, or social media likes and comments. If your strategy is working, you should see traffic increase over time.

Offline KPIs matter, too. When there's an uptick in people reaching out to you for advice or employees mentioning your latest blog post, your strategy's working.

Master Personal Branding and Executive Communications

Exec Comms specializes in executive communications and personal branding. We help leaders develop an online presence that reflects their values and voice. To learn how we can help you build an authentic personal brand as an executive, Reach out for a quick, 15-minute chat about Exec Comms today.