Personal Branding Interview Preparation Guide

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Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.

A branding is a symbol, design, name, sound, reputation, emotion, employees, tone and much more that separates one thing from another.

Here are seven ways to start building an awesome personal brand:
☛ Start thinking of yourself as a brand
☛ Audit your online presence
☛ Secure a personal website
☛ Find ways to produce value
☛ Be purposeful in what you share
☛ Associate with other strong brands
☛ Reinvent

Once you understand how you wish your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about your personal brand. This does not mean you can not be human. A strong personal brand can yield tremendous ROI whether you are working with an organization or leading one.

Having a personal website for yourself is one of the best ways to rank for your name on the search engines. It does not need to be robust. It can be a simple two to three page site with your resume, link to your social platforms and a brief bio. You can always expand on the website with time.

We have all been there. Someone in your network posts something utterly mundane or ridiculous and you wonder what compelled them to do so? A medium is not a substitute for a message. Find ways to add value to your audience by creating or curating content that is in line with your brand.

Every tweet you send, every status update you make, every picture you share, contributes to your personal brand. It is an amalgamation of multiple daily actions. Once you understand how you wish your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about your personal brand.

Your personal brand is strengthened or weakened by your connection to other brands. Find and leverage strong brands which can elevate your own personal brand. Start with the three C's, company, college, colleagues. Which school did you attend? Are there groups you can join? An alumni newsletter you can contribute to? What hidden opportunities are available within your company which you have yet to tap? Consider submitting a guest post to the company blog or look at other digital assets you can connect to your brand.

A strong personal brand is dependent on a strong narrative. In other words, take a second to think of celebrities you know who have a strong personal brand. They are all have a very clear story and a consistent brand. If you have multiple passions or areas of interest, a narrative becomes even more crucial so there can be unified theme.

Businesses create vision and mission statements. Creating a personal brand begins much the same way by creating a personal vision.
Only you can determine how you want your life to unfold. You can not control every aspect of your life but you can create a long-term vision and develop steps to achieve that vision.
Your life's vision should include how you see yourself in 10, 20 and even 50 years. Consider the elements in life that would make you happy family, beach house or a challenging corporate job.

Once you have your vision, it is time to determine who your target audience is. Most professionals are selling something to someone. If you are looking for a job, you are selling yourself to a potential employer. If you want to start your own business, you are selling yourself to potential clients.
But your target audience goes beyond an employer and customer. You are looking to build a community of people, employers, peers, influencers, etc. who can all be assets in different ways.

You can not mold perception without first understanding the current status. In other words, yourself and setup alerts for your name on a regular basis. Have a fairly common name. Consider using your middle initial or middle name to differentiate. Cultivating a strong personal brand is just as much about being responsive to what is being said as it is about creating intellectual property.

There are basically three people that fit into your personal brand's target audience:
☛ The Person That Will Pay You
☛ The Person That Influences The Person That Pays You
☛ Your Supporter

These next steps will take you through the necessary process of refining your target audience to make your brand implementation more effective:
☛ Identify the person that determines if you can advance.
☛ Create a complete description.
☛ Identify the person's motivations.
☛ Identify your potential opportunities.
☛ Create a game plan.

Identify the person that is in charge in your career. It might be an investor. It might be a client. Or it could be the boss we just mentioned. It could be a specific person that you have in mind or it could be the vision of a person. Whatever it is, identify that person and move to the next step.

Create a complete description of the person. Marketers and business leaders do this all the time with their customers. They put comprehensive descriptions together of their target customers to create detailed, vivid images of the exact person their employees will think about when making every decision in the business. Now, you will do the same with your target audience.

As you build the profile of your target audience you will get inside their head and figure out their motivations. This is important because when you know what this person's motivations are you can help them achieve their goals as a way to achieve your own goals (you get what you give).

Example:
If your target audience is your current boss, the sales team leader. Their motivation might be two-fold:
1) Move up to the next position in the business, which is probably regional sales manager or a similar position.
2) More free time to spend with his or her growing family.

Once you know what motivates your target audience it is time to formulate ways to help them achieve their goals, thus helping yourself achieve your own goals. You can do this on your own, but another way to find opportunities is to go to your target audience and have a conversation with them.

Put together a game plan for taking the opportunities and achieving results. Look at the way others have done things before you. There is no reason to start from scratch. Look for examples within your company. Look for examples outside your company. Take the things others have done to achieve results. See if there is room for any improvements. Then start taking each step to achieve the desired results.

Look at the social media profiles of your target. If it is a real person you can look at theirs and if it is not a real person you can identify a handful of people that fit your description and look at their social media profiles. You are looking at the people this person is following or connected with. The people they follow are people that occupy their attention. Also look at connections.

Create a description of each person that influences your target. Make a description for each of the important connections on social media as well as the people involved in the publications. These descriptions will help you to better understand who these people are and how you can earn their trust and get them to mention you when talking to your target.

Here are the steps to follow to identify the influencers and win their approval:
☛ Identify the influencer
☛ Create descriptions
☛ Create a contact plan

Once you understand who the influencers are and where they are online you can put together your contact plan. This will be your way to connect with the influencer and help them with the things that motivate them.

Finally, we have to remember your support team. These are the people that support you in your effort to move through your professional plan to achieve your brand vision. Supporters can include family members, friends, colleagues, co-workers, mentors and anybody that can offer support as you work your way to your vision.