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- Personal branding is the soul of your brand.
- Make a business plan.
- Check with your network of contacts.
Developing our personal branding ( personal brand ) is gaining popularity not only among the Baby Boomers and Generation X generations, but also among the youngest such as millennial entrepreneurs .
The statistics prove it: Mexican millennial entrepreneurs are becoming the group that registers an accelerated growth.
According to data published by the digital magazine Entrepreneur:
33 percent of entrepreneurs in Mexico are between 25 and 34 years old.
- 66 percent of entrepreneurs are men and the remaining 34, women.
- 52 percent of the businesses are operated from home.
- 1 out of 3 Mexicans who want to start a business stays in the attempt.
Now, if we were to ask the hundreds of thousands of successful millennial entrepreneurs what the key to their success is, I imagine many would mention that they have a personal branding strategy .
Are you a millennial entrepreneur What is part of this new productive and driving force in Mexico?
Then, you will be interested in knowing the following definitive personal branding guide that you can follow to achieve a good position in the market.
1. Personal branding is the soul of your brand
As an entrepreneur, it is essential to know in depth who you are, what you do and what you offer, including both your weaknesses and your strengths.
This exercise will help you to detect your personal branding (personal brand) understood as the perception that others have of you.
Photo: Amarnath Tade via Unsplash
To achieve self – knowledge of your entrepreneurship, I suggest you ask yourself the following question:
What distinguishes me from others?
To be able to differentiate yourself you must be able to answer this question: Why would they buy from me and from anyone else?
2. Make a business plan
An essential condition for your personal brand to transmit coherence and harmony from the beginning is to develop a business plan .
What is the business plan ?
It is a document where you include:
- The objectives of your venture
- The strategies to achieve these objectives (the personal branding strategy enters here )
- The organizational structure (if you will have collaborators)
- An estimate of the initial investment
- A communication manual
You will try to create a vision of your entrepreneurship and write the ideas, implications and routes that will make it grow. Learn in this article what are the 8 benefits of having a personal branding.
3. Check with your network of contacts
Contact your network of contacts (friends, family, former university colleagues, colleagues from the last job) so that you can find three things in them: inspiration, success stories based on their own experience and your first clients.
Your network of contacts is the most important asset you have when you start your business.
Photo: Trent Erwin via Unsplash
Little by little, the synergy you achieve by connecting with those people who are around you will help them to recommend your business in the medium term and become your promoters.
But to achieve this, you must always keep in mind the following point:
4. Projects a professional image
To connect with the audience that will give life and value to your business, you have to decide to project a professional image from the beginning.
If you want to build a professional image that gives credibility to your venture, Experts recommend that you pay special attention to the following points:
Photo: bruce mars via Unsplash
Dress for success
Dress for success refers precisely to placing emphasis on visual presentation, which to be effective, must consider the place, audience, type of event and the message you want to send. Remember that the first impression is never forgotten. Another point to consider is the turn in which you work since the traditional or modern of your arrangement and clothing will depend on them. If your business is focused on digital, creative areas, marketing or communications, clothing can be more relaxed, modern and disruptive; not as sober as what would be recommended for the entrepreneur working in finance or law.
Be authentic
Consider reflecting some of your personality in the way you dress, find your personal style . If it is difficult for you to find it, we recommend you go to an image consultant who will help you to do so as well as highlight your best features
Be congruent
It’s funny, but the professional image can be the main ingredient for a person to be memorable. People can come to associate a personal brand with a certain type of arrangement, clothing, gestures, postures, phrases and vice versa. That is why it is very important that you learn to build magnetic messages through the way you dress, which always has to be in accordance with what you do and what you do.
5. Take advantage of social media for personal branding
I suppose that as a millennial entrepreneur you live online in the world of social networks.
Right?
That is a great advantage.
However, to achieve effective personal branding it is not necessary only to “be” present in them and build a community of followers, but to “interact” within them. This is known as a social media strategy for personal branding.
How can you build successful personal branding on social media?
Photo: Erik Lucatero via Unsplash
Here we list some tips:
- Know the social networks that your audience focuses on.
- Choose the channel (s) where you will promote and promote your personal brand. Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest, each of them has its own personality and is an effective tool for your personal branding strategy.
- Create a professional and creative profile on the network you have chosen , taking great care of the quality of the photography, the good spelling and the description of what you do. Remember to talk more about the benefits that your product or service offers and less about its characteristics.
- Define your personal brand image (name, logo, feed design, color palette and typography). Consistency is essential to build highly effective personal branding .
- Create and share useful, original, relevant and attractive content.
- Interact with your community, as it is the only way to grow in social networks and to consolidate more and more and in a better way your personal brand. This is achieved by replying to each message and thanking them when they share our content.
conclusion
The success of personal branding is the result of the work that you must do every day so that your business can go as far as you want.
It is the result that is obtained with dedication, planning and, above all, disposition, since projecting to others the image you want and that identifies you will take some time.
But once you do it and see how you managed to make a positive difference to others, you will know that all the effort was worth it.
