Avoid These 10 Personal Branding Mistakes
If you want to make more money, it’s not enough to just be an expert in your space. In addition to being good at what you do, you also need the right kind of attention in the right amounts as well. If people don’t know about you, they won’t ever buy from you. However, in the journey of starting and building a personal brand, it’s easy to make certain mistakes that can hold you back. So avoid these 10 personal branding mistakes so that you can grow faster, easier, and more successfully.
1. NOT CARING ABOUT YOUR BRAND
If you don’t believe that you have a brand and don’t care about it, you are unintentionally letting someone else define it for you. Your brand is what comes to mind when someone thinks of you. It’s what comes up when someone searches your name on Google. So if you don’t care about your brand and don’t do anything about it, other people will create it for you. And the problem with doing that is that the narrative other people create can be either positive or negative. If you choose to ignore your personal brand, be prepared for negative attention.
2. THINKING YOUR BRAND IS YOUR LOGO
Although your brand may have a logo, that doesn’t mean that your brand is your logo. Your logo is simply an image that represents your brand. The actual value of your personal brand is just that–personal to who you are. So even if you have a personal brand, if you are doing nothing besides making a logo and putting it on top of your content, you are doing little to help accelerate the growth of your personal brand.
3. NOT HAVING A PLAN
Too many people create a social media page or website and then call it a day. However, if you’re not actively putting in the work, creating a plan, and sticking to it, it’s likely that nothing is actually happening. Creating a plan is as simple as this:
Creating a social media content strategy
Planning out your schedule and sticking to it
Sharing one valuable piece of content every week with your clients
Making a plan doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s just important to have one and commit to it.
4. NOT USING SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is one of the best ways to share your personal brand with the world. It’s free, it’s accessible, and everyone has it. In most cases, your clients are already there waiting for you to make an appearance. By not using it, you are missing out on countless opportunities to network, meet clients, and share all about the personal side of your brand.
5. NOT SHARING WHAT YOU KNOW WITH OTHERS
Many entrepreneurs have this misconception that if they share too many secrets of their industry with their followers, they will lose clients because of all the free information being posted. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. The more ‘secrets’ you share online, the more likely someone will want to hire or buy from you. The reason for this is because if it’s obvious to the world that you are an expert, it will also be obvious that there is even more valuable and exclusive information for those who buy from you. People who refuse to share valuable information for free also aren’t likely to offer much for a price, and your audience knows this. So by keeping everything a secret, you are also keeping clients away.
6. BEING INCONSISTENT WITH YOUR MESSAGE
You cannot preach one thing and then change your mind about it the next week or even month. It’s important for you to stick with one theme, your main values, and the main message that you wish to share. If you are too indecisive and inconsistent with your messaging, your audience will pick up on that and feel confused. It’s an easy way to lose your audience, so make sure to stick with one message.
7. LACKING AUTHENTICITY
When you become an entrepreneur, all you want to do is flaunt your success, right? I feel that too sometimes. I want to share all my successes and great things I’ve achieved, however, the problem with that is that it isn’t authentic to the true story. In real day-to-day life, we deal with rejections, failures, and bad days. It’s important to share some of our real-life sometimes. If all you do is try to look good, your audience will pick up on that and distance themselves from you. It becomes harder to build a connection, so make sure to stay authentic when you build your personal brand.
8. SEEING YOUR BRAND AS SEPARATE FROM THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
Your personal brand is not synonymous with ‘company’, and this is a mistake many people make. As I always say, your personal brand is personal. It is when you combine your brand with your personal self. If you believe that you can keep your brand separate from the rest of your life, you risk disconnecting from your audience. One of the key components of building a personal brand is to share your key values, stories, and experiences, and unless you want to lie, it’s not possible for these to be separate from your personal life.
9. IGNORING THE COMPETITION
It’s easy to hate on our competitors, but doing so is counter-productive. Instead of hating on them and ignoring them, it’s important to take a look at what they are doing and learn from them. Why is their personal brand so successful? What are they doing that you’re not? Maybe you can build a partnership with them. There are so many useful things you can do, and ignoring your competitors can be detrimental to the growth of your own personal brand.
10. THINKING THAT PERSONAL BRANDING DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU
Personal branding is not just something that ‘doesn’t work’. Tying in with my very first point, everyone has a personal brand, whether you built it yourself or someone else did it for you with their opinion of you. If you feel that personal branding isn’t working for you, you should look at it from a different perspective. Why do you feel that way? Maybe you don’t know how to grow your brand. Maybe you don’t know the best plan to follow. Maybe it is taking too much of your time. Or maybe you just don’t enjoy it. These are all valid concerns. An easy solution is to first take a look as to why personal branding is important, and then consider asking for help.
DON’T MISS OUT
Personal branding can be a great way to build your career and business, but there are mistakes to avoid along the way. By avoiding them you can achieve a much stronger personal brand and bring in more customers, clients, and cash flow in the long run. If you want help growing your brand, need a plan, and want someone to take you to the next level, apply for a free call here for us to give you the results that you’ve been looking for.
