Whether you’re a freelancer; entrepreneur; small business owner; or if you are an employee of a huge company… or maybe the CEO of a huge company; work to develop yourself as a brand.
What does that mean?
Well, in the post I published a couple days ago, it referred to brand as reputation; what you bring to the table; what people can expect from you consistently. But today I want to take that a bit further when referring to the action part of developing yourself as your brand.
Be a Resource
Whatever field you’re in, if you’re passionate about it, develop yourself as a resource. Be an authority in what you’re good at.
Set up a website, a blog where you can consistently put out valuable content that will be helpful to others who are interested in your field. If you’re consistently (and I repeat that, because it’s key) putting out solid content that is of value, you will establish yourself (your brand) as someone who’s an authority in your field; you establish trust; you give people a good idea of what they can expect from you.
And… why are we doing this?
Because if you develop your brand in a positive way, this will only help you do whatever it is you want to accomplish in your professional life. In some of the categories I started the post with, it’s obvious how this only gives you a stronger position in your field. But even if you’re an employee, working for someone else; it still works for your benefit. It builds brand, it builds reputation and that gives you leverage.
Starting a new business; what do you name it?
If you’re starting a business and you want to give it a name (that doesn’t include your name), because you’re hoping maybe at some point you might want to sell it and be filthy rich. That’s fine. Give your business the right name, you don’t have to name it after yourself. But… as you work on developing the brand for your business, still work on developing your own brand.
That will only help you and the business. Yeah, people might think highly of your business, say, Super Duper Helicopters. But, if people also recognize that Super Duper Helicopters is such great business, largely due to the fact that Gary Goodguy (that’s you in this story) or Ronda Rodgers (also you, just wanted to give you a choice) is so great at what they do; again, that gives you leverage in anything you want to do to build the business or any other direction you want to go in the future.
YOURNAME.COM
If you haven’t already done so, try and register your name as a domain. It’s always good to have as an option, maybe a good place to start your blog; the platform where you can establish yourself as an authority; establish trust; develop your brand and gain that leverage. That’s a good thing.
