Why Personal Branding is Important – GEC Business Review

by Rachel Poh

Businesses, whether big of small, that succeed or fail isn’t a big thing nowadays. But, what happens to the entrepreneurs when their businesses are gone? Yes, the answer is that they will be able to regain momentum quickly if they have built their own brand concurrently while operating their business.

Indeed, a personal branding can always be leveraged by an entrepreneur to regain momentum, capture attention and even start a new venture even quicker than the previous one. Some classical examples such as Meg Whitman (CEO of Hewlett-Packard), Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos.com) and even Carol Bartz (former CEO of Yahoo!) have built a strong personal brand. As for Carol’s case, simply everyone knows who she is—better or worse. Nonetheless, the bottom line is, whether they have a sense of credibility and prestige that one trusts and respects.

So, whether you are an entrepreneur or employee, you should build a strong personal brand if you want a long-term career as a business owner.

The media is always interested in hearing stories from individuals or entrepreneurs who are in different stages of business creation and development. In order to have media exposures, you need to become an expert in something that relates to your current company. For instance, if you start a social network for a housing developer, you can become a social media expert; if you advise business owners in starting up franchise businesses, you can become a franchise expert. In other words, you can become an expert in any industry. Most importantly, it will work in a particular proficiency and expertise.

Brand Yourself by Creating a Social Media Universe

Building a strong personal brand by creating your very own social media universe is essential. Such universe should go wide, covering more than just Blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more, it will be the fastest way. Simply a click, when someone goes to search for you, your name probably, what comes up? Therefore, your domain names should go under (yourname.com) or (facebook.com/yourname).

Your blog should promote and link back to your company website. It should have synergies among your social pages, press release links, articles that you have written, and a bio depicts you as an expert in a particular field. The agenda will be accomplished in such way: if an event organizer is interested in having you give a speech, or if someone is looking to interview you for a story … show time!

Brand Yourself by Associating with Big Brands

The best way to get famous is to align yourself to big brands. Having said that, you need to find ways where you can create meaningful two way relationships with big brands and you. By associating yourself with big brands, both you and your company will start to gain more attention, which will drive personal branding exposure.