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Branding isn’t just for businesses. You can build your brand as well. Personal branding is a way to make a presence so that people see your skills and abilities. If you are looking to advance your career, personal branding is exactly what you need. Building your brand will help increase your career.
I’ve been in the technology industry for 10+ years, focusing significantly on software testing. It was only four years ago that I started blogging. Before that, my only writing experience was minor stuff that I had written in elementary, high school, and college. When I first started blogging, my articles were about software development and testing. Eventually, I branched out to articles with career advice tips—most of my pieces for both tech and business center around personal experiences. So, I created a space for myself where I became the subject matter expert.
Here are my top 3 tips for creating your brand:
Learn and Explore
You have a niche. It is something unique if you may not have discovered it yet. If you are trying to advance in your career, the best thing to do is find out what you are great at. It should also coincide with something you like about your job.
For example, if you are a front-end web developer, that means you are responsible for the layout and design of a website. You are probably familiar with CSS, JavaScript, or HTML. You’re probably also familiar with liquid, fluid, or responsive design. That’s great, but you must dig deeper and learn more about them.
Research to learn more and think outside your job description and your experience. Practice anything new you’ve learned on your own to come from “real world” experience.
Combine these new things you’ve learned with the things you already know and boom! Not only does this strategy help create better blog posts, but it helps you to advance your career.
It also makes for better conversations in meetings, simply because you’ve become the subject matter expert at the table!
Write and Educate
You can write if you feel like you don’t, either research or take a class. I’d recommend writing workshops if you feel like paying for writing classes. There are some online and in-person classes. There are also one on one lessons.
When you start writing, you may have many first drafts, and that’s OK. You may go days where you are working on the same article, which is also OK. If you are writing to educate others, you must do everything to ensure that your essay is clear and concise.
You also must ensure that it is filled with great examples and works cited where necessary. You should also decide who your audience is for your niche, beginners or advanced. I like writing for both.
If I feel an article should be more advanced, I’ll write a “part 2” as well. This works out great for three reasons: beginners can follow both pieces and understand them both, advanced users can skip to the second article, and you’ll have another blog post under your belt. You should ensure that the seats are linked to one another so that users can click back and forth when necessary.
Publish and Social Network It
You must believe in yourself! Everything starts with self-belief. Imagine me virtually grabbing you and shaking you like the guy from the movie “Airplane” when the woman began to panic. I’m telling you to get yourself together—you can do this!
To test the waters of self-publishing your articles, you can create a personal blog on sites such as tumblr.com or wordpress.org and publish.
You can publish an article on LinkedIn to immediately reach followers within your industry to see what they may be interested in reading.
Creating your blog gives you the ability to generate sample articles to showcase. Once you’ve gotten comfortable, I suggest that you contact any publication that you read daily. Or google publications within your niche to see if they accept contributing writers. Read their guidelines on contributing and submitting articles. After your pieces are public, ensure you “social network” them. Post them on every platform. It would help if you also asked the people you know to do the same.
Creating your brand is not difficult. You’ve probably been doing it already simply by asking for LinkedIn recommendations.
It’s important to know that to stay relevant in your industry, and you must continuously be focused on doing everything to create and enhance your brand. I like to tell people, “don’t just be job smart, be career smart.” Make sure you significantly impact your career so that you are valuable. You shouldn’t just be trying to secure yourself a job; you should be guaranteeing yourself a future.
