Do you want to boost your career or business? Personal branding will allow you to enhance your image to stand out from the crowd and increase your visibility. More than a fashionable marketing concept, personal branding helps you achieve your professional goals. Charlotte Michelin explains how and why you can rely on your personality to control your image.
If I ask you to think about what is necessary to succeed in your professional life, you will perhaps spontaneously think of assets such as intelligence, a good ability to learn, the ambition to accomplish great things or even skills. social skills that help develop strong relationships. However, you are obscuring an essential aspect: your personality.
Poorly managed, it can cause great damage to your career or your business: inappropriate anger, brutal thinking, systematic lateness, sloppy dress... But used well, it can also be a real springboard for your professional success.
Your personality, that part of you that your loved ones love – or not – and forgive in the private sphere, will not benefit from the same clemency or the same patience from those you meet at work.
No second chance to make a good first impression
When you meet someone for the first time, that person will form an image of you in just a few seconds. An image that will be almost definitive! Did you know it takes six months to erase that first impression? Six months is a long time and almost irreversible if you've left a bad impression. The good news is that you can avoid this faux pas thanks to personal branding, which is also called personal marketing or self-marketing.
Faced with the competition, stand out with personal branding!
Today, the art of communicating your professional image has become essential to face increased competition in the job market. And this, all sectors of activity combined. This is why personal branding is extremely effective in setting you apart from your peers and highlighting your difference in your professional field.
But what exactly does personal branding consist of?
Personal branding is above all:
- Know yourself well and communicate effectively
- Manage and take care of your digital identity
- Create the right connections around you
Focus on your personality
Your personality is the basis of your “professional DNA” : this is what allows you to make a difference with equal skills and to show yourself in your best light by talking about yourself with sincerity and authenticity.
No need to have 15 years of business expertise, the most important thing is tobe aware of your strengths and weaknesses. It is very rewarding to share the highlights of your journey and why you are where you are today. Your culture and values also provide a differentiating element in the energy of a company and should be subtly integrated during your discussions.
Promoting your personality means highlighting a key element that belongs only to you and that no one else will be able to match. Where a professional skill is replaceable, your character remains unique.
Cultivate your soft skills
Your soft skills are your human and relational skills, your interpersonal skills, your tastes and your natural adaptability. Nowadays, agility is at the heart of organizations: your creativity, your good stress management or your sense of collectiveness constitute major assets and driving forces within a team. These soft skills are among the skills most sought after by recruiters or partners.
Transpose your mad skills
Your mad skills are skills acquired during your leisure time and which are transposable in the professional world. Choose one or two that illustrate your temperament. Have you backpacked around the world alone, are you a fan of paragliding, do you practice a sport or art with a high level of excellence…? Explain how these disciplines and personal experiences accentuate your added value.
Take care of your digital image
Your digital image, or web footprint, is all the traces you leave online (personal blogs, social networks, etc.). However, it has become very common to “Google” a person before meeting them or even before contacting them. Recruiters are not immune to this trend…
Better then check the information circulating about you. To do this, I advise you to carry out your audit on the Internet:
- type your first and last name in the search bar;
- check whether the information or images that emerge among the results are consistent;
- if this is not the case, it will be necessary to “clean” certain things…
Be careful, therefore, with social networks lifestyle like Instagram and Facebook. The content is not always very professional and should be blocked. Keep in mind that we create first impressions every day, both in real life and online! Be vigilant about the digital traces you may leave.
Work on your network!
You are awesome and maybe even the best in your field. But if no one sees you, no one will ever know... So come out of hiding!
Get used to being in contact with others in a targeted and timely manner according to your areas of professional development. So, you could attend conferences, specific evenings or even meet-ups... Once or twice a month to start, that's enough to create a link and meet interesting people.
To develop relationships in a positive and personalized way :
- firstly, take an interest in others, ask open-ended questions;
- secondly, talk about yourself to create synergies.
Stand out from the crowd while remaining yourself
Remember the essential: it is important to know yourself well in order to be able to exploit the strengths of your personality. This is what will allow you:
- to stand out from the crowd by remaining yourself;
- and, at the same time, to create an environment around you that suits you and in which you will not have to disguise yourself.
Each course is different: it’s up to you to play to show that the real added value is you.
