3 Steps to Building a Strong Personal Brand as a Techie

Whether you’re intentional about it or not, you have a personal brand. According to Jeff Bezos ‘’Your personal brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room’’

It’s what people know you for. 

A personal brand is simply a combination of your skills, experience and personality. It is what makes you stand out in your industry. There are many designers, data scientists, software developers in the world but what makes you different from everyone else?

If the question on your mind is ‘’How can you do this?’’, this article was written for you.

Now ask yourself these 3 questions

• Who am I?
• What do I want to be known for?
• What inspires me? 

Take your time to answer these questions sincerely. The answers would help you develop a strong personal brand.

There are 3 important steps to take when building your personal brand. 

1. Identity
2. Communication
3. Credibility

One mistake a lot of people make is that they try to build a personal brand using someone else’s personality. If you do this, you’d end up frustrated because you’re not being yourself. It’s okay to learn from others but don’t lose yourself in the process.

This brings us to the first step. 

• Identity: Who are you? What is your story? One of the reasons we love to celebrate success stories at I4G is because it’s unique to you! Two people cannot have the same story albeit similar. Your story, experiences are unique to you. If you don’t know who you are, you’d never be able to build a strong personal brand because you cannot communicate what you don’t know. What words best describe you? What excites you? What makes you sad? What do you want people to remember you for? After you have figured this out, you would be able to know what impact you want to make.
• Communication: Now that you have figured out who you are and the impact you want to make, you need to communicate. Communication is not just about you! Ask this ‘’What matters to the people I want to impact?’’

At I4G, we want to empower young Africans with tech skills and job opportunities so this affects the kind of content we put out. We think of you in every decision we make. For you, it may be that you want to develop software that improves health care or design applications to teach children with dyslexia. Your focus would be the needs of the people you want to impact. What problems do they have? How can I use my skills to develop solutions for them? 

This would affect your communication style. 

• Credibility: Now that you have decided who you are, the impact you want to make. You need to start building credibility. You can do this by volunteering at organizations that do what you’re passionate about and building your portfolio to position you for what you want. Make sure you share what you know and what you have done online. People cannot know you if you don’t share. Whilst you do this, make sure you give your best to every task, job, gig you get. Do good quality work, your work would speak for itself. One of the fastest ways to get a job is by referrals. As you keep doing this consistently, you are gradually building a strong personal brand.

A strong personal brand isn’t built overnight. You would make mistakes, learn new things, unlearn some things along the way. It’s a process, enjoy it!

As you build your personal brand and share online, tag us @IngressiveForGood we would love to celebrate you every step of the way!

Did you learn something new from this article? Share with us in the comment section