How to Build your Personal Brand- Blessing Abeng 

Personal branding means creating a unique identity for your personal brand. It is about who you are consistently as your target audience interacts with you. Your concern might be that you’re not a business and don’t have a target audience. However, the truth is that every one of us has a target audience for instance when looking for a job, the companies you look up to for a job are your target audience and a potential client. So you need to evolve from just seeing yourself as an employee looking for a job or an appointment to someone with skills.

In other words, You are your business. The skills you possess are your commodity and your salary is your remuneration.

What can you do to attract your target audience? You do this by paying attention to your strengths and weaknesses and finding out the things you can do well that other people reach out to you for in other words those things you do effortlessly.

Remember, the way you talk about yourself is very important therefore don’t see yourself as valuable or someone who lacks skills. There are things you know that others don’t and vice versa. If people keep coming to you for help about a specific thing, that is definitely your strength therefore make a consistent effort to improve on it. Also, don’t sell yourself short or think less of yourself rather, improve.

When thinking about your personal brand, do not go with the saying “fake it till you make it” rather visualize your dream and future self, compare it with your current self, find out things you need to achieve it, and work towards making it a reality as opposed to “faking it till you make it”. Also document, future employers are looking beyond CVs, and portfolios, and looking out for people with strong personalities to represent their company. Therefore document your learning and challenges, share your work, and collaborate with people who align with your goals, do not build alone.

Don’t trick yourself or shy away from great opportunities just because you are too scared to try. Nobody was born a genius. You have to practice your way into one by showing up every day in your own little way and with time there will be a great difference from your previous self.

In a nutshell, as you think about your personal brand:

1. Take out time to know yourself 
2. Share what you are doing 
3. Don’t underestimate what you know and overestimate what everyone else knows.

Consistently auditioning, sharing content, ideas and showing up every day is the best way to attract a potential employer, when you show up every day doing your thing, you indirectly register your brand and personality in people’s minds in the sense that whenever there’s a need for your skill you come to their mind by default.

Showing up doesn’t mean creating content. Content creation comes in different ways: attending events, partnering with people, challenging yourself to improve, etc. 

Consistency means building a sustainable habit, in the sense that even if you miss a day, you will still continue and persevere until you make it second nature. It literally means not giving up.

Finally, collaborate and work with people who share similar values with you, share the work you do online, and don’t fake it. Instead practice till you become your visualized self, be authentic, document your story, ask for help, and ask questions and it will make sense in the end.