8 Strategies for Developing a Strong Personal Brand
Creating a strong personal brand can help you stand out, establish credibility and advance your career.
As an entrepreneur, you can use your personal brand to your advantage in several ways. It’s an expression of your values, personality and unique selling proposition (USP) that can help you stand out from the competition. In the digital age we live in now, it’s important to have a strong personal brand if you want to be successful in business and stay relevant in a crowded market.
According to studies, a person’s personal brand can significantly impact both the reputation of their employer and their career success. For example:
- A study by LinkedIn found that professionals with a strong personal brand are more likely to be hired and promoted. The study found that “50% of professionals with a strong personal brand received interest from new employers compared to only 14% of those with a weak personal brand.”
- A survey conducted by CareerBuilder found that “57% of employers are less likely to interview a candidate they can’t find online.” This highlights the importance of having a strong online presence and personal brand.
- A study by Weber Shandwick found that “49% of executives believe a strong CEO personal brand is critical to their company’s overall reputation.” This highlights the importance of personal branding not only for individuals but also for the companies they represent.
- A study by HubSpot found that “companies with a strong CEO personal brand generate 11% more shareholder return than their competitors.”
These studies show how personal branding can affect professional success and a company’s reputation. By building a strong personal brand, entrepreneurs can set themselves apart from their competitors, gain credibility and help their businesses succeed.
Strategies for developing your personal brand
To build a strong personal brand, you should spend time and energy building your brand identity, establishing your online presence, creating compelling content, networking and collaborating, being genuine and consistent, developing your leadership skills, embracing your unique point of view and asking for feedback.
1. Define your brand identity
The basis of your personal brand is your brand identity. Your unique selling proposition (USP), personality and values are all included. Asking yourself questions like, “What do I stand for?” will help you define your brand identity. What values do I hold? What distinguishes me from my rivals?
2. Establish your online presence
In today’s digital age, building your brand online is crucial. Convey your expertise and add value to your readers’ lives by creating a website or blog. You can reach your target audience and spread your message by using social media like Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
3. Create compelling content
With the help of content marketing, you can establish your brand and yourself as a leader in your field. Make blog posts, videos or podcasts that are interesting to your audience and showcase your expertise.
4. Network and collaborate
Networking and working with other people can help you build your reputation and connect with other leaders in your field. By attending conferences, joining professional groups, or participating in online communities, you can meet other business owners and grow your network.
5. Be authentic and consistent
Being honest and reliable is crucial to winning over your audience. Don’t stray too far from your brand’s identity and values in your content and messaging. Your listeners will value your sincerity and credibility highly.
6. Develop your leadership skills
Leadership skills are highly correlated with the reputation you’ve built for yourself as an entrepreneur. You can become an industry leader by inspiring and motivating your team, sharing your vision with them and making strategic decisions. Finding a mentor or coach, participating in a leadership development program, or reading material on the topic can all help you grow as a leader. Focus on improving your emotional intelligence, strategic thinking and communication skills to become a better leader and build your personal brand.
7. Embrace your unique perspective
Your original perspective sets you apart from other professionals in your field. Recognize the value of your unique perspective and employ it to set yourself apart. Communicate your point of view through your messages and articles.
8. Seek feedback
If you want to fix any flaws in your message, you need to hear what people think. Your target audience, coworkers and mentors can give you feedback that can help you build and keep your personal brand.
If they want to succeed in business, entrepreneurs must build a solid personal brand. The time and effort you put into developing your brand identity, online presence, content creation, networking and collaboration skills, authenticity and consistency, leadership skills, a unique perspective and feedback will pay off in the form of a strong personal brand that sets you apart in your industry.
Building a name for yourself in the business world can only help you in the long run. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it in the end. Building a solid personal brand can lead to increased professional credibility, trust and success. Using the aforementioned methods, you can establish a solid personal brand that will set you apart in your field and aid you in reaching your objectives.
Read on Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/starting-a-business/why-personal-branding-matters-for-entrepreneurs/449028
Don’t Let Your Organization Become Stagnant — Learn How to Innovate with These 5 Tips
Reinvent or risk stagnation — why leaders need to keep their people innovating, and how.
What do you think of when you hear the word “stagnation?” I always imagine stagnant water, not moving or flowing, but simply sitting there, rotting and attracting bacteria and flies. Stagnation is a dangerous state for water because water is meant to keep moving for life to flourish.
The same could be said for any individual or organization. What happens to a person when they stop moving, growing to their full potential and innovating for the betterment of themselves and society? The same thing happens when a company stops growing and innovating — they become vulnerable to being left behind while others keep moving. Competitors step in to do better, while stagnant companies struggle to remain relevant and successful. For a company to flourish, leaders need to keep their people innovating.
The dangers of stagnation
The business world is constantly evolving and growing increasingly competitive. In today’s business climate, stagnation has serious consequences for companies and the people responsible for keeping them running. Stop innovating, and we risk falling behind our competitors. In their search to gain more of the market, they are constantly trying to figure out how to offer better products or services or find more efficient or cost-effective ways of doing business. Constant innovation is how we stay ahead and remain a leader in the field. If our competitors provide what we do but better, we lose customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Stagnation can also lead to a lack of excitement and motivation among employees. Without new challenges or opportunities for growth, employees may become disengaged. Stop innovating, and they may look for opportunities elsewhere to develop their talents and advance their career.
Without innovation, we risk becoming obsolete. Our products or services no longer meet the needs of our customers, or new technologies render them outdated. Only by constantly innovating can we stay relevant and ensure our products or services continue to meet the needs of our customers.
How to inspire creativity in yourself and your team
Innovation is also how companies stay competitive, meet the needs and expectations of customers, engage and motivate employees, and remain relevant in an ever-changing world. Leaders can avoid the dangers of stagnation by encouraging creative thinking among themselves and their people. Here are five ways to start:
1. Set aside dedicated time for disruption. This can be a specific time of day or a set number of hours per week, but make sure to schedule this time specifically for coming up with new ideas
2. Encourage a growth mindset. When we believe our intelligence, abilities, talents and even interests to be learnable, and ourselves capable of learning through effort and improvement, we are more likely to succeed. With a growth mindset, we see every challenge as a learning opportunity. We become more adaptable, resilient and constantly looking for ways to improve. Embrace and encourage ongoing learning and growth to help stay open to new ideas and approaches.
3. Seek out new experiences and perspectives. Travel. Try new hobbies. Engage with people from different backgrounds and cultures. By exposing ourselves and our teams to new experiences and perspectives, we expand our ways of understanding the world, which will spark new ideas and approaches.
4. Set specific, achievable goals. Setting clear, achievable goals helps us stay focused and motivated, giving us a sense of purpose and accomplishment as we progress. We can also set goals to help meet targets for creativity and innovation efforts.
5. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals. Not to say everyone should be the same, and diversity plays a critical role in innovation, but we should aim to surround ourselves with people genuinely interested in creativity and innovation. Their inspiration and motivation will echo between us both and those around us. Join or start a creative group or look to network with like-minded individuals.
Diversity sustains innovation
A well-rounded, diverse team with a broad range of perspectives, experiences and backgrounds breaks up patterns of stagnation before they start, resulting in more innovative and creative solutions and sustaining a more innovative and dynamic team. Greater diversity of thought brings a greater variety of ideas and approaches to problem-solving. Teams of employees with a wide range of backgrounds and expertise have solved a wider range of problems, which translates to new approaches to tackle opportunities from multiple angles, identify new opportunities and craft more effective solutions.
Their range of life experiences, cultural backgrounds and personal interests can all contribute to a more creative and innovative team. Even their communication styles and approaches may be different, which can foster more open and inclusive communication. A 2021 study found that effectively learning to communicate and manage culturally diverse environments positively impacts an employee’s sustainable innovation behavior and performance. This higher cultural intelligence also fosters better collaboration and teamwork, helping to break down any barriers that might stand in the way of creative thought.
In today’s competitive world, the ability to stay adaptable is critical. Pivoting can save a business — especially when it’s stale. Leaders should strive to inspire themselves and others to remain creative and innovative, encouraging new ideas and approaches with a well-rounded team of diverse perspectives, expertise, communication styles, and life experiences for more creative and effective solutions. Eliminating stagnation and fostering sustained innovation keeps an organization stay dynamic, forward-thinking, and thriving.
Read on Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/5-ways-to-invigorate-innovation-in-a-stagnant-organization/447998
If You Want to Be a Good Leader, Understand The Link Between Business Values and Leadership
Let’s look at two different lessons about leadership and corporate values:
In 1982, Johnson and Johnson (J&J) discovered that someone had contaminated their Tylenol Extra Strength capsules in at least half a dozen Chicago pharmacies and grocery stores. Because of their corporate values committed to public safety, J&J leadership responded immediately: warned customers to stop consuming it, halted advertising and removed all Tylenol from store shelves until they could determine the extent of the tampering.
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig platform exploded, and its owner, British Petroleum (BP), realized it had a leak. Company officials first reported the leak volume was low, but when the rig sunk days later and eleven workers died, investigations into BP’s practices found they took shortcuts, cut corners and ignored early warning signs. Its leadership was dishonest from the get-go, and to recover, the company had to revisit and update its corporate values.
Business values are the guiding principles that shape an organization’s culture and inform its decisions and actions. Good leadership, in turn, is essential for aligning an organization’s actions with its values and creating a positive and productive culture.
Read the full article, and click the logo below:
Are You Tired of Losing Valuable Employees? Here’s How to Train and Build Leaders From Within Your Team
Creating a leadership pipeline within an organization can save a company — here’s how to do it.
Losing good people is expensive. In 2017, Gallup estimated replacing one employee to cost anywhere from half to double that person’s annual salary. That translates to between $660,000 to $2.6 million per year for a 100-person organization with an average salary of $50,000.
That costly burden makes it even harder to survive in a competitive labor market, and today’s market is more competitive than ever. According to a 2020 study by Crayon, a market and competitive intelligence tools supplier, 90% of businesses surveyed feel the market has become more competitive; 48% of respondents said it had become “much more” competitive. Add in an exhausted workforce and fears of recession, and most companies today would struggle to survive the loss of good people.
Company founders and executives depend on their leadership teams for stability. While we as leaders try our best to build loyalty and engagement to keep them, we also need a plan if it ever comes down to having to replace them. Record-breaking quit rates are only finally starting to slow down. Considering how costly and difficult it is to attract and recruit high-quality talent to replace those who leave, everyone should aim to train and recruit leaders from within. This way, we not only offer them a reason to stay with our company, but we also develop their talent and potential contribution to it.
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
Diversity Is Not the Same to Everyone. Here’s Why That Matters
If companies want to reap the benefits of diversity in its truest form, it’s time to consider diversifying it.
I know I’m not the typical picture of diversity. However, growing up in communist Poland offered me a unique approach to problems and solutions that most businesspeople I meet today never consider. Diversity of thought — combining our differences to cover as many diverse perspectives as possible in our decision-making — is where companies find the most benefits.
While diversity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups are important, being truly diverse takes more thought than people realize. To truly experience greater diversity, we need to eliminate bias, go beyond what diversity looks like and choose the people that bring something new to the table.
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
How to Stay Calm in a Crisis and Lead Your Team Through Anything
Calmness is the key to leading through a crisis — leaders who stay calm can get their teams through anything.
The pandemic brought a wave of global uncertainties: supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, rising prices and an oncoming recession. Crisis after crisis has characterized the 2020s.
When facing so much uncertainty, it can be easy to worry about the future. That worry often then becomes doubt, which can quickly spiral into panic. And when we panic, we usually rush. But try to take a step back and think of your last rushed decision that ended up being a good one; panic is never a good foundation for making healthy decisions. Calmness, on the other hand, is the key to leading others through a crisis. Leaders who can stay calm can get their teams through anything.
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
How to Best Recruit Board Members Outside of Your Industry
The value of board members from outside your industry cannot be understated – here’s why.
ew individuals are experts in everything. Even the cumulative expertise in most businesses could use input from more experts in diverse areas. This is why we have boards — a panel of experts in areas that fill in the gaps in our existing company knowledge base.
But even once we find the right group of experts from our industry to take a seat on our board, we would still stand to benefit from the wisdom of more diverse perspectives and experiences. Their range of successes and failures becomes additional resources to put together more tried and tested strategies in the face of new challenges.
Outside board members can bring a lot to a company, but to find the right ones for the job, we need to know what to look for:
Related: How Board Members Can Help You Through a Recession
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
How Board Members Can Help You Through a Recession
With recession looming, having a strong board is now more important than ever.
First, COVID-19. Then, health mandates. Add in choked-up supply chains, the Russia-Ukraine war, rising prices, interest rates, and inflation. Economists are starting to unite around the prediction — a recession is inevitable.
No one has a crystal ball, and the future seems more uncertain than ever, but if we break these problems down (e.g., pandemics, war, and rising food and fuel prices leading to a recession), we realize that many of us have lived through similar challenges before. Either we made it out on the other side alive and thriving, or we made mistakes and learned what not to do. These insights are valuable for getting through this next round of uncertainty.
Alone, a business owner can see issues from a limited amount of angles. Especially as first-time leaders, it can be hard to think outside the box with little experience to reference. But, with a board, its members’ expertise can help in more informed decision-making. Leaders can lean into the diverse range of expertise their board members have — their “been there, done that’s” — to tackle challenges and opportunities better and get their company through even the toughest of times, including the oncoming recession.
Related: Building a Better Board: 5 Things Every New Board Member Should Know
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
Finding the Right Board Members for Your Company is Crucial to Success. Here’s How to Do it.
Finding the right board members for your company is an important task. Here’s what to consider.
Once upon a time, a new startup rushed through the process of bringing board members into their company. Its leaders were young and inexperienced. They went through the process without third-party guidance or a deep dive interview with candidates. They met smooth-talking members looking to be partners and were sold on something grand, but what the candidates delivered was the total opposite.
The partners’ experience was less than they let on. Their mission, vision and values were out of alignment with those of the existing members. Things quickly started to fall apart and the startup founders suffered through years of pain before the company eventually dissolved.
I’ve heard this story many times in my job guiding board formation. So many leaders lament that fewer mistakes would have been made if they had just had connections to more of the right people who matched up with their company’s core values, ambitions and guidance to vet those candidates.
“But none of that happened,” they tell me. “We signed papers and got screwed.”
Not many founders consider their board’s composition, but taking the time and care to cultivate a board of inside and outside perspectives across diverse experiences can be a company’s number one predictor of success. Building a board is a big deal for your company’s success and must be done correctly. Here’s how to do it right.
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
The Time for Outside Board Members is Now
Outside board members are the x-factor that will propel your company out of times of crisis.
Outside board members have always been a necessity, but today they are more important than ever. When a company can turn to a board with a broad diversity of insights and with members from outside the company, they receive guidance that can be the advantage they need to survive tough times. Nowadays, it seems like times are only getting tougher.
As problems increasingly have global repercussions, every decision we make could make or break a business. Outside board insights have always been a necessary consideration for staying agile and strengthening decision-making power, but now, those insights are becoming indispensable. To be more in an uncertain future, bring on outside board members for a broader selection of expertise to fill a company’s gaps and the best chance of coming through anything on top.
Related: Why E-Commerce Businesses Need to Rethink Their Channel Strategy
Look outside your company for the best fit
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
