Overcoming The 3 Common Pitfalls of Personal Branding
In his best-selling book, 'Known,' Mark Schaefer offers these key building blocks for establishing a personal brand:
1. Identify your sustainable interest: Your sustainable interest is the thing you are motivated towards and uniquely equipped to offer an audience that they need right now.
2. Pay attention to click moments: These are those moments in life when your interests align with an opportunity. Click moments can give you a first-mover advantage.
3. Find seams: These are important trends and opportunities or, as Mark calls them, "fractures in the status quo."
4. Settle on a natural content format and channel, then show up consistently: For content to stand out, it should be "Resonant, Interesting, Timely, Entertaining or Superior."
These sound simple. Yet, according to Mark, there are three key places many people get stuck when building their personal brands. They are: Identifying a sustainable interest, developing content consistently and knowing if it's all working.
These pitfalls were the focus of a group discussion I led recently along with Mark and Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez at the Uprising, a retreat for marketing leaders put on by Mark Schaefer each year. If you have always wanted to build a personal brand but have concerns and feel stuck, this article is for you. Let me share some of the insights we recently discussed with a room full of marketing leaders who, like you and I, also struggle to build and maintain their personal brands.
Before we address the three common pitfalls, let's quickly cover why having a personal brand is important, particularly now.
Why Personal Branding is So Vital Now
As I mentioned in my previous article, The Motivation (and Guidance) To Build Your Personal Brand Now, we live in an era of information saturation. AI-generated content is now proliferating across the digital landscape, and deepfakes are on the rise. In fact, estimates claim that up to 10% of all content online is already AI-generated, and that number is growing. With all the noise, how can consumers know who to trust and what to pay attention to? As Mark Schaefer explains, "The personal brand is now everything; it is our only hope of transcending AI and remaining relevant."
Beyond the role of personal branding in building trust and helping us stand out amidst the noise, having a personal brand also helps professionals become more valuable to themselves and their organizations. Having an audience you can tap into and being known as an authority in some way not only helps validate us, but it also allows us to compete better for new clients, positions and promotions. With this understanding, let's dive into the first major pitfall of personal branding: identifying a sustainable interest.
Overcoming Pitfall #1: Identifying Your Sustainable Interest
I compare identifying your personal brand with writing a hit song because it rarely happens on the first try. Instead, it takes time and effort to resonate with an audience and develop a point of view that is truly impactful. It is like finding the right stage and beginning to play for the right people. To develop a personal brand, you must share insights consistently with a community that values those insights and wants to connect with you personally.
In truth, building a personal brand takes time and self-discovery. Along the way, you may find yourself wrestling with imposter syndrome and wondering whether you have what it takes. These are the common questions that I wrestled with, and you may have too:
What is my unique contribution? Do I truly have something special to offer?
Will anyone care about what I have to say?
How can I find a niche and stick with it?
If I focus on one thing, won't I be missing other opportunities?
These are tough questions, for sure. On that last question, I'm reminded of what brand positioning expert Andy Cunningham says, "If you try to be everything to everyone, you'll end up being nothing to no one."
The fact is, we all have something to offer and are unique in our own way. The difficulty is often finding the bullseye at the center of our interest, our insight and the needs of an audience. This is especially hard as we're often told to "follow our passions" or "start with why." While those are helpful guides in some things, applying them to personal branding often leaves people stuck without a clear roadmap for their personal brand.
Here is how I discovered my niche and got clarity on my sustainable interest and how you can do it, too:
Relevance: Keep up with what is happening and how it impacts those you seek to serve
Interest: Pay attention to what burdens you and what you need to say
Uniqueness: Understand how this burden often relates to your own story and purpose
Feedback: Start offering help and adjust your focus and approach as you get feedback
As a founder turned 18-year B2B marketing leader, the struggles of entrepreneurs and marketers affect me, and I want to help them. I took an unconventional path in building my career, which provides a unique perspective on the problems these professionals face today. Using the steps above and through trial and error, I discovered a niche: Helping small to medium-sized B2B founders and marketers succeed when they are under pressure to perform with little time or budget.
Once you've found your place, the question becomes, how can you start to build momentum for your personal brand? Let's deal with that next.
Overcoming Pitfall #2: Building Momentum With Consistent Content
Think of content creation like a musician building their catalog. My 20-year-old son wants to be a solo guitarist. His goal is to attend Berklee College of Music and play music professionally. Today, he works for my company, AH Marketing and plays in church bands. Initially, he was called on to play once a month. But, his reliability and ability to perform opened more doors for him. My son was soon asked to play weekly services for one church, which turned into weekly services for multiple churches, which also led to playing for large conferences and special events. Last week, he had three shows in one week. In the same way, you can build momentum for your work.
At this point, you might be thinking, "With everything on my plate, how can I possibly fit in creating content on a regular basis?" Believe me, I get it. Between family, work, coaching soccer, and volunteering, finding time for consistent content creation is a challenge. Experts suggest we organize, make lists, block time, and better manage our calendars. Many authors I've spoken with point to their daily writing habits.
I don't yet have a daily writing habit (it's a goal of mine), but here's what I do do:
Remain Informed: Read and listen to news, audiobooks, and podcasts daily.
Capture New Ideas: Jot down quick thoughts on my phone.
Interact & Develop Ideas: Post and engage in conversations during the week in a limited number of places. (I choose to interact in the RISE marketing community and on Linkedin).
Reflect & Develop: Then, one day during the week, I spend time fleshing out one idea from my phone (to relieve the burden I'm carrying that week).
I post what I've written on my blog and send it to my LinkedIn newsletter subscribers. It's a discipline I follow (just like losing weight, saving money, etc.). This is where a strong "why" helps to fuel your efforts and keeps you coming back. In my case, I find myself writing for an earlier version of myself 10 years ago. Just consider what would happen if you started keeping track of your ideas and put them out there so we could learn and interact with you more because of them.
Overcoming Pitfall #3: How to Know If It's Working
Once you are on your way to building your personal brand, you may face moments of uncertainty when you ask yourself if it is working. While quantitative metrics like impression, follower growth and engagement are interesting, qualitative measures offer a more tangible understanding of your impact. Over the last ten months, I saw a 20% increase in new followers on LinkedIn (my platform of choice), along with significant engagement and impressions. But the most meaningful impact I saw included:
Networking Opportunities: I had countless offline conversations with industry professionals.
Invitations: I received numerous invitations to guest on podcasts, present at events, and guest-write articles.
Business Growth: My company acquired two new clients thanks to LinkedIn and the connections I've made along the way.
Building a solid personal brand is an investment in your professional future that allows you to establish yourself as a thought leader, connect with an audience, foster new relationships and find new opportunities. I hope the insights in this article can encourage you to move past the obstacles standing in the way of you becoming known.
