Your personal brand is how you promote yourself to the outside world. Each person has a unique combination of experience, skills, and personality that is visible to others. Your unique selling point is what people will remember you by. Branding also plays a key part in the development of your career, as it helps show that you are in the right spot to move further, and helps you get where you want to go. But what are the best ways to brand yourself?

Uncover your personal brand. Your brand reflects who you are at your core. Your personal qualities should also be visible in the way you shape your brand. This first step is difficult, so to help, ask yourself the following questions: “What are my biggest strengths?, “What is my superpower?”, “What am I passionate about?”, and “What is it that my manager, colleagues, family and friends come to me for?”.

The next step to do is putting what you have uncovered into words. You are going to build the foundation of your brand. Think about what you want your personal brand to portray. It also might help to look at how other professionals in your sector have branded themselves and see if the way they have done it could also be beneficial to you.

 Now it is time to publicize your personal brand. Identify platforms of interest on which you can publicize your personal brand. Where are the people who might be interested in you? What you want to achieve is to create an easy way for people to learn about you but also be able to get in touch with you. Where are other professionals in your sector? Where are potential employees? Look for social media groups and platforms they may be active in and promote yourself there.

Create a personal brand statement. Your statement should consist of four different parts. The first is the competencies you provide, which are the strengths you came up with in the uncovering phase. Secondly, mention the benefit of your expertise. What do people gain or lose when they work with you? Next, let in your statement know who or what your focus area is, to who or what do you provide a service? And lastly, end your statement with the thing that makes you unique. We already thought about this in the first step. It is important to let the people that read your statement know what makes you different from other people with similar strengths.

The most important thing at the end of the day is that you know who you are as a person and are able to articulate this to others. You need to know who you are at your core, where you want to go, and then see how you can let others know. Knowing your personal brand will help you envision the necessary steps that you need to take to excel further in your personal and work life.