What’s the difference?
So what’s all the fuss about personal brands and what’s the difference between a personal brand and personal branding? If you say it out loud it seems obvious at first and yet we, as a collective, seem to use the terms interchangeably. Personal brand vs personal branding is an important nuance to understand in order for you to keep your focus clear on what to do first, or next, in your business.
But first let’s define what a personal brand is. Officially.
I did some digging and found that on the first page of Google results, there were many websites defining personal brands as a way to market yourself. They offer tips and tricks to create a personal brand to market yourself to the world.
But something about this didn’t sit right with me. If you’ve read other articles from me, you’ll know that marketing and branding are things that I have a natural aversion to. It’s always seem smarmy, dishonest and only geared towards pointing you towards the checkout. Running my own business, needless to say, means that it’s a daily struggle to spend time on the marketing piece and feeling genuine about my brand.
Until I realized that there’s a difference between a personal brand and personal branding. Just 3 letters changes the meaning and the focus of each term.
Let’s define it
Here’s the official definition of a personal brand:
A personal brand is a widely-recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.
www.personalbrand.com
And here’s the official definition of personal branding:
The conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.
ww.personalbrand.com
So what do these two heavily worded descriptions mean in a nutshell?
A personal brand is about who you are and what you’ve done – what others know and recognize about you and the value you bring to your industry. Personal branding is how you choose to communicate that value consciously and intentionally. This is where some tips and tricks can help you to market yourself and the surface level of what people see of your brand.
But those tips and tricks do not help you with your personal brand. Focus first on sharing your expertise or hone your writing voice – really know and understand your message. This is what is going to connect you with your audience and how people will come to trust you.
And in the world of business, that’s when they’ll buy what you sell. Your audience will truly believe your genuine intention that what you’re selling is inline with their values, helping them with whatever problem you’ve promised to solve.
Why is it important to know the difference between personal brand and personal branding?
1. Know what advice or courses are right for you.
Knowing the difference between the two will affect what you choose to focus on. It’s certainly not helpful that in most cases the terms are you used interchangeably. Many sites and services have great ideas on how to grow your personal brand. The ‘how‘ is the keyword. If ideas are being shared as to how to grow your brand, you’ll most like be focusing on branding.
Branding is basically the packaging of your brand – what your website or logo looks like, what fonts you choose, the colors you focus on and even the filters you use on your Instagram photos. Perhaps there’s a special hashtag you’ve created or an acronym you’re using – all this contributes to the packaging which leads to the marketing of your brand. These are conscious choices in how you’re putting yourself out there to be known.
And if this is what you need to be focusing on, then fantastic!
However, be mindful that creating you posts and your website – without knowing your messaging, you’ll have a difficult time coming up with the content. It may dilute your message and you won’t attract and get in front of the right crowd, which in turn, means no sales when you decide to launch your product or service.
2. Know your audience.
Knowing your messaging will help you tremendously in knowing who your audience is and where they hang out. So it makes sense that at the very beginning the main job is identifying your ideal customer. And it’s hard. It’s very hard. You have to really take the time to think of who this one person is and if you’re starting completely fresh and haven’t had any followers yet, this is going to give you a bit of a headache.
But don’t rush it and take the necessary time to figure it out. When you know your audience and who you’re talking to, you won’t have a difficult time coming up with posts and sharing what you know. This also means you won’t have an issue showing up and even being vulnerable sometimes because you know it will help someone.
And knowing your audience is the driver to the next important point.
3. Targeted content.
This is generally advice given to those who are building a website because businesses often get caught up in building and designing the website or posting to Instagram to stay consistent and relevant, they usually forget about the content. Large corporations and personal brands alike – content becomes the last thing on the list to tackle.
But it’s the most essential thing to begin with.
Content drives the strategy. Strategy drives the user experience. User experience drives the design. The design drives the layout, fonts, colors and images – all the things most people want to start with first. I’ve been in countless meetings where clients ask for mock-ups and design and then are disappointed when it has to change because their content doesn’t fit. It’s a cruel cycle that I have to take them through. On Instagram your image should match your caption and and likewise for your Facebook ad.
When building a business – your personal brand – target content is where to start. The wonderful thing is, just like you, it doesn’t have to be perfect and it you don’t have to have it all figured out. If blogging is your platform, start writing. If Instagram is your platform, start taking photos and practice writing posts, using hashtags and engaging with your followers.
Then when it comes to the branding part you’ll have an easier time and have much more fun creating it instead of agonizing over it. In face, it’ll evolve over time and your audience will connect to it because it’ll match who you are and what you say.
