Do you need to build a personal brand?

The Digital Marketing Podcast with Mandar Marathe

Well, if you need an answer, you need to ask yourself this question ? What is it that you want to achieve in the long term? Do you want to run a business that employs 100's of people and generates a ton of revenue? Or do you want to run a business that is location independent, employs a few people and you can make a small side income. In either case, I feel that building a personal brand does go a long way in achieving your goals. So, why do you need a personal brand. What are the benefits? 1. Establish credibility & reputation: If you want to do business with a company, you will search for a person's name with whom you are going to do business. You will go through the social media profiles of the prospect on LinkedIn - you will see what groups they are a part of or what do they like. People who want to do business with you, first analyse your profiles on Social Media. 2. Establish thought leadership: If you want to be seen as someone who has deep knowledge and expertise in a subject, then you need to have a personal brand and create content that helps you establish yourself as a thought leader. Whether its Brian Dean, Neil Patel or Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot), they have all created a ton of valuable content which has helped them build thought leadership in their niche industry. 3. Revenue: Having a personal brand does translate to revenue. I have a website for my personal brand mandarmarathe.net. People who come to my website, also visit my agency's website (briefkase.in) and then they put in a request to work with us. So, at some level this translates to revenue. How do you go about building a personal brand? First and foremost you need to have a website of your own. You need to publish content like blogs, podcasts, videos etc. on your website. I also have a About Me page - This is critical for your personal brand - List all your certifications, achievements, educational qualifications and everything that you are connected to on the About Me page. Second, you need to have a good Social Media presence. You need to promote the content that you have been creating. You need to have an all-star profile on LinkedIn. A facebook account, Instagram account or Twitter account - whatever is relevant to your industry. Third, you need to focus on content creation. What I believe is that you "Publish or Perish". Which means that in today's world if you are not able to produce remarkable content, that you will perish in your industry. Either you produce content, or die a slow-death. Pick one format - whether its video, podcast or blog - just start creating content. Focus 20% of your time on content creation and the rest 80% on content promotion (I am really bad at this and will learn).