Personal Branding

“A brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon

What is an image? Why some people seem to have a persona and a grand reputation that makes you be in owe of them before you have even met them? How does image relate to a person’s success?

Today, with the breath-taking advances in information technology, we are more connected than ever before. There is also a lot more competition and people all over the planet are competing with one another to provide products and services. In such a competitive work, what comes to define a person’s output is their brand. Much like branding being a crucial part of a company’s marketing strategy, personal branding is just as important to anyone operating in any market.

Many come to think of personal branding as something for the self-employed or those working in the creative industry such as actors, singers or musicians. In reality, personal branding is essential for everyone. If you are working for someone else, you still need to provide your services and consultation to your co-workers. To get better results and succeed, you need to be able to popularise your ideas and become well-known. Personal branding can help you build your image and spread your ideas.

Personal branding follows the same principles of branding and marketing though it is applied to an individual. This course provides a structured approach to help you define, plan and execute a branding strategy. The course contains numerous guidelines as suggested by branding gurus as well as plenty of examples. The course also contains many exercises to allow delegates practice going through the structured approach.

In addition, we have also included a case study which is analysed throughout the course as various topics are covered. The example helps delegates see how a particular branding strategy at each stage can be applied so they can use the example before moving on to do an exercise on a given technique.

The training materials contain the slides, handouts, exercises and workbook required to run the course.

In this highly practical course participants will learn:

Effective Branding

• What is personal branding?
• What guidelines should you follow when developing your brand?
• What is the 5-Step approach to personal branding?

Define Expertise

• How should you approach personal branding?
• What is your expertise?

Define Mission Statement

• What is a mission statement?
• What are some examples of poor mission statements?
• What are the three areas to consider when creating an effective and useful mission statement?

Define Branding Strategy

• What are effective branding strategies?
• What can you learn from the world of marketing?
• How can you think like a marketer?
• What strategies should you consider to promote your personal brand if you are working for someone else as opposed to being self-employed?
• What is attention economy and how does it relate to personal branding strategies?

Design Your Brand

• What strategies can help you become more memorable?
• What should you consider for brand identity and uniqueness?
• What can you learn from politicians and celebrities?
• What can the advertisement industry teach you about designing your personal brand?
• What should you consider when designing your personal pitch?

Delivering Self-Marketing

• What are the three important areas to consider when marketing yourself?
• What strategies can help you in self-marketing?

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Level: Beginners & Intermediate 

By the end of this course the delegates will be able to:

• Take advantage of the best practice guidelines to design your personal brand
• Define your specific expertise so that you can use it to define your personal brand
• Identify your mission statement and goals in order to express yourself with your brand
• Formulate your branding strategy in line with your goals and mission statement
• Design your personal pitch and brand in line with your goals and branding strategy
• Use a number of proven strategies to market your personal brand and publicise yourself

Personal branding by definition is very personal. It requires people to think deeply about what they want to achieve in life and how they want to present themselves to the world. While designing the course, we aimed to balance the need for individual time with the benefits of group exercises. As with all of our courses, our aim is to maximise interactions between delegates which we know will increase the effectiveness of the training. For this specific course however, we had to make sure that delegates also had enough time to think about their own personal brands and what they want to get in life.

By its very nature, personal branding is not something that can be completed in one or two day courses. Delegates must spend time after the course on their self-analysis and reflection while also updating their branding strategy based on the feedback they receive. The course is therefore designed to give people a head-start on the important task of personal branding.