Build a personal brand to kick-start your sales process

 A strong personal brand is more reliable than a company’s reputation. On average 9 out of 10 startups fail together with the image they managed to build for themselves during that time.

The best thing about personal branding is that if there’s anything that others can copy from your business model, your reputation and image will cover it successfully. A strong personal brand will make your product or service much harder to replicate. Also, by running PR yourself, you’ll gain the opportunity for developing relations with the media personally.

Here are 4 good reasons why it’s worth to invest in personal branding at the early stages of running your startup.

1. Boost the credibility of your company

When you build a strong personal brand, you become an authority in a niche. That type of credibility extends to everything you do, including your company. That’s one of the essential advantages personal branding brings to startup owners.

It allows building trust around yourself rather than the company and then extending this trust to your product or service.

It might be easier to promote a company, true. However, many startups suffer from lack of trust from larger companies — and that’s just essential if you operate in B2B. A strong personal brand will add a layer of authenticity to your motivation and help your startup stand out on the market.

2. Contain an entire resume in your name

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an employee or a startup owner — it would be pretty amazing if you never had to write your resume again, right? A well-developed personal brand is more valuable than even the best CV.

After all, your brand is confirmed by other people. A strong personal brand proves that your activities bring tangible results and that you have a specific reach in your niche.

3. Improve sales and support marketing activities

To build a personal brand, you can write expert content for the media, set up your blog, or speak at industry conferences. By doing that, you will be sourcing and engaging potential prospects directly.

Moreover, those who got interested in your expertise and knowledge will see you as an attractive person and come to you on their own. You won’t have to try hard to convince others of your value. Your personal brand will speak for itself.

4. Find talent for your startup

It’s not easy to convince talented professional to come work with you on your small venture. During conference presentations or when sharing your knowledge online, you’ll be inspiring your audience to connect your activities with your brand automatically.

If these turn out to be interesting, your target will believe that your startup is an exciting place to work at. That way, you’ll be sure to attract talented people to team up with and take your business operations to the next level.

So how do you create a strong personal brand?

Here are 4 essential steps for building a personal brand that will bring these advantages to your startup.

1. Start writing

One of the easiest ways of creating a personal brand is sharing valuable content. Use blogging platforms like Medium to publish articles where you share your expertise, knowledge, and experience. Make your strategy omnichannel by adding supporting that content with LinkedIn activity. That’s the easiest branding method, but it requires dedication and patience.

You can set up a personal blog next to your startup’s website and talk about what it’s like to run your startup and share useful industry tips. Finally, if your niche has forums or closed groups, join them and actively participate in ongoing conversations.

Adding value to the community in your sector is the best way to build a personal brand — and writing is the most straightforward method for doing that.

2. Speak at conferences

Be sure to participate in and speak at industry conferences and events. By being a regular at these events, you can be sure that sooner or later others will start recognizing your name.

So be open to sharing your knowledge with other people and use the opportunity for some robust networking too. With every presentation, you’ll be showing more people that you’re an expert in your field.

3. Help people out

A smart way to share your knowledge without risking that you end up looking conceited or full of yourself is helping others out. For example, you can dedicate half an hour every day to answer some industry questions others post in groups, forums or platforms like Quora. Writing answers to questions posted by others is an excellent occasion for demonstrating your expertise publicly and getting your name out there.

4. Express your opinion

Since you’re speaking as an individual and not representing your company, you can use your public profile to share private opinions and recommendations. Your LinkedIn profile is an excellent place to do that.

By sharing statuses where you talk about recent happenings in your niche, you will build a position for yourself as an authority able to pick up on trends and set the direction of the entire sector- all the while adding more value to your community.

Use these 4 tips to build a strong personal brand that elevates the status of your startup and inspire people in your sector to trust your expertise.

If you’d like to learn more about personal branding and running PR on your own, stay tuned for more content on the topic and check out other previous posts we published in the series:

How to plan a successful product market launch

How to create a media plan for a digital product

DIY Public Relations: How to create PR materials without hiring an agency

Have you got any questions about building a personal brand? Or perhaps you’re not sure whether investing in personal branding is for you? Leave a comment -we’ll be happy to show you how a powerful personal brand helps startup owners.