WTF is Personal Branding?

At some point over the last few years, personal branding got a bit… weird.

What was once essentially “be known for something” became content pillars, brand archetypes, thought leadership strategies and LinkedIn posts galore. Many beginning with:

“I wasn't going to share this…”

But then proceeding to share it with 47,000 people.

We've created an entire industry around teaching human beings how to behave like brands, which is slightly ironic because the best personal brands tend to work for exactly the opposite reason. They feel like people.

So, let's strip away the jargon for a minute. What the f*** actually is a personal brand?

You already have one. Sorry.

Whether you've intentionally “built your personal brand” or would rather launch yourself into the sun than call yourself a thought leader, you already have one.

Your personal brand is essentially your reputation. It's what people associate with your name, what your former colleagues remember about working with you and what somebody says when they're recommending you. It's the reason someone says, “Oh! I know exactly who you need to speak to.”

There's a quote routinely attributed to Jeff Bezos that ‘your personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room’. Whether or not we need another Jeff Bezos quote floating around LinkedIn, the principle is useful.

Your personal brand isn't really what you say about yourself. It's what other people have come to believe about you.

Personal branding isn't posting on LinkedIn

This is probably my biggest bugbear! Everyone approaches me to help with their social media ‘personal branding support.

Which brings me to the fact that personal branding and content creation have somehow become interchangeable. They're not.

You could post on LinkedIn three times a day for the next five years and still have absolutely no idea what you want to be known for. You'd have a content strategy and possibly repetitive strain injury, but not necessarily a strong personal brand.

Equally, I've met people with incredibly strong personal brands who barely post online. Their reputation precedes them. People talk about their work, recommend them, invite them into rooms and trust what they have to say.

Content doesn't create the brand. It amplifies it.

Visibility is useless without substance

Personal branding occasionally loses the plot when we become obsessed with being seen. Followers, impressions, speaking opportunities, press, blue ticks, podcast appearances and, of course, the holy grail: going viral.

Visibility matters. Being brilliant at something nobody knows you do isn't always particularly helpful. But getting attention and having authority are two completely different things.

You need something underneath the visibility. The work, experience, ideas, results, reputation and point of view need to exist first.

A personal brand shouldn't manufacture credibility. It should make existing credibility easier to see.

Please, stop trying to become a “thought leader”

Can we release everyone from this pressure?

You do not need to wake up every morning with a groundbreaking opinion about the future of work. Sometimes your thought can simply be, “I've been doing this for fifteen years and here's something I've noticed.”

Expertise doesn't always arrive as a TED Talk. It can be an observation, a mistake, a pattern you've spotted or a story that demonstrates something better than a seven-slide carousel ever could.

You don't have to constantly prove you're the smartest person in the room. You just need to contribute something worth hearing.

Give people something to remember you for

“I help people become the best version of themselves.”

Lovely. What does that mean?

The people with strong personal brands tend to occupy clear territory in our minds. We associate them with a subject, an industry, a way of thinking, a particular style or sometimes even a phrase.

That doesn't mean picking three content pillars and refusing to discuss anything else for the rest of your natural life. Humans are allowed multiple interests. Revolutionary, I know.

But if you want people to remember you, give them some mental shortcuts.

What do you know? What do you care about? What do you believe? What have you experienced? What can you talk about that somebody else can't talk about in quite the same way?

Usually, the interesting stuff is somewhere in the overlap.

Don't sand off your personality

Corporate communication spent decades removing personality from people. Personal branding has occasionally responded by giving everybody the exact same personality.

Everyone is delighted to announce. Everyone has five lessons. Everyone is humbled. Everyone is incredibly excited to embark upon their next chapter.

Nobody appears to have ever had a normal Tuesday.

But personality is often what makes expertise memorable. Maybe you're funny, warm, analytical, blunt or obsessive about detail. Maybe you're brilliant at making complicated things sound simple.

Don't remove those things because you've decided you need to sound “professional”. Professional and human are perfectly capable of coexisting.

And being authentic doesn't mean sharing your entire life either. There is a difference between being personal and being private.

You can share your perspective, experiences, humour and stories without giving the internet unrestricted access to your relationships, family or breakfast.

You don't owe the algorithm your entire personality.

Proof beats proclamation

This is perhaps the simplest personal branding advice I can give.

Show me. Don't tell me.

Don't tell me you're innovative. Show me the weird thing you tried that worked. Don't tell me you're an expert. Teach me something. Don't tell me you care about community. Show me what you've built for people.

This is where storytelling becomes incredibly powerful. A good story can demonstrate experience, values and expertise without you having to stand on the internet shouting, “HELLO. I AM CREDIBLE.”

Which is generally preferable.

Your personal brand should survive without social media

Here's a useful test. Imagine Instagram disappears tomorrow. LinkedIn shuts down. TikTok gets launched into space.

Does your personal brand still exist?

Would people recommend you? Do you have relationships? Are you invited into rooms? Do people remember your work? Does your name mean something within your industry?

Platforms are distribution channels. They are not your reputation.

The strongest personal brands exist online and offline, through conversations, events, stages, podcasts, introductions, communities and that incredibly powerful sentence:

“You should speak to…”

So… WTF is personal branding?

For me, it's actually pretty simple.

Personal branding is intentionally shaping what you want to be known for and giving people enough evidence to believe you.

The content, PR, podcasts, events, speaking, networking and social media are simply ways of communicating it.

You don't need a new personality. You don't need to turn every mildly inconvenient experience into seven leadership lessons. And you definitely don't need to start referring to yourself as a visionary.

Please.

Work out what you want your name to mean. Do good work. Have something to say. Show people the proof and be recognisably yourself.

Make it easy for the right people to remember you when you're not in the room.

That's personal branding. Everything else is distribution.

Olivia x