Make a Difference in Your Career with Personal Branding

The most important element of the business world; differentiation. Making a difference is through personal branding. Embrace the concept of personal branding to be successful in your business life.

The most important distinguishing factor in today’s business world is “differentiation”. Whether you are an employee from corporate life or an entrepreneur trying to move forward with our own efforts, the importance of making a difference in both ways comes before you. Making a difference is possible both with the ideas you put forward about your business and with your working style, communication and image. This is where personal branding can make a huge contribution to your successful advancement in your career. Then let’s take a closer look at the concept of personal branding, which is gaining more and more importance.

What is the concept of personal branding?

First of all, we are all familiar with the concept of ‘brand’. As a concept, a ‘brand’ is defined as a set of elements that distinguish a product from others and give it a personality and identity. A logo is a facet of branding and generating one isn’t difficult thanks to a variety of logo creator softwares. In fact, the history of this need for differentiation dates back to ancient times and it is known that symbols, symbols and stamps are used to distinguish products from each other. For example, in Ancient Greece, olive oil producers used to produce special ceramic cubes for their products and differentiate the presentation of their products. B.C. In the 1300s, artisans used to draw various distinctive symbols to identify the manufacturer of the products. As we have seen in all these applications, we see that the prominent point in the concept of brand is to distinguish itself from the others and to reveal its difference and quality.

The personal use of branding actually starts from a similar point. As we have all experienced together, our world is now changing much faster than before, and this creates highly competitive conditions for employees. In this competitive environment, it needs to highlight the qualifications and abilities of its employees in the business world, and thus reveal its difference. This is valid from job interviews to promotion processes. Those who can express themselves holistically correctly always go one step ahead.

It is important to understand personal branding correctly!

To understand “personal branding” correctly, you need to think of this concept as a “value proposition” package. Because sometimes we witness that the concept is misunderstood. Our aim here is to shape our own talents and competencies in a way that will add value to both the companies or people we do business with and our career, and to manage our image and communication correctly. The misunderstood point is the misconception that a personal brand can only be created with visuals, clothing or image creation. Unfortunately, these will not be enough for personal branding without your knowledge that will contribute to your business.

The main purpose of personal branding is to adapt issues such as creating value, providing added value, having a vision and mission, self-development, addressing stakeholders in the business environment, and expressing oneself correctly. It is possible to express it as follows. While branding provides commercial growth and sustainability to companies’ products and services, personal branding enables us to successfully climb the steps in our career journey with our talents and distinctive features. Making a difference is only possible by realizing your difference and reflecting it correctly. So, how should we proceed in creating a personal brand? Personal awareness, mission, vision determination, continuous improvement, updating and personal image are the points we will deal with.

Things to consider when creating a personal brand

Analyze yourself

With personal awareness, in the process of creating one’s own personal brand, one needs to know himself correctly, realize his interests, attitudes, skills and abilities, and discover his strengths. What abilities do you think you have from birth, what are your actions that make you different from others? In this way, you can discover how you can turn your talents into benefits and how you can contribute to your career by using them. For example, in the company you work for, you can identify a needed point about your business area and highlight or develop that aspect of your business, thus gaining visibility.

Analyzing yourself correctly and revealing your unique aspects and differences will both increase your self-confidence and make your team at work realize this. In order to create a career mission, it is useful to emphasize the following points:

• What you want to do, what you want to focus on, what you want to achieve in life.
• In which areas you want to contribute or help.
• What result you want to achieve, what kind of value you want to create in what area.

The importance of setting a mission is also related to determining the job you love.

Define your vision

Vision, on the other hand, keeps people alive and dynamic, takes them away from the comfort zone and routine, enables you to dream and motivate. We mentioned that personal branding is a value creation process. At this point, your vision for your personal brand defines the long-term value you will create in your career. For example, is it clearly defined where you want to be in 5 years? To be promoted, to be a manager, to start your own business, to move it to another geography if you have your own business, to do a master’s, etc.

With this approach, you will feel that you are starting to increase your own value and make a difference as you set your vision and move in that direction. Continuous development and updating are indispensable for personal branding. Consider the brands of companies. Over the years, they constantly update themselves, from their advertisements to their packaging, to their product variety.

No matter what field your career is in, you need to have a good grasp of current developments, trends and technological innovations. You know, we said from the very beginning to make a difference. All these areas will contribute to the work you do, broaden your perspective, and therefore support your career progress, work performance and keep you away from stagnation.

Take care of your image

Personal image is the perception formed in the minds of others. The way we speak, our body language, our communication skills, our dressing style and even our social media posts are the components that represent us and create this perception. Handling these elements holistically within the framework of the personal brand is extremely important in terms of the image we create. We support our personal brand with the accessories we use, the clothes we choose, our level of knowledge during a presentation, our body language, and the words we choose. For this reason, each of them should be given importance separately and they should be tried to make the most accurate contribution to us. In addition, your working style in the workplace, how much you embrace the job, how well you comply with the deadlines will affect how your image will be formed, as it determines your value creation style.

Managing all these components I mentioned correctly and developing your career in a supportive way is directly related to gaining trust and reputation and being preferred.

I wish you to create your personal brand in a way that reflects you in the most accurate way and illuminates your career path.