6 Reasons Why You Need To Build Your Personal Brand by Joella Skoogh

You’ve probably heard that you need to build your personal brand, but do you know of all the career advantages a personal brand could give you?

My name is Joella Skoogh and I’m a full-time business owner working as a marketing strategist, speaker and personal brand coach. I would not enjoy my job and life as much as I do today unless I had worked actively and consistently on building my personal brand for the past 1.5 years. Thanks to my personal brand, I have broadened my network, gained new friends, built a reputation in my industry and worked on things I'm really passionate about. Best of all, I’ve recently left Sweden to work from the Tuscan hills in Italy (and wherever else I decide to go) for a while.

Here are six reasons to why you need to start building your personal brand TODAY.

1) If you want to start a business, your personal brand can help your business thrive

Personal brands are the new business brands. When I quit my job and started working for myself, I had zero industry contacts, no clients and I had never actively worked on building my personal brand. Now I wish I had started building my personal brand a lot earlier because I would’ve been further ahead of the game. Whether you want to start a business selling products or services, your personal brand will help you accelerate the success of your business. People want to buy from people, not companies.

2) People will recommend you to others - even if they don't know you personally

Sometimes, people will reach out to me because somebody who follows me on social media has recommended me to them. Most of the time, they haven’t worked with me and don’t know me personally, but they still like and trust me enough to recommend me. In other words, it’s not just about how many people who follow and interact with you. It’s also about the trust you build that will make them willing to connect you with their network.

3) You will become top-of-mind in your niche

You don’t HAVE to niche yourself, but it’s a lot easier to build your brand if you do. As a marketer, I was just one of many consultants out there. When I started talking about marketing on TikTok, I became the ”go-to TikTok expert”. I have more skills beyond just TikTok, but by centering my personal brand around a specific subject, I became top-of-mind for opportunities that excited me. I am now often hired to speak or teach about marketing on TikTok.

4) You can do what you love and earn more money

If you become good at what you do and you build your personal brand around that, there are endless opportunities out there for you. In addition, when you build your brand, you increase the value of what you can offer. You are seen as an expert and you can charge accordingly.

5) You will attract opportunities instead of chasing them

As a business owner, you should never sit around and wait for opportunities to come to you. However, with a personal brand, more opportunities and clients will come your way without you needing to chase them. When you do chase them, your brand will make it more likely people that will say yes to you.

6) You can take up space as a woman, thus inspiring and helping other women

This is perhaps the most important part for me. I help other female business owners and entrepreneurs to build their personal brands and many of my clients are scared of platforms like LinkedIn since they consider it highly male-dominated. Well, how do we change that? By taking up the space ourselves. 

Are you excited to start building your personal brand now?

Good! Here are the steps you can take to start today:

• Set your goals - WHY do you want to build a personal brand and what are your specific goals?

• Define your target audience - Who do you want to reach? What are their interests, goals and challenges?

• Define your brand - Who are you? How do you want to be perceived? What do you want to be associated with? Make sure your brand is authentic and in alignment with your goals.

• Decide on types of content - What type of content can you create that your target audience will want to consume and engage with, that's also relevant to your brand?

• Start posting - and stay consistent! The only way to know what works and what doesn't is to POST and then evaluate.

For more tips on how to build your personal brand, you can follow me in Swedish at @brandingjoella on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM if you have any thoughts or questions after reading this article!

If you want to see behind the scenes of my journey as an entrepreneur, you can follow me in English at @joellaskoogh.

Thank you for reading this - let’s start building our personal brands!