Do you need a personal brand in 2019?

These days online reputation can have a hugely significant impact on both personal and professional development. With this in mind, we’ve investigated whether a personal brand is a must have, or a slight waste of your time.

For entrepreneurs and industry professionals, it’s alleged that having a personalised digital footprint is ‘essential’ to your business strategy in 2019. From a reputation management perspective – there’s no denying that personal branding is content that you can definitely control, unlike the majority of other things like reviews and press coverage.

The internet is a potential resource for employers or business investors to look to before making an important decision. There have been many celebrities affected by historical online actions. Most famously, just last year, Kevin Hart stepped down as the host of the Oscars due to anti-LGBT remarks he made on Twitter many years previous.

Most people will have some content out there that they want to bury. Any positive content published online will help to push down any harmful content that may be out there, and allow you to create certain content that you want others to see about you.

Therefore, if you’re looking to gain greater control of your brand’s reputation, building a positive personal online presence might seem like a no brainer.

A survey conducted by Kredible found that 52% of vendors had lost business because customers found, or didn’t find, information about them online. Online presence also played an integral role for job seekers surfing the web to check out a prospective employer. According to a survey of recruiters by Jobvite, 95% revealed that they viewed a competitive personal brand as an essential differentiator for attracting top applicants in today’s workplace.

A personal presence online puts a face to a brand. Despite HR-driven applications calling for photos to be removed from the hiring or sourcing process to lower the possibility of discrimination, they can offer a significant advantage. Claire Bahn, CEO of Online Profile Pros, a profile photo provider, stated the following;

“Experts estimate it takes less than one-tenth of a second for someone to make an impression of you from your photo. They don’t bother reading your profile or digging deeper if their initial impression is negative.”

Not convinced yet? Let’s look at the other side of the argument.

Not everyone has bought into the personal brand hype. Many don’t get the importance of a personal brand, believing that a reputation is a by-product of hard and transparent work. We get it. Essentially, someone’s reputation is just how they are perceived by others, rather than how they truly are. Reputation can be influenced by two factors: treating people well and doing great work. It doesn’t take a massive digital footprint to achieve those two reputation builders.

Building an effective personal brand can be time-consuming – we can vouch for that. Spending countless hours adding filters to photos and finding relevant hashtags is time that many entrepreneurs and business owners could better spend elsewhere enhancing their product(s) or service(s).

Added to this is the sheer amount of profiles that exist out there. A few years back, people used to have maybe 2 or 3 profiles – but in 2019, it’s closer to 9 if you include dating profiles. There’s just a lot more ways for people to research about you these days, and more work to put in to ensure you’re portraying the consistent image to others that you desire.

The recent Microsoft acquisition of LinkedIn is proof that the professional world is recognising the importance of social profiles. So, what should you do?

Our advice? Seek professional advice as to whether you’d benefit from one. Most marketing agencies should give you the lay of the land for free in a bid to acquire your potential business. Also, be honest and realistic with yourself – no matter how much work they do on their end, you will need to assist them at many touchpoints as the content is about YOU. This might range from arranging weekly calls to sending the agency imagery, or approving things like blog posts.

In Brandlective’s eyes, personal brands are about knowing who you are and what you stand for, and then finding ways to make that visible. It’s about amplifying your skills and passions, which we believe is key to rising up in saturated markets. That’s why our business tagline is ‘giving visibility to those who think differently.’

Keep these things in mind, and we wish you the best of luck whichever path you choose to go down!

*if you would like to continue this conversation further, or have a chat with a member of our team about personal brands – please feel free to do so by clicking below. We’d be happy to help either way :)
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