Seeing examples of personal brands from other professionals can be an inspiration as you plan your own brand development. While personal brand goals will be unique for every individual, there are common characteristics that most personal branding goals share, and popular examples that can guide your personal brand strategy.
In this blog post, we review personal branding goals examples that you can emulate and use as thought starters as you consider the value you’d like to create with your personal brand.
Personal branding goals examples:
Building a larger following on marketing channels like social media is a common personal branding goal. Whether you want to increase your likelihood of finding a new job, growing in your current job, improving your reputation in your industry, or building a community to support your business as an entrepreneur, growing an audience is a personal branding goal that provides significant value.
Growing a following on platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn, or driving traffic to your personal branding website are examples of audience growth goals that have a plethora of benefits. That is because an audience is an asset that offers leverage, representing a community of potential customers and clients if you want to start a business, professional contacts, and potential employers.
Examples of ways you can build an audience for your personal brand:
These are just a few examples of channels and content types you can use to start building an audience online for your personal brand. Each one has different benefits and opportunities for leveraging your audience once you have it.
Learn the difference between personal brands and business brands.
With so many people building their own businesses, creating profitable side hustles, and embracing the creator economy, monetization is among the top personal brand goals examples. A strong personal brand can be leveraged to earn revenue in multiple ways.
Examples of ways to monetize your personal brand:
Whether you want to earn additional income in the form of a side hustle, or if your goal is to start your own business as your primary income stream, a personal brand is an asset that can be monetized to achieve your goal.
If starting your own business isn’t of interest, one of the most significant benefits that a personal brand can offer is helping to support your career and yielding job opportunities. A strong personal brand increases your exposure to industry peers, hiring managers, recruiters, and professionals in your field in general— a network effect that can lead to a strong reputation when you go to apply to jobs, and an increased likelihood that you will be sought out by employers.
If improving job opportunities is your primary goal, building a personal brand is an attainable way of achieving it. Not only will it increase the number of potential employers in your network as your audience grows, your skills will be on full display as people see your insights, writing, and creative abilities through your personal brand content.
Related: Personal Branding for Job Seekers - Developing a Personal Brand for Your Job Search
Improving your professional profile doesn’t stop at content exposure, as building your personal brand creates tangible resume-worthy projects and accomplishments. If you want to improve your resume as one of your personal brand goals, use your personal brand to learn skills and complete projects that add to your professional experience and credibility.
For example, if you work as a marketing professional, creating your own website, newsletter, and social media channels are projects that can be strong resume additions. In this example, if the marketing professional grew their Twitter following 100% per month for a year, that statistic can be added to their resume as evidence of their social media marketing prowess. The same goes for their newsletter growth, building their website, and growing an email list— all relevant demonstrations of a marketing skill set from their personal brand work that can go on their resume.
Think about how you can leverage your personal brand to improve your resume and add the tangible projects and results once you have them.
Your personal brand can be a test bed for learning and practicing professional skills. Sticking with the marketing professional example above, a marketing professional can use their personal brand channels like social media, their website, newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel, etc. to practice skills like writing, content creation, audience growth, and community management.
Building a personal brand is great for people who have a goal of improving their professional skills, as a personal brand challenges you to learn new skills and rely on yourself for its success. Want to build a side hustle? Then learn about ecommerce and digital projects. Want to become a better writer? Try building your Twitter following through writing weekly threads. Examples like this demonstrate how personal brand building is an invaluable skill development journey.
As a student or young professional, your personal brand goal will likely focus on getting a head start in building your reputation and credibility in your industry. The benefits listed above in the other personal branding goals examples are all applicable to students, as building a personal brand will help you develop and demonstrate skills, grow your network of potential employers, and build an audience that can be leveraged as a monetized asset.
For young professionals and students getting a headstart in your career is an invaluable personal branding goal, as starting now in building an impressive profile on channels like LinkedIn can lead to a plethora of professional opportunities.
For talented professionals who might be introverted, or have yet to make personal branding a priority, putting yourself out there more and overcoming fears of public exposure and imposter syndrome can be a personal growth byproduct of building a personal brand.
For example, starting to share your insights by writing on social media or blogging, or recording videos and participating in podcasts are initiatives that will help you gradually feel more comfortable about being recognized for your expertise. That is why you often hear people set professional goals like “speak at a conference,” because people want to step out of their comfort zones and expand their reputations.
Setting a personal branding goal of becoming more comfortable with public exposure and recognition is a goal that can pay big dividends as your expertise and value become apparent to a wider network of people. If this goal resonates with you, try starting small with tangible goals like “speak at one conference this year,” or “publish an article on LinkedIn once per quarter,” and follow the tips in this blog post: “Personal Branding Tips for Introverts.”
The personal brand goals examples in this blog post are all options for you as you consider what you’d like to accomplish through personal brand growth. But you do not need to feel limited by these goals, and can customize them to your specific needs and interests, or use them as inspiration to create totally unique personal branding goals.
Hi, I'm Justin and I write Brand Credential.
I started Brand Credential as a resource to help share expertise from my 10-year brand building journey.
I currently serve as the VP of Marketing for a tech company where I oversee all go-to-market functions. Throughout my career I've helped companies scale revenue to millions of dollars, helped executives build personal brands, and created hundreds of pieces of content since starting to write online in 2012.
As always, thank you so much for reading. If you’d like more personal branding and marketing tips, here are more ways I can help in the meantime:
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