Personal Brand Development (by Tobi Afolabi)

I am a member of "The Let's Talk About Series" community. I'll be sharing notes from one of the sessions held earlier this year, on Personal Brand Development by Tobi Afolabi, the pioneer of "The Let's Talk About Series" community.

----------

Tobi Afolabi:

A lot has been shared on this community about personal branding which all balls down to the fact that it is the perception people have about us and what we do. These things we do may be conscious or unconscious to us, but the fact remains that they form a perception of who we are.

We live in a world of brands today: People, places, organizations, ideas and many more. Why do I say this? A number of us today, if we were asked to choose the our best fashion designer, shoe maker, life coach, footballer.... We do it based on the perception we have about these people. Same happens to places, organisations, ideas, as well as many other things.

Our decisions are based to a very large extent on our interactions, directly or indirectly, with these entities. This perception we have which forms our decisions is what we refer to as the brand.

We will focus today, on how to build a remarkable personal brand.

Just like we had earlier established, personal brands are built unconsciously, but can also be built consciously.

Today, we see people are so endeared to people like Fela Durotoye, Barrack Obama, Mitchell Obama, Dangote, Omolola Jalade, Odunlade Adekola and many more. You wonder why do these individuals command the kind of attention and patronage they do. The answer is simply their brand.

People often lean towards people who take time out to build their brands (identifying their unique selling point, using it to solve people's problems and positioning for opportunities) because they somehow have a perceived value of being better through such persons.

Before we go into the world of building your personal brand, I will like to reiterate the following:

- Trust is key in today's world and it takes a consistent personal brand to arrive at that.

- Branding makes you memorable. If you can get people to associate positive traits to you, there is great chance of rising above your peers.

Now, Building Your Personal Brand

Self Reflection.

The first key, I have realized, to personal branding is to know and understand one's unique abilities. Just like a consumable product, before you can proceed to marketing your product, you need to understand what makes your product unique from others in the market. It is your uniqueness you sell to people.

Today, we have a large number of professionals in similar disciplines, football, music, arts and craft, life coaching, fashion... What makes Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar stand out from the billions of footballers all over the world? These individuals are all highly skilled footballers, but each still has something that differentiates him from the other.

Finally, what makes YOU different from every person in your industry?

Your branding process starts with a deep reflection of who you are and what abilities you possess as an individual.

It is not okay to have a gift and not be able to apply it. The gift you possess has been deposited in you to help solve people's problem(s). Look for what you are passionate about or a problem you have a great burden to solve and apply your gift to solving it.

A lot of us try to recreate other people in ourselves because we love their personality. Some want to speak like Tony Robbins, some, it may be they want to look like someone. Guess what? What you copy is the brand they have built for themselves. If you really want to establish your relevance in your industry, then stop being a copy and discover the brand YOU and promote it.

Having established your unique abilities and what problems it is you wish to solve, it is time for you to become visible. Being visible implies that the world knows you for your gift and your personality.

If you love to design outfits, then tell people about it through your various platforms, teach it to people and establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Creating the TA Speaks brand required me to most importantly account for my abilities and marry it with my passion which for me is seeing people discover purpose early and fulfilling with little or no effort. To achieve this, I speak, teach, facilitate, and create platforms. By creating the brand and becoming visible for what I do, I have been invited to speak at events and also facilitated a number of online chat sessions.

If people don't know who you are and what you do, it will be hard for people to associate with you. People assess your personality (brand) before they interact with you.

Promote your brand through social media platforms.
The social media space is one of, if not the fastest, way to get visible and build trust in your brand. Over 70% of the world population today are online. Facebook alone has over 2 billion active users daily. If you must promote your brand, one of the easiest tools to use is definetly the social media. People these days check your account out before they accept or send you a friend request.

So, is your social media account currently promoting or speaking your desired brand?

All the speaking, facilitating and consultancy engagements I have received on the last year was because I put my brand out there for everyone to see. There is certainly a lot of work for me to do with the TA Speaks brand. You can never end the branding process. It is continuous.

Another great way to building a highly impactful and memorable brand which many of us mustn't forget or ignore is the place of mentorship. Whatever, your desired personal brand, there is someone, probably a role model who is a professional in your desired field or a similar field. Meet with them and look a way to glean from their experience in building their personal brand.

Also, very important, is leveraging our network and relationships. The first marketers for your personal brand is your immediate network. They have the first contact with you and can easily market you to their own network.

It is very important that we treat our personal brand development like we treat branding a product, because indeed you are a product. You carry potential which must be deployed towards solving problems and until you let people know of the existence of your brand and your solution framework, you will only exist in your space.

In conclusion, I will like us all to keep the following pointers in mind as we all reflect on today's discussion.

- There are many competing brands... You must position yourself so people would desire to associate with you and prefer you above all.

- If you don't brand yourself, someone else will certainly not be a true reflection of you.

- By branding yourself, you will stand out from others.

Thank You.

-----

The Let's Talk About Series is a personal and career development discussion platform that discuss diverse topics to help boost people's productivity and build personal confidence. They are passionate about self discovery, and believe the strife for personal development helps in adding value to one's life; creating opportunities and setting priorities for the areas that make them most effective.

You can check out the community on Facebook.

Tobi Afolabi