Personal brandinghas been a trending topic since 2008. It has become a common suggestion to start a personal to grow your and get a higher paid job. But let's be honest, it's not the right thing for everyone.

While it takes a long time to build your brand, it can go south quickly when you break that trust. Being reliable at the office is not something relegated to the new sales associate down the hall. Here are ten tips to help you create an authentic personal brand—and amplify your career in the process. Ten Tips for Developing Your Personal Brand 1. Figure out who you are. In order to build a personal brand that accurately reflects your personal and professional identity, you first need to know who you are.

Is the right thing for you? How do you know if a personal branding is the right thing for you to do? I know that having a great relatable story is really important. Personal branding is not 100 percent about you. It is about the people. But the unique selling proposition of your personal brand is you. So you need to have a story that benefits other people.

I'm building my personal brand around the idea that I built my business while studying dentistry at university. Naturally building my personal brand and having almost no while at school, people kept asking me about what I was doing.

I found that a lot of people were interested in hearing about my story and decided to write the story of what was happening with my new business. If you can benefit other people with your story, you have a responsibility to share it. The writing I was working on became my first Entrepreneur post, and it gained a lot of traction.

There are signs that made me start thinking about building my personal brand. If you see these signs, then you should by all means start your personal brand. How do you recognize the first sign?

1. You are genuine about helping people.

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Personal branding is not 100 percent about you. It's about the people you serve. You need to be genuine about helping other people. If you are not genuine, why would people follow you? It seems that most people love to associate with other people, not just these big corporate companies who don't care about them.

You need to position yourself as a genuine person who cares about other people. If you are not genuine about helping others, then personal branding is probably not for you.

2. You think long term, not short term.

Building a personal brand will yield you nearly no results in the short term. It takes time to build your audience and your brand. You won't gain any of the benefits of personal branding untill you have a good following. You may also begin at first with a process that is not scaleable and that has no value in the short run. You work with that and you will be able to grow your personal brand.

If you are all about the short term -- personal branding is probably not for you. But if you think and work toward the long term, this may be the best time investment you will ever have.

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After you have worked on your personal branding for some time it will begin to pay off. You will start to find that If you want a job you will be able to have it. You may decide that you want to write a book and publishers will be begging to publish your book.

3. Other opportunities start to appear.

Other opportunities will start to pop-up. If you decide you want to start a coaching business, you will have worked on your personal branding long enough that you will always be booked up months in advance.

You won't see these benefits come about in the short run. But when you have put in the time and the effort -- in the long run -- you'll see that every minute was worth it.

4. You constantly take action -- and have the time to do it.

As I said, personal branding is a long-term strategy and you need to be genuine about helping people. You will need to constantly be taking action to build your brand and genuinely help other people. But you will need to have the time to do the work of building your personal brand.

You need to free up your bucket list and start being more careful with your time. The most important thing to do when building your brand is to work on it, learn all you can about branding and follow the suggestions you learn about. Check out my checklist to help you get 300 percent more done.

Related: How Successful People Work Less and Get More Done

But if your plate is so full that you can't have 15-20 hours, at least, every week to spend growing your brand, then you need to think about something else.

5. You are a leader

Actually being a leader is a very important criteria. Personal branding is a role. You are building a tribe, not a crowd, around your brand. As says it, 'A crowd is a tribe without a leader.'

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If you want to have a tribe, you need to be a leader and you will want to lead your tribe. Everyone can lead but we are trained not to do so. If you think that you can't be a leader, then don't create a personal brand.

The internet needs more enterprising individuals, not faceless corporations.

If you think you have the criteria to build your personal brand, then you need to take action and start building it. Seth Godin said it best, 'The web can do amazing things but it can’t provide leadership. That has to come from individuals with passion.' If you are that person with that passion and drive, you need to start leading now, and build your own personal brand.

Successful brand building process outshines competition and plays an important role to create your customer’s loyalty. You need to establish a strong connect with your customer in order to make your company successful. Branding process defines your company’s vision and position in the market.

A successful branding process increases your sales and advocates your product or service. From developing your Brand Guide to creating crucial brand elements such a logo and slogan, branding process represents your company’s true spirit.

A successful brand has to be consistent in communication and experience across

• Environment
• Print & packaging
• Website & online advertising
• Content marketing
• Social media
• Sales & customer service

6 simple steps on how to build a successful brand:

Step 1: Determine Target Audience

While you are thinking on how to build a brand, always keep in mind who you are targeting with your communication. Identify your target audience and tailor your mission to meet their requirement in the best possible manner.

Aim for a scenario where you create campaigns as per the needs of your customers for a successful brand building. Decide what type of communication best delivers your message to the audience you are targeting. Don’t forget to filter your audience on the basis of their demography, age, interest and behavior. It will help you to target niche into the segment.

Step 2: Define Brand Mission

Define the values you want to incorporate with your audience base. Your vision and mission statement basically depicts the purpose of your existence. It will guide your branding process across channels. You need to present an authentic image of what your company strives for.

You need to articulate your company’s mission across channels so that it sets path of your communication. Everything from logo to your tagline, your communication should reflect your mission. Always ask yourself:

• Why have you started your business?

• What are your goals?

• Who is your target audience?

Step 3: Research Competition

Analyze your competition and find out what they are offering to their customers. Think why your business is different from your competitors. The branding process should focus on that difference and should revolve around what makes your product better than the rest.

If you find that your market is filled with a vast number of competitors, then you can try tweaking your branding process with an exclusive communication strategy. Always remember to:

• Be aware about what your competitors are doing
• Research about their USPs
• Differentiate yourself from others
• Convince your customers what makes you the best

Step 4: Create Value Propositions

Always focus on what makes your brand unique and valuable. Find your value propositions that sets your business apart from the market.

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Include your value preposition in every marketing communication you are driving across channels. It is one of the most important step to create a successful brand. For example, multiple payment solutions loaded with SSL security feature and zero set-up fee makes PayUmoney India’s best payment solutions provider.

Step 5: Determine Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines define your brand’s tonality and sets specific rules on how to create a successful brand. It helps you to maintain consistency across channels and makes your business more recognizable.

Develop your brand guide as it sets a definite pattern for your visual elements (logo, templates etc.) and structures your brand tone.

Step 6: Market Your Brand

Prepare a definite marketing strategy to market your brand. Apply your branding in every piece of communication, from packaging to stationary, website to marketing collateral. Display your brand in as many places as possible.

Identify new channels such as email, web and affiliates to promote your brand. Also advertise your brand in unexpected locations such as employee t-shirts, your social media pages and office goodies.

Brand building is an ongoing process and following above steps will definitely stand you apart from your competitors. Also read our blog on, “The Importance of Brand Guidelines”.

Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Building Process

What is brand building?

Brand Building is creating awareness and promoting the organization using different strategies and plans. In other words, it is building the brand through different campaigns such as social media, content, and events. Branding is essential for a company as it is what people see and feel about it. It is your logo, your tagline, advertising message…everything!

Helpful Articles for Brand Building:

Why is it important to build a brand?

It is important to build a brand to build credibility, acquire more customers, become popular and boost employee morale.

How to plan a brand-building?

Start with identifying your target audience, develop a content/messaging strategy, logo and business tagline to be sent out across all platforms and devices, develop your business website. Implement and analyze and improve the content and social media strategy, if needed.

What is brand roadmap?

A brand road map consists of concepts and strategies that most everyone can follow while building a brand. It includes goals and objectives and how to achieve them with set deadlines.

How will you build a strong brand?

We can build a strong brand with various methods and strategies. To start with, one needs to conduct a brand audit of his/her company. This includes thorough competitor analysis and what is being provided by your company. Make sure you are original and authentic with your content and messaging. Your message to your target audience should stand out. Analyze your strategies again and implement them to establish brand identity.

How does advertising help in brand building?

The motive behind branding is to attract more customers. Advertisement plays a great role here. It helps every business to remind their consumers of their presence.

Advertisements help to build brand salience and build brand imagery. It reminds people of the product or services offered by a business by looking at its logo or advertising campaign.

What is brand reputation?

It is the perception of a particular brand by others. A good brand reputation means that your consumers trust you as a company and like your products or services.

Learn more about how to build powerful brand communication here: Brand Communication