Five Common Personal Branding Mistakes
Nothing is worse than spinning your wheels. It’s disappointing to pour time and effort into your work only to find there is little payoff. But watching your hard work bear fruit, on the other hand, can be one of the most satisfying experiences.
How can one get that sweet feeling of reaping the fruits of hard work? By building their personal brand.
As a personal branding coach to subject matter experts, I’ve seen the following mistakes. To prevent those I coach from feeling discouraged and unfulfilled, I encourage them to avoid these pitfalls that are sure to waste their time and energy:
1) Not identifying a goal.
“He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” Winston Churchill’s advice applies to personal branding. If you are not aiming toward a goal, you can waste your time and effort. There are no values to build an audience around or promote your work.
Start building your personal brand with a goal in mind. To do so, identify what you wish to achieve with your work. Then figure out how a strong personal brand could help you achieve this goal.
For example, you want to become an authority in your field. You can do so by increasing attention to your commentary on a topic, so you decide to launch a newsletter. So you focus efforts on building an audience interested in the topic and encouraging them to subscribe to your newsletter.
Takeaway: Build your brand around people and opportunities that will advance your work.
2) Not defining the target audience(s).
Blindly reaching out to whoever cares about what you say can waste your time and not help you reach your goals. So will refusing to define your niche. Drill down on who exactly you want to attract to your brand. Who will be the right ears to hear what you have to say and activate to make a difference?
Deciding who you want to reach will begin to answer other important questions too, such as:
- Where will you reach them?
- How will you reach them?
- What content will you reach them with?
You will use the wrong content and methods to attract the wrong people if you fail to specify your audience.
Takeaway: Take time to identify who you want to reach, and then think through the best methods to reach them.
3) Not explaining the value you bring.
Avoid yelling into the void, or worst, an echo chamber. Posting content without asking yourself what value it provides your audience does that.
People are self-centered. If you’re familiar with economics, you’ve learned the concept of self-interest. The best economic outcome for all is when individuals act in their own best interest. By embracing this reality, a good brand builder knows it’s important to clarify the value they provide to their audience.
Now let’s take this one step further. Connect the dots for your audience between what you do and their interests. BOOM! You’ve struck up the ultimate value proposition.
Takeaway: Define your added value, and weave it into your bio, content, and interactions.
4) Failing to stay consistent.
In a world of ever-increasing noise, thought influencers keep a steady drumbeat. Social media platforms prioritize different numbers of daily or weekly posts. But rewarding consistency is standard.
This may mean finding new workflow solutions to help you create content. One way is to spend a portion of your week creating, some consuming, and the rest posting content. Whatever way you decide to structure your workflow, make sure to consistently share good content.
Takeaway: Create a workflow that prioritizes sharing valuable insights consistently.
5) Not fully using your work.
It pains me to see work wasted. Good content you’ve worked hard to create deserves to be shared at multiple times and in multiple ways.
Repurpose, Reuse, Recycle.
Squeeze every last drop from your work. Share your content across platforms, in various formats, and at various times. Different content works for different platforms. Make sure you tweak your posts to best present your information on
Takeaway: Use that one piece of content (research paper, blog post, book, article) to create many social media posts, blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.
Avoid these pitfalls by learning from others’ mistakes. It will take you far in building your personal brand. If these have been holding you back, overcoming these obstacles may bring your game to the next level.
I wish you the best of luck as you build your personal brand online!
For more personal brand-building tips, connect with me on Twitter at @marketingmollie.
