How to execute effective personal branding
Personal branding has been a hot topic with my clients recently. You all want to position yourself as experts, create opportunities and drive your career upwards.
I am so here for it.
I tapped my friend Meredith Farley to give you expert guidance.
Meredith is the CEO of Medbury, a LinkedIn-focused agency that creates LinkedIn strategies and content for executives, leadership teams and brands. She is a personal branding guru and I’m excited for you to learn from her.
Fun fact, Meredith and I met on LinkedIn and are now IRL friends (yes, great and weird things happen on LI). I’ll let her take it from here…
Hi there. Cydnee and I have had many discussions about the pain and power of “putting yourself out there,” posting on LinkedIn and developing a personal brand.
Earlier this summer she mentioned that many of her clients are curious about what their “personal brand” should look like - which makes total sense. Figuring out what you want out of your career is often quickly followed by wondering how to brand and market yourself to get it.
So: Below, I’ve outlined 4 fairly painless steps to take if you’re thinking about working on your personal brand. In two weeks, I’ll follow up with another email focused entirely on leveraging LinkedIn.
Because you’re subscribed to Cydnee’s newsletter, I’m going to presume two things:
1. You’re a millennial woman with ambitious career and life goals.
2. You’re cool and thoughtful. Because that’s the community Cydnee attracts.
So I won’t offer cookie-cutter advice like “it’s all about your font and a signature color!” or “just post consistently on social media!”
Instead, let’s explore a deeper understanding of personal branding and how you can authentically represent yourself on and offline.
First: What is Personal Branding?
I believe personal branding is a form of professional self-care. It involves deep internal work to define who we are and what we want. When done well, it helps us more easily attract opportunities that are aligned with our values and true goals. When we feel ungrounded, it’s a way to remind ourselves of our core identity.
What It’s Not:
A personal brand isn’t just a sleek website or a polished digital avatar. Your personal brand also exists in real life and reflects how you show up in all professional settings and contexts.
Step 1: Define Your North Star
If you’re thinking, "Wait, didn’t Cydnee already cover this?" Yes, ma’am she did—right here. Articulating your North Star, or the core of who you are and what you do, is the perfect starting point for personal branding work. Understanding your purpose is essential to communicating it to others and attracting aligned opportunities. If you haven’t read that email or done that work—start there.
Step 2: Collect Examples
This part should be easy - don’t overthink it. Take stock of the creators you follow online, the newsletters you subscribe to, and the professionals or colleagues you admire. Zoom out and consider: Do they all have something in common? What do you like about how they approach taking up space - IRL or online? It might help to do a timed free-write to figure out what you’re responding to.
Step 3: Find Your Personal Power Words
Find three to five words that represent the best, most aspirational version of you and your brand. At Medbury, we do this for all our clients, placing these words at the top of their creative brief. Whenever we’re unsure about a piece of content, we refer back to these words to guide our choices. And it really helps - I swear!
These words can also help focus and ground you in “high stakes” situations, like giving a presentation, prepping for an interview, choosing an outfit for a big meeting or writing a delicate email.
My words, for example, are: Competent. Warm. Nuanced. Calm.
Step 4: Do a Personal Brand Inventory
Make a list of all the opportunities and spaces you have to make an impression (IRL and digital presence) - your elevator pitch, about pages, social media profiles, email signatures, speaker or panelist bio, alumni profile - and put each into one of three categories:
1. Great as-is.
2. Needs refresh.
3. Delete.
And, if there’s anywhere you don’t have a profile or presence but want to add one, create a fourth category: Need to create.
What now?
So this part is harder to cover in a newsletter. Next steps will look different for everyone. For some of you, it might not involve social media at all - maybe it’s just about “working louder” in a more strategic way.
If you will be polishing up or publishing on social, know that self-promotion can be challenging. If it comes naturally to you, that’s awesome. For most of us, it's tough.
My best advice is to just start and give yourself permission to experiment. Know that it is going to be uncomfortable - it’s a little like starting a new exercise routine. At first, it’s brutal, but you get stronger and better at it over time.
If you’re ready to invest in the power of your brand, hiring an expert can save you time and effort, delivering much better results quickly. Even consider a “power hour” or a one-off consulting session with an expert who can offer valuable, personalized tips.
Or, to keep it super lean, enlist a friend with good taste who shoots from the hip. Whether you need to brainstorm ideas, get an edit, or just get feedback on your content, having an objective perspective is incredibly helpful.
At Medbury, we focus on LinkedIn strategies and content for executives and executive teams - so in the next send I’ll share all of my secrets about that [wild, beautiful, powerful, sometimes cringey] platform. Hope you stay tuned for it.
Ok - til soon!!
Warmly,
Meredith
P.S. Want to keep learning? Here are a few recs for further reading:
Check out Aliza Licht’s book, On Brand.
And HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style is a fun read and a master class on branding through symbolic fashion choices.
P.P.S. CalmOS is coming back this fall! CalmOS is my 8-week group coaching bootcamp to help you change the way you operate so you can work (and live) with more ease, confidence + balance.
Applications open Sept. 10th. Check out the details and join the waitlist so you have early access and are eligible for special bonuses!
