Introduction
For Salesforce talent and entrepreneurs, building a personal brand has never been more important than it is today. Anyone with access to the internet and social media can build an audience, position themselves as an expert, and start attracting clients for their business. And that’s exactly what a lot of people are doing.
While it’s great to see that so many people are embracing their entrepreneurial spirit, this also means that Salesforce talent, independent contractor, and entrepreneur will soon face more competition than they already do. The key to differentiating yourself from your competition is building a personal brand.
What is personal branding?
Let’s start with the basics. A personal brand is who you are, what you stand for, the values you embrace, and the way in which you express those values. Your personal brand is how people see you; how they’d describe you. It is the set of values and characteristics that describe who you are and guide your choices in work and in life. Your personal brand is what makes you outstanding.
Personal branding is the strategy of establishing and promoting you, which includes your industry expertise, skills, experience, the kind of person you are and what you stand for. Personal branding is the process that helps you highlight your strengths, establish a reputation, build trust, and communicate the unique attributes that you bring to your current (or desired) industry. Cultivated well, your personal brand with a unique combination of skills will signal to employers whether or not you’ll be the right fit for an open role.
Why personal branding is important to your Salesforce career?
When there is competition that can deliver similar results, why should the employer or customers choose you? What personal branding strategy can you do to stand out in the business? Just like any famous Salesforce leader or big business, it all goes back to the personal branding process which provides exclusive value or offers a superb service and customer experience. When you can offer a delightful experience on top of results, you have instantly set yourself apart.
Build trust and authority
Having a personal brand helps to build trust with your customers, and position you as an authority and a thought leader in the Salesforce industry.
By using your personal brand to educate people who are interested in what you know and what you do, you gain more credibility.
Get featured in media
When you engage in personal branding, you automatically become more accessible and more visible to your online audience. By building a personal brand online, your audience can easily find you on publications, magazines, television, radio, podcasts, etc.
What’s more, the media presence is in constant search of Salesforce experts that can share their insights with their audience. You can do the same thing and make your personal brand stronger.
Build your network
When you have a personal branding strategy that clearly articulates who you are, what you do, and how you help others, it makes it easier for other people and entrepreneurs to see value in connecting with you. You can leverage your personal brand to build your network, both online and offline, quickly and effectively.
How to develop your Salesforce personal brand?
Developing a personal brand might sound challenging, but there are incremental steps you can take to build credibility in your field. Here are fice steps to help you create an authentic personal brand—and amplify your career in the process.
Step 1: Define your value and passion
Values are the things that reflect the way you live and work. They are at the core of who you are as a person and determine your priorities. When you cope with difficult decisions, you typically rely on your deepest values.
Passions are the ways you enjoy spending your time. Generally, these are different from your values, though they may sometimes overlap. To build your personal brand, you must first identify your passion. It might include technology, solution designs, implementation, etc.
Values and passions help you determine where you want to be in two, five or even twenty-five years, including your ideal career path. If the passions and values above were attributed to a person, he would most likely perform well in a specific Salesforce role and show his personal brand.
Step 2: Identify your niche
The next big step in personal branding is defining your niche. This will help you define your brand. You need to showcase what you stand for and how people should recognize you.
If you are not an expert in any specific Salesforce field, consider narrowing your focus and skills. Or you can at least plan to narrow what you work on that creates good results. Just keep in mind that eventually you will need to follow that intended focus with action.
After defining your niche, you can build up your brand by including your interests and skills in all of your social media profile descriptions. They will serve as keywords that will help your brand appear in relevant search results when people look for such information.
Step 3: Find your audience
One of the biggest mistakes you can make as you build a personal brand is trying to appeal to everyone. In reality, not everyone is your ideal client.
In order to attract your perfect clients, you must be willing to repel those who you do not want to work with. This means identifying a specific target audience and building a brand that is attractive to them.
It may seem counterintuitive, but if you try to be liked by everyone, you will attract no one. You must be polarizing in order to stand out. Not everyone that is exposed to you or sees your message will like you or resonate with you, and that is perfectly fine. You don’t need to reach everyone to build a successful business. You just need to reach your perfect clients.
Step 4: Create an effective strategy
To build up your personal branding, you should encompass a consistent strategy and develop an effective plan that you want people to reach out to you from time to time.
Create your bio
A professional bio is a necessity for any Salesforce talent and entrepreneur to update their networking events, speaking on panels, and keeping your LinkedIn profile up-to-date. Your bio might include your education, work experience, any published writing or press hits, awards you’ve received, volunteer work, and possibly even some of your personal interests.
Personal branding doesn’t happen solely on your portfolio site or social media profiles. Writing an on-brand bio can make sure that your reputation follows you wherever you go.
From Twitter,Linkedin to Facebook, to establish your personal brand, you must build up your voice out there.What’s more, put effort on your personal website and any social networks you choose to join.
Start blogging
Blogging is a great way to showcase your creativity and thought leadership. If potential clients and collaborators can read about your work process and habits, they’ll have a crystal clear idea of who you are and what defines your work strategy.
As an added bonus, you will continually be creating new content and generating new SEO terms as a result. Add your contact information so people that read your blog can contact you for other projects and jobs.
Be active and responsive
Engaging with your audience through questions, discussions, comments, replies, etc can do wonders when branding yourself on social media. This can help you build a strong relationship with your audience, ensuring the loyalty of your followers towards your brand.
Strive to build your own fan following by sharing relevant content and common interests, and make your audience feel important by writing for them. This way you can craft your own standing on your desired platform and succeed in your personal branding.
Step 5: Build up your skills
You should set aside time each day to work on new Salesforce skills. The most effective way to tackle a long-term project is to make a habit of it. That means spending a little time each day working on one or two pieces at a time.
Never forget that this is a business commitment, not a hobby, so it’s really important to devote part of your workday to upgrading your personal brand. You may commit some of your personal time to it, as well, but it’s an ongoing project, one that will never end. Start building your job around it.
Conclusion
If you are working in the Salesforce field and have the ambition to become a Salesforce leader, this roadmap can be really helpful to your career development process. Use the tips discussed in the post to start leveraging your personal branding efforts.