(DGIwire) — Any entrepreneur worth their salt knows that an idea alone can take you only so far. Actually putting that idea into motion and emphasizing its distinctiveness is what makes for true success. To make your ideas—and by extension, your business and your products—stand out from the crowd, you need to do some personal branding.
Personal branding, according to Entrepreneur magazine, is one of the most effective strategies available for modern businesses. Consumers generally distrust corporate brands, so personal brands can offer a unique way to build trust, facilitate customer loyalty and increase revenue.
While the basics of personal branding are relatively simple—it’s basically corporate branding applied to an individual—successfully implementing this strategy doesn’t always go as smoothly as planned. If you’re struggling to see results from your efforts or if you feel as though your momentum has come to a halt, it might be due to one or more of these common mistakes, another Entrepreneur article explains:
- Your branding is inconsistent: Inconsistency is the most common problem plaguing new entrepreneurs. As with corporate branding, personal branding needs to be solid and consistent to be effective.
- You’re limiting your social channels: A ton of channels are available for your personal branding needs, including social media platforms, publishers and other assorted online opportunities. If you’re using only a few of them, you’re not going to reach your full potential.
- You’re only networking online: There’s a misconception that personal branding is exclusively about the impact you can make online. Due to the prevalence and simplicity of online publishing and social networking, it’s easy to think that using these channels exclusively is the best way to go. Attending in-person networking and speaking events can introduce you to people who don’t network online, and can greatly improve your reputation, which is especially important for startups and local businesses.
- You aren’t creating a dialogue: Too many entrepreneurs make the mistake of writing a lot of content and posting a lot of social media updates, but never look to their followers and fans to create a dialogue. Opening the dialogue with questions, surveys, invitations for discussion and other forms of interactive exchanges will make you and your company more approachable.
- You’re doing everything alone: Building a personal brand may largely be an individual effort, but that doesn’t mean everything has to be focused on you. To be successful with personal branding, you need to collaborate with other thought leaders and more established institutions around the web.
“If you’re struggling to create a personal brand on your own, you might want to consider working with a public relations team to help tap into your full potential,” says public relations expert Dian Griesel, Ph.D. “Taking advantage of everything a professional PR firm has to offer will get you far.” As President of DGI Comm, an award-winning media relations and news placement agency based in New York City, Griesel has decades of experience helping a wide range of clients—from multinational corporations to creative individuals—establish their brands and make them more visible, both online and in traditional media.
“It’s all about being recognizable,” adds Griesel. “Breaking through the noise is the first step to making a name for yourself.”