Building and Using a Personal Brand

Alex Faiers came to REC HQ on 9 May to talk about Brand. Brand is important not just to big companies, establishing a personal brand can will help you retain clients and encourage more to come to you. Here's how...

Clarity of key message

Before you even begin to market to the public you must, first, know and clearly define what your message is. What do you do? How do you help your clients? What’s the call to action (on the website, email or telephone call)? There’re often a huge number of touchpoints between a you and a potential candidate or client: the website, emails, telephone calls even through secondary sources such as recommendations and proxy, by job sites you're advertising on. You must, at every point of contact, make it clear what you offer and how you can help them, your ‘core value proposition’

Brand Identity (aka reputation)

What do you offer? What do you stand for? How do you help your clients? Establishing an identifiable and consistent personal brand is useful in getting people to return to your services. It's a well-established psychological fact [http://bit.ly/2OOhQ7Z] that people prefer what they find familiar; if someone knows your brand and, crucially, views it in a positive light then they're more likely to come to you regardless of where they are in the recruitment process.

Story and aligning brand values

Once you're clear on what it is you're offering, you can then start to think about how you will communicate this. People tend to connect with a story, a clear and useful narrative that explains what you do in a relatable way. What's your Brand’s story? How is this relevant to the client/ customer? It helps if you are aligning with customers ‘personal brand values’. Resonate with the customer, empathise with what they want in their career/ from their workers and try to best serve their particular needs. “People are the Heroes of their own story, we must cater to the hero”, not talk about our own company. “Tell a story of success” start with what the benefits of a strategy/ product/ service then detail it, for example you could start a conversation with “I was able to place ‘x’ number of permanent staff for company ‘y’…”, demonstrating desirable results gets a client instantly interested in what you can offer them.

Provide Value

No one cares about you! OK let me re-phrase that, people care most aout themselves and their own professional interests when they’re looking for professional services. How often have you gone to the 'about us' section of a services company to learn about where their CEO came from or exactly what date they started hiring internationally? What clients want from us is good recruitment, high quality candidates matched to high quality employers. People want to know what you can offer them. Make sure that you're clear on how you can make their lives easier and how you can help them progress in their career. Provide value to the customer first, sell to them second. Then explain: What are the consequences of not engaging with you and using your services?

Content

With social media being a prominent part of most all professional careers, it’s helpful to push out the right content, regularly and on the right channels. LinkedIn is the obvious choice for recruiters but don’t just feel limited to blog content, video (making sure they’re annotated and safe for work!) is statistically much more popular then plain text.

You can learn more about building & maintaining a marketing brand identity from Alex Faiers himself here.