Personal branding is the process of building a brand identity for a business or person.

It’s basically about marketing yourself, communicating your values, highlighting your experience, and telling your target audience who you are and what you stand for.

If we talk about marketing yourself, in particular, this process can have multiple purposes. In a nutshell, it implies creating a specific image that would help you achieve your personal or professional goals. 

Further in this guide, I’m going to tell you why you need to engage in personal branding while in college and, most importantly, how to handle this task on your own. 

Let’s dive in!

Why Should Students Care About Personal Branding?

Building your personal image isn’t a one-off process. It’s an ongoing and quite tedious work that requires time and dedication. As a student who is constantly busy with studies and homework, you might not see the opportunity to build a brand. 

Of course, you can turn to Writepaper.com to delegate your schoolwork and save time for this endeavor. Also, this way, you will ensure that your grades stay high.

But why do you need to bother about this in the first place?

You should think about personal branding as a way to promote yourself. For students, it is an opportunity to kick-start their future careers. By promoting yourself as a knowledgeable, talented, and experienced professional in a specific field, you can gain more exposure to potential employers and boost your chances of being hired.

Also, if you are a freelancer or entrepreneur, self-advertising can help you build awareness and win clients. You can grow your authority in the field, showcase your portfolio, and just let people know who you are and what you do.

Finally, creating your identity is a great way to take your networking to the next level. You become more open to interesting networking opportunities if you are visible and easy to reach. Needless to say, effective networking can also help you attain a variety of goals.

Basically, based on everything mentioned above, we can say that a solid personal image can help you in many different ways, depending on your goals.

Simple Tips For Effective Personal Branding For Students

Now that you know why you should care about it, you must be wondering how to start promoting yourself. As was mentioned earlier, this is no easy process. But I have a few simple tips that will get you on the right track.

1. Find your niche

Personal branding always begins with some soul-searching. To get started, you need to determine who you are, what you are passionate about, and what makes up your identity.

First, you must discover your personality, culture, values, and outlook. These are the things that lay in the core and describe you. After this, you need to find something you want to be (or already are) an expert in. 

For example, if you are an arts student or have a hobby developing software, it’s wise to start building your identity around it. Most importantly, it should be a niche where you can become an expert and deliver value to your target audience.

2. Design brand attributes

Every brand, whether an individual or a business, must follow a unique brand style guide combining specific attributes that highlight the public image. These attributes typically include logos, business cards, web design, etc. It’s important to have a distinctive website look with a distinctive logo design and other brand elements.

Unless you are a design student, creating branded guidelines can be rather challenging. But you can always turn to a creative design studio for help.

3. Build a website

The most important thing in personal branding is that it must make you visible and easily searchable for your target audience. In many cases, ensuring this is easy with the help of a personal website, SEO, and wise content marketing.

Please note that not all students must build their websites to create online identities. If your goal is just to get hired and you are not a creative professional, simply creating social media presence can work just fine. However, if you have a portfolio to show potential employers or want to create your own business, you will likely need to craft a website too.

4. Establish a web presence

Regardless of whether you create a website or not, establishing social media presence is a must. These days, social media plays a huge role in all spheres of our lives, including business and branding. So, whether you want to get visible to employers, find customers, or attain other goals, you should hop on social media immediately.

Create accounts on some of the most popular social media platforms that your target audience uses. For example, if your goal is to build a career, you should pay special attention to LinkedIn. Or, if you are striving to attract clients to your business, you can also use Instagram, Twitter, etc.

When creating your accounts, ensure they align with your overall image and feature relevant brand attributes. Also, take time to discover your target audience and its needs, and develop a solid SMM strategy.

5. Set up your value proposition

When establishing your identity through your website and social media, you need to set up a value proposition. It is a promise of value to be delivered. In simple terms, it should be something that proves your value to the target audience.

Your value proposition should be centered around your goals so that it can be different for a student looking for a job and someone seeking exposure to their professional services. 

In any case, the value proposition should explain what you can give your audience, what makes you special, and why people should be interested in you from a professional point of view.

6. Grow awareness through networking

Many beginners make a big mistake by assuming that personal brand is all about their good selves. On the one hand, it’s true. Your goal is to make yourself visible to the target audience and prove your worth. But on the other hand, networking is what brings real value.

You should encourage your target audience to connect and network with you. This way, you will attract exciting opportunities.

7. Be helpful

Whether you are trying to attract customers for your business or potential employers, you should never focus your brand on “selling” yourself. Don’t use your social media, website, and networking solely for sales purposes.

Instead, stick to the 80-20 rule, which implies delivering 80% of helpful and informative content and keeping only 20% of your content commercial. Remember that informative content that brings value helps you build authority and establish yourself as an expert. This tactic works much more effectively than obtrusive selling.

If you are a student or a novice businessman, you can order an essay. It will be useful to you in passing exams or summarizing your business papers, thus, strengthening your personal brand. 

Conclusion

As you already know, a personal brand isn’t something only companies should care about. It can have plenty of benefits for individuals and students, in particular.

Though establishing a solid identity is a lot of work, doing it isn’t that hard if you know exactly what you need to do. So, use this guide as your starting point and create your personal brand to ensure future success.

If you want to go further and build impressive branding across numerous online channels, feel free to contact ReVerb. Our marketing experts will help create a memorable image of your personality or company through the most impactful marketing strategies and design solutions!