Your personal branding is essential for engaging and effective leadership, no matter if you’re an executive, an entrepreneur, or someone who is aspiring to leadership. It’s about taking a strategic approach to your career, business and life. It’s about differentiating and positioning yourself to lead with influence and impact. Here are ten common personal branding mistakes and easy solutions for how to avoid them.

1. 10 personal
branding
mistakes that
are easy to fix
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2. Your personal branding is essential for engaging
and effective leadership, no matter if you’re an
executive, an entrepreneur, or someone who is
aspiring to leadership. It’s about taking a strategic
approach to your career, business and life. It’s
about differentiating and positioning yourself to
lead with influence and impact.
Here are ten common personal branding mistakes
and easy solutions for how to avoid them.

3. JUMPING IN
WITHOUT
A PLAN
Business leaders are
unlikely to reach
organisational objectives
without a strategic plan
in place. The same
applies to your career
and lifestyle goals.
Map out your values and
what you stand for,
determine what makes
you different in your
chosen field, identify
your goals and put a
plan in place to achieve
them. Your personal
branding plan is what
keeps you on track.
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4. NOT
THINKING
ABOUT YOUR
STAKEHOLDERS
When it comes to authentic
and engaging leadership,
part of personal branding
or the ‘brand of you’ is how
you serve and create value
for others.
Identify the stakeholders
and audiences which
matter most to you. Map
out each group’s needs and
how you can help.
Determine how and when
you will engage and
communicate with each
group in order to meet
their needs.
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5. MAKING CLAIMS
WITHOUT
EVIDENCE
Authenticity is crucial to
building trust.
It’s important not to
stretch the truth and to
have concrete evidence
for every claim you
make.
When it comes to
personal branding, the
phrase ‘fake it till you
make it’ probably isn’t
the best advice.
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6. NOT
BEING
CREATIVE
WITH
POSSIBILITIES
There are many ways to
stand out and differentiate
yourself. Take time to
reflect on possibilities and
be creative.
There are tried and tested
ways available to you that
are important, particularly if
your goal is position
yourself as a thought
leader. Consider what else
you can do to reach new
networks, or to provide
solutions to new audiences.
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7. BEING VAGUE
ABOUT WHAT
MAKES YOU
DIFFERENT
Ambiguity about your
values and what makes you
different will likely result in
a ‘me too’ approach. This
could prevent you from
standing out.
Clarity and precision in how
you present and
communicate is key to
differentiating yourself, as
well as to connecting
with others and engaging
in deeper relationships.
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8. NOT
PARTICIPATING
Just showing up may not
be enough.
Get involved, contribute in
forums and discussions,
participate and share
relevant and engaging
information.
Ask relevant questions to
elicit responses, listen and
take feedback on board.
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9. USING HYPE
LANGUAGE
It can be hard to talk about
yourself because it can feel
self-congratulatory.
This can lead to under-
communicating your
accomplishments and
expertise.
The other side of this is
taking the language too far
and describing your
knowledge and experience
with colourful adjectives to
hype it up. This can be
detracting – let the facts
speak for themselves. It’s
possible to resonate with
your target
audiences without over-
communicating.
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10. INCONSISTENT
PRESENTATION
It’s likely your personal brand
is across any number of online
and offline channels, whether
it’s social media channels,
your personal and your
company’s websites, annual
reports, brochures and so on.
Each channel has different
audiences, different purposes
and probably different styles
of communication ranging
from formal to informal.
With clearly articulated values
and positioning objectives,
create a consistent personal
branding presence across all
channels which reflects you
while aligning the language to
the audience and channel.
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11. CHOOSING
QUANTITY
OVER QUALITY
Over-communicating can
be just as disadvantageous
to your personal branding
as under-communicating is.
Share relevant and
insightful content regularly
and in a measured way.
Adding to the proverbial
‘noise’ may create a barrier
between you and your
audiences.
Quality sets you apart and
connects others to your
insight, particularly when
distributed at regular
intervals.
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12. TAKING A ‘SET
AND FORGET’
APPROACH
Setting up a plan and
letting it tick over by itself
is unlikely to deliver the
results you want.
Consistent and regular
monitoring of how you are
tracking against your
objectives will enable you
to make changes to your
approach if you need to.
Circumstances change
regularly and it’s important
to adapt your plan to those
changes.
Also remember to update
your profiles as you gain
experience and skills in
order to keep them current.
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13. Contact us to discuss how
you can engage and build
deeper relationships with
the audiences which
matter to you through
personal branding.
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