We are looking for India's Top 50 HROs. Submit your application today. Enter Now!

Latest Articles

upcomingline
 Five reasons to create a compelling Personal Brand

Five reasons to create a compelling Personal Brand...

calender Mar 31, 2021

We are all well aware of the appraisal calibrations where a decision to promote a person is based on...

 Three Things to do Before You Begin Your Personal Branding Journey

Three Things to do Before You Begin Your Personal ...

calender Mar 31, 2021

Building a compelling personal brand is not just good for you but it’s great for business, for...

 Deepika Padukone and How to Position Yourself

Deepika Padukone and How to Position Yourself...

calender Mar 25, 2021

Amongst the raft of celebrities that are showing their love of ripped jeans, Deepika is a notable ab...

 What colour is your collar?

What colour is your collar?...

calender Mar 24, 2021

For as long as we can remember, we had workers classified broadly into “white collar” or...


Latest Trending Articles

upcomingline
 Leadership Insights: Priyanka Anand, Vice President and Head of Human Resources, Ericsson India Global Services

Leadership Insights: Priyanka Anand, Vice Presiden...

calender Jan 10, 2018

  Leaders play a key role in shaping the future of any organization especially w.r.t. their hu...

Three Things to do Before You Begin Your Personal Branding Journey

 Three Things to do Before You Begin Your Personal Branding Journey

Building a compelling personal brand is not just good for you but it’s great for business, for your communities and helps you control your narrative. 

While when I started off, a job was to just get by and have a good life, my nephew opened my eyes to a bigger purpose. I suddenly found myself contributing more of my time, to mentor, share knowledge in networking forums, writing for publications for PR & Communications and showing up for my own Sikkimese community. It helped me focus on my career and narrow down on the topics that I can be good at, as a communications leader, as a D&I champ and a mountain girl.

So before you begin your personal journey, take a long, hard look at yourself. When I orient senior leaders to use of social media or personal branding I use a simple way so that hiring an expert is not needed. It needs to be authentic, that’s why you have to DIY (Do it yourself)!

Create your stick figure, literally

Make a stick figure and write down your name. 

Step 1 – Like we labelled the human anatomy in Bio class, label this figure with all the things that make you, YOU – your personal and professional expertise, competence, accomplishments, hobbies, usual mood (serious, joyous, stoic), your personal favourite topics, one thing that no one knows about you and what have you! Bring your whole self to this exercise.

Picture from: https://portraitoftheoddity.tumblr.com/

Step 2 – Circle all the things you’d really like to be known for or to be contacted for or topics you’d want to pass on the knowledge about. 

Step 3 – Write those down and it could boil down to something like – Logophile. Communications Leader. Mountain Girl.

These are your key topics, to connect on, engage, write, comment, speak, and make a content calendar out of. 

Re-create your journey on paper

When talking to young leaders, while mentoring or during training, I can’t emphasize enough the ‘reflect on your journey’ bit. It helps so much to introspect on your journey so far, gives you so much clarity on why you are where you are, what’s stopping you from being your absolute best, and what are you really good at and in finding your whole purpose. 

Recreating your journey, in your journal (perhaps) helps with your narrative. Who are you is the sum total of your experiences, your wins and failures, your downfalls and your strengths. Re-create that journey on paper, and write down your narrative, your executive profile, in PR terms.

Find your style 

In your stick figure you wrote down your usual mood. This can define the tonality and style of your writings, your speech and your behaviour – consistency is main driver of a brand. Consistently delivering on your brand promise is what puts the trust of people on you. 

Now that you have your content topics, calendar and style – you have your ‘personal brand’ book!  

In a PR and Communications terms, with the information that you have with the above exercises, you can now make a media/ communications plan. Where do you want to talk or be seen, what are the key messages and who is your Target Group (TG).

Nota Bene: Always remember, that what you share be in your talks, meetings, blogs or social media, the TG (target audience) is the most important part. Who are you communicating to? Keep the relevance of the audience in mind so that there is a little takeaway for everyone!


Author:

Ira Pradhan

Ira Pradhan
Ira is a Corporate Communications and DE&I leader.
 
For over 16 years, she has championed programs on Branding, PR and CSR at Philips, Wipro, Tesco and Mercedes-Benz R&D India. Currently Ira leads Internal Communications and DE&I at Freshworks. She is founder member of Global Women in PR (GWPR) India chapter and featured in PRovoke Rising Stars global listing.