In today’s business environment, it is important to have a personal brand, whether you are an employee or an entrepreneur. Becoming a leader in your chosen niche will open doors that you never expected to be opened and create opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Here are five strategies for building a personal brand and how you can implement them in your own life.

Determine what you want to be known for

Your personal brand doesn’t simply stand for who you are today. It’s also a road map of where you want to head in the future.

So, to build a strong personal brand you have to understand your existing expertise and identify your strengths and weaknesses related to the industry you want to explore in the future.

This will help you discover the traits and skills that you were unaware of so far. It will also let you identify the areas that need improvement in order to achieve success. Besides, by knowing where you want to be in the next five to 10 years, you can prepare yourself by working on the skills you need for it.

Create valuable, engaging content

To brand yourself effectively, you need to get your name out there. One of the best ways to do this is by creating content that is helpful to people within your chosen field. You can start this process by becoming active in online communities within your niche and answering people’s questions, providing advice and helping others any way you can.

In the longer term, you will need to build your own community. For example, this could be via a podcast, YouTube channel, blog or Instagram account depending on what type of content you are best at creating. You could also start a Facebook group or a forum website, which will allow others to provide much of the content while you moderate. I have a great blog all about Facebook groups.

Speak

Speak at events whenever you have the opportunity. At first, these may only be small, community meetings. You should make sure to film these speeches and leverage them on social media.

It can be nerve-wracking to speak in front of people at first, so start small if you need to. As your confidence grows, expand your reach. Speaking at events is a great way to build your profile directly with the audience you are speaking to, and it’s also a way to establish yourself as an expert.

There may be regular, monthly clubs or groups in your local area that are continually looking for speakers. Contact as many as possible and offer your services. Use the opportunity to give as much value as possible, rather than promote your services. If you provide helpful information in an engaging way, you will soon have many requests to speak.

Continue to educate yourself

If you want to be an expert in your field, continue learning yourself. Attend events put on by other experts, read as many books as you can and pay for as much training as possible. Find the people in your industry who have had the results you want and follow them.

Learning is never over! You must keep ahead of developments in your field so that you can impart the information to those that are following you. This is the best way to ensure you become the “go to” person in your industry. Investing in education from those that are already doing what you want to be doing will pay off hugely down the line.

Narrow your niche

Depending on your level of experience and notoriety already, and the size of the industry you are in, you may need to narrow your niche. For example, it may be hard to become known as an expert in social media marketing in general. However, if you have a specific skill in social media marketing, it is easier to be known in that sub-community as an expert.

No matter who you are, if you are skilled at what you do, there is a niche that you can be the leader in.

Find that niche and tell the world!

If you want to build your brand, you need to become known in your industry. This can be done via a mix of real-world and online methods. It is essential that you stand out and provide real value if you want to be considered an expert; advertising and self-promotion are not enough. However, if you do offer amazing value to your community, you will soon have a following, and this following can be leveraged in ways you would never have dreamed possible.