10 Facts About Your Personal Brand

Do you know why Steve Jobs always wore the same clothes (jeans, black turtleneck, white sneakers)?  To help establish his personal brand. Obviously, his strategy worked. He had an almost cult-like following and people felt that as long as he was in charge of Apple it was going to be good.

Although Steve left us some years ago, he remains one of the strongest brands on the planet. But what made him so great? Steve used his personal brand to position himself as a visionary, a change agent and an innovator.

Now, you can’t copy Steve Jobs, but you can copy his strategy by investing in your personal brand.

What’s your personal brand?

In this digital age, your personal brand is equivalent to your reputation.

Personal branding is an important practice for the modern-day career. That means whether you are a CEO, a marketer or a creative, your personal brand is essential for establishing credibility.

Yet, there are still founders and managers who are dead set against creating their own personal brands. If you are one of them, here’s a list of personal brand facts that will hopefully change your stance on personal branding:

10 Facts About Personal Branding

1. Sales agents who use social media as part of their sales technique, outsell 78% of their peers.
2. 77% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company when they hear about it from someone they trust
3. Only 33% of buyers trust messages from a brand while almost 90% of customers trust product or service recommendations from people they know
4. 77% of all brand conversions on social media are people looking for advice, information or help. This is much easier to understand and interact as an individual as opposed to a company.
5. 88% of people say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
6. Employees have 10x more followers than their corporate social media accounts
7. Content shared by employees receive 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels
8. Leads developed through employee social marketing initiatives convert 7x more frequently than other leads
9. Brand messages are re-shared 24x more frequently when distributed by employees versus their company.
10. 75% of people are willing to drive further in order to deal with a great salesperson.

Clearly, customers trust a well-built personal brand more than they trust a company.

What’s more, people with established personal brands also outsell their peers and have much higher conversion rates.

The term personal branding  has long been relegated to companies, but in this digital age, everyone has a personal brand. Choose to cultivate and develop your brand.