How To Build Your Personal Brand Like An MBA

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Don’t worry, what the hell is an MBA anymore anyway? How about this, let’s show you in one kick ass article how to build your personal brand like a new millennial tech-superstar. No? How about a serious modern virtual professional and entrepreneur in 6 steps? Yeah, it’ll be fun and enlightening. Let’s roll.

Step #1: Begin Putting Together Some Scratch

You need to start building a personal platform enhancement fund. To be safe, yep, you need to shoot for at least $2500. Whatever it takes. Maybe it used to be mega-cheap back in the day, but now in order to build the foundation for a serious personal brand it’s going to take a little production value! How fast can you get together $2500? In the meantime…

Step #2: Start Crystallizing Your Brand

Who are you, what’s your (relevant) personal brand story and why in the name of all that is Holy do you matter? What’s so special about you? Honestly! Get right to the absolute core value that you want to offer to the world. It doesn’t matter if other people are doing it, or you’ve got a highly competitive industry. There’s only one you.
Here’s some stuff to start really focusing your mental energy on until you get to the heart of the matter.

• Website: Don’t just walk up to a designer and be like, “yo, I need a really neato website for my personal brand.” Sigh…Begin seeking out personally branded websites that strike a chord with you. How many pages will your website have? Is there going to be a blog and social media pages? How will it interact with people? How will it project your brand? Start getting specific because you can’t dump this on anyone else and expect good results. This is your brand. You must define it.
  
• Voice: What’s the voice of your personal brand? Duh…it’s yours! Don’t try to be or sound like anything or anyone that you are not. Be genuine! Be sincere! Keep it real.
  
• Imagery: You need some high quality high resolution model-worthy (not that you need to be mega hot stuff, just high production value photography) images to go with your brand. Start thinking of what kinds of pictures will do you justice and not come across as generic.
  
• Service: Again, what EXACTLY are you going to offer the world? Use this time tested method of getting to the core: if you can’t explain it to something that knows nothing about your services in like 3 sentences and have them completely understand, you’re not being specific enough.
  
• USP: That leads to your Unique Selling Proposition that will define you. “Hi, my name’s Betty and I use my writing ability to make your business more successful.” Whatever, you get the point.
  

Step #3: Begin Shopping for Professionals

You’re going to need a web designer. You’re going to need a professional photographer. Maybe Betty can get away without a copywriter, but you’ll probably need one. You’re going to need a branding consultant for an hour or two. You’re going to possibly need a project manager to make sure the team is on-task and there’s deadlines. The point is, get the small team together you need to make your brand a reality. Today most folks use sites like oDesk or Elance.

Step #4: Add Substance to Your Vision

With these folks you can add much more depth to your ideas and vision. They can outline the costs but plan on this as a bare minimum at the $2500.

• $1500 website
  
• $500 photography
  
• $500 copywriting for the website.
  

After the website’s done and perfect, your journey really begins. Don’t forget that.

Step #5: Bring the Team Together with Money on the Table

Pay the people. Make sure you’re happy with your imagery, website and the writing used to convey your brand as an MBA. These folks will be able to fill you in on social media marketing, internet marketing, and all that stuff. But that’s another blog post. You’ve got the basic run down, now go make it happen.

Featured images:

•  License: Image author owned 
•  License: Image author owned 

By Ali Asjad
Ali Asjad is a content strategist based in Stockholm, Sweden. He helps companies in vast and varied verticals be more successful and visible online. Circle him on Google+ to further the conversation.