How to use authentic personal branding to your advantage

Personal branding is one of these terms that is thrown around on LinkedIn right now. No-one has the textbook definition of what it is. But there’s a paradox and an irony to it , because there’s nothing personal about it.

I believe personal branding is how you are included in conversations when you’re not physically there. And those conversations don’t need to be physical, they can also be digital. How you are interacted with on social media, for example on LinkedIn. Every time you post a piece of content, that is sharing another feather that makes you, you. Another string in your bow. People are interacting with that content and you don’t even know they are. I really believe people don’t know 95% of the legacy they’ve already created.

What I mean by that, is all of us have very little feedback and touchpoints about how our story and how our brand makes people feel.

Long-term brand strategy

I had a friend, a fellow podcaster, who was going through a grievance process with one of their sponsors who said “Lewis, we’re not getting the financial return on investment from sponsoring your podcast, because you’re not selling the adequate amount per month”.

But, they aren’t comprehending the brand awareness that they’re getting.

With that in mind, it’s important for personal branders to show up in as many different domains as possible, time and again. Even if it is TikTok, you have someone’s trust for 30 seconds whilst they’re consuming that content. So, it falls to you to provide them with something whilst they’re doing that, because it’s so easy to lose the trust of a consumer.

It’s really important for someone in industry or an entrepreneur to just show up consistently and with high quality content. Sometimes, even though content is not engaged with, it’s a long-term brand strategy.

Personal branding and junior staff

Everybody has a personal brand whether they know it or not. It’s when people understand that everyone has one and then they take advantage of controlling their own narrative that they find more success. Consequently, I believe a lot of senior representatives have only been able to discover their personal brand in hindsight.

In that case, personal branding is like sitting backwards on a train. You only realise the landscape once you’ve passed it. Whereas, if you’re a junior colleague, you can actually construct the landscape. You’re sitting forward on the train and can see where you’re going.

What is most important for junior staff, in terms of personal branding, is that most people join an organisation straight from university or school. They are very malleable, and act like a blank canvas. The colours haven’t been chosen yet, the thickness of brushes haven’t been decided, the type of paint isn’t formed.

For example, when I joined KPMG, I became the social mobility guy as soon as I joined. I became uniquely identifiable. So, when I’m not in the room and someone mentions my name, they say “oh, it’s David McIntosh the social mobility guy” I’ve never been told I’m a great management consultant or accountant. It’s always these extra frills that are sitting in the periphery of my day job. That’s a brand acquisition strategy which is giving people access to my 9-5 skills.

So, it’s really important that junior people do that sooner rather than later. They can escape competition by being authentic. No one can outwork them at being them.

Companies should embrace personalities

There’s also an onus on the organisation to create a culture that embraces that. It’s a two-way street. If an organisation isn’t willing to support them, or listen, then they’re going to get a bad feedback loop. They’re never going to deploy it in the workplace and they’re only going to do their 9 to 5.

Social media has made the personal brand move from being invisible to very much visible. Prior to LinkedIn and social media, personal brand was solely the conversations had about you behind your back. Now it’s the conversations you create for yourself via content, via thoughts, and via what you post online.

There is still an important role for companies to play in embracing different personalities. I’m really conscious that KPMG has taken great strides when it comes to building a more inclusive workplace – really looking for people to come as they are.

To open up our profession, we’ve been tackling the issue of nepotism head-on. We launched Opening Doors to Opportunities earlier this year, giving even more young people from social mobility cold spots a better idea of what a career at our firm might entail.

Our own research showed that fewer people from low socio-economic backgrounds get these sorts of opportunities. Worryingly, the vast majority of people still feel think that becoming a doctor, lawyer or accountant is easier if your parent worked in a similar profession.

Is personal branding under-represented in certain areas?

From a social mobility point of view, it is definitely under-represented. The reason is because organisations are, only now, embracing the stories of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Especially in financial services.

I’ve heard of organisations that think they’re doing great social mobility. But in fact, they’re doing forced social mobility. These organisations think that social mobility is where they take a disadvantaged young and they put them on a ‘polished treadmill’. This is an attempt to change them into a very polished, well-spoken, middle class character.

But, that’s not good social mobility. That’s called a deficit discourse, where you’re losing all the innovation and personal experiences in which there are solutions. So, if a person comes from a disadvantaged background, they have faced problems we can pull solutions from.

I’ve heard stories where people from a lower socio-economic background are more technocratic than performative. When performance is hard to measure for an individual based on metrics, social networks take central stage. Success isn’t about performance, it’s about perceived performance. But those from a lower socio-economic background don’t want to be so performative. They don’t want to put themselves in public speaking arenas to share their stories, or share their expertise.

For instance, children from single parent families (or whose parents work nightshifts) often don’t eat dinner together. These children now have a lower willingness towards public speaking. The dining room table is a stage when you’re young. It’s where you come home and speak about your experiences at school and how you interpret the world. iIf you’re not getting that exposure, it actually creates a microfracture that translates into adulthood.

Collecting dots

Collecting dots, from a personal brand point of view, is creating an undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are. This can be by getting good client feedback, winning awards, publishing content online,or just creating as much credibility as possibl about who you are. And by doing that, you also interact with a whole array of people in the process.

It’s a two-factor methodology where you collect dots – information, intel, connections – and then you connect the dots.

A lot of people at junior level will pass as many exams or churn out as much work as possible, and not get sufficient credit for it because they’re not advertising it to other people. They’re not sharing it online, and they’re not putting their accomplishments on a pedestal.

For junior colleagues, it’s pivotal to collect as much information, feedback, credibility, and experiences as possible, and connect them to the right environments and people as they possibly can.

This article is adapted from an interview with David McIntosh, conducted by Robert Hunter, content manager at specialist recruitment firm AJ Chambers.