Is 2021 the year for a brand-new ‘Brand You’?

BrandTribe, 6 Jan 2021. Ananda Shakespeare, founder and CEO, Shakespeare Communications, and a PR guru shares 101 of Personal Branding for 2021.

In this new era of changing work patterns, working from home, more flexible hours, pivoting and all the other much-mooted buzzwords, there’s never been a more important time to engage in self-branding.

Put simply, it helps you stand out from the hoi polloi – whether you’re looking for a new role, aiming for more industry exposure, or perhaps positioning yourself as a thought leader.

So how do you begin to ‘self-brand’? In some cultures, it’s considered crass – let’s pause a moment to consider the Danes’ unwritten-but-widely-adhered-to Jante law – which considers individual success and achievement as inappropriate and in bad taste.

But unless you’re Danish – and quite an old-fashioned one at that – most modern societies celebrate a degree of self-aggrandisement, albeit tempered with appropriate modesty.

And yet here we are, at the turning of the year faced with more and more people looking into career changes, starting out on their own, and even fighting for diminishing work opportunities.

My advice, quoting Carl Jung – is to remember: “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

We all hold our destinies in our hands, our hearts – and perhaps our resumes. So be bold – be open to controversy – and put yourself firmly outside your comfort zone.

Self-branding 101

In a simple way, expressing opinions exactly as I am here, for this exalted newsletter, is a great kick-off point for self-branding 101. Discussing industry trends and opinions will help you stand out, and as I said above, be controversial if you wish – but be prepared for backlash.

Content is king, and if you are not a confident writer, you can always discuss your ideas with a more competent wordsmith who can help you sculpt your ideas into something more poetic than prosaic – just make sure to give credit where credit is due.

As a PR person, I help individuals and companies… Continue reading