Invest in yourself
To achieve a particular position in any field one must go through all kinds of learning, skill training events, courses, tests and whatnot. But then, does the ultimate goal you achieve is self satisfactory? Does your achievements brings in the right amount of achievement or rather I should say helps you to achieve the desired results from that. No, you might gain some applaud from your friends and relatives for it but what about the outside world or from the industrial field you wish to enter. This rarely does happen to any of us. And, being a designer myself, I understand the pain of not getting the right amount of appreciation that you wanted to accomplish. As a designer to attain all the kind of fame that I should have got in the beginning came from personal branding; when I invested in my own self.
What is Personal Branding?
Wikipedia suggests:
Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.
Personal branding emphasizes on making the individual person a brand and in this case the individual person will be the designer. The designer himself/herself will become the authoritative self who will become a brand name to be represented in the industry. Personal branding will bring the right amount of recognition and fame from the market. For example, consider the famous Indian Fashion Designers like Sabyasachi, Anita Dongre, MASABA, Manish Malhotra and so many more. They are brand themselves, one needs to take only there name to identify them.
Benefits of Personal Branding for Designers
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Fabricates your brand identity in the global market
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Initiates B2B or B2C business
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Boosts E.A.T: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness
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Becomes a reliable source for authenticity
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Forms healthy relationships with the existing giants in your industry
Ways to Boost Personal Branding for Designers
Own a website for your Brand
Leverage Social Media
Design specific platforms like Dribble, Behance, Tumblr and even Instagram and Pinterest can be utilized to display your work and creativity. https://createbytes.com/insights/10-Amazing-Resources-for-Design-Inspiration/, this link will help you to identify all the platforms that can be leveraged to spread a word about your brand, work and skill set.
Interact With Other Designers
Communication is the ultimate key to spread a word and a perfect way to make things even more personalize. Getting in touch will give a jump to your work where you can take feedback, stay updated and grow with the ever-growing market. Communicating with other designers will help you to enter into your industrial field will help people know about you and your brand.
Consider your Brand a product
Once you start considering your brand a product that you have to create and nurture the designer inside will you instinctively will look at it from a different shade and work upon it. You will be one individual devoting 100%, consider the fact of how productive and efficient you can become at your work. You will be able to understand the right path which needs to be followed and process that will help you achieve your brand goals.
Conclusion
Developing a personal brand can be tiring work but one needs to have patience and the perfect skill set to work hard on it. Lastly, a complete understanding of the digital marketing procedure can take your brand to heights that you want it to achieve.
