Did you know that you can be a brand? That’s right, YOU are a brand! Naomi Garrick is back with us to talk about how you can build a personal brand and how that can help you grow your business!

Employees are your business’ biggest brand ambassadors

The evolution of the Internet and social media has forever changed the nature of personal branding.

Brand Strategist and CEO of Garrick Communications, Naomi Garrick says thanks to the ease of internet access and social media, personal branding has become more than who you are and what people are saying about you. It’s now about what people can find out about you through a google search.

“Personal branding is the thing you want to be known for; what do you want people to think of when they think of you, if they see you or hear you? How do you want people to feel after they interact with your brand,” Garrick said in an interview on MoneyMovesJa with Kalilah Reynolds.

She noted that some still think of personal branding as something that only celebrities, influencers or top executives at companies need.

However, she noted that most employers now use social media to research potential employees; to see if that person’s brand- the way they represent themselves online- aligns with the company’s.

In that way Garrick said that social media has become one of the biggest tools in personal branding. 

“Because a lot of people are making decisions about working with you, hiring you, engaging your services…simply by what shows up or doesn’t show up in a search result,” she said. 

The PR Chick, as Garrick is called, also noted that employers should leverage and not discourage their employees’ strong personal brands. She said that employees and employers can be intimidated by the strength of the employee’s personal brand.

However, Garrick noted that employees are a company’s biggest brand ambassadors.

“They are the first people that someone is gonna go to if they hear something on the news or if they hear about a new product or service,” she said. The CEO said that if an employee’s personal brand has good reach then it positions them as a great brand advocate for the company.

“People make business decisions, on the individual and not just the company,” she said.

“There is greater access to information and consumers want to know the faces behind the brand. We want to know that this is someone who believes in our core values or someone that I want to be a part of their community,” she explained further.

It’s the reason why influencer marketing has become a large part of most companies’ marketing strategies, she explained. Influencers have already established a community of consumers who trust and value their options on goods and services. 

Garrick said that employers should encourage employees to build their personal brands and their skills.

The PR Chick said that there are three major steps to defining one’s personal brand; clarity, value and communication. For any brand to be successful, a clear brand identity must be established. 

“It starts first with just getting that initial clarity on who you are; because we don’t take the time to do a lot of introspection. So, it’s just looking into who we are as individuals, what’s really important to us, what are some of our core values? What are some of our goals, long term and short term because that kinda determines who we wanna work with, where we wanna go and what’s really important to us,” she explained.

The second step, Garrick said, is to determine the unique value that you bring as a brand. She noted that several people can have the same job title but their individual education, experience and skill sets will differentiate them in the work space.

“It’s looking at all these different skill sets and saying ‘ok, what actually makes me unique, what problems do I solve and do I solve them differently or better than someone else’,” she said.

Lastly, communicating your brand in the right way is necessary because that is how people will interact with you. According to Garrick, learning how to position, package and promote the brand that you’ve created is the only way to gain major success.

She again noted the role that social media has played in providing an equal footing for any brand to succeed. The CEO noted that it is important to find out on which platforms your following exists and build it out from there. 

“It’s about showing, being consistent and showing that key message that you want to be remembered for so you know that you’re the go-to person for this particular thing,” she said.

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