Start Building Your Personal Brand by Taking These 7 Baby Steps

As a real estate agent, personal branding will play a key role in the success of your business. This is because as you build your business, prospective customers will be on the look out to find out more about you. What they find will influence the final business decision they make, whether in your favor or against. In this article, we’ll highlight 7 small but important steps you can take to build your personal brand. Hopefully when you take these steps, you’ll be on your way to having more influence and credibility as you build your real estate agency business.

Develop a brand mindset

Personal branding is as much a mindset as it is a practice. When you start thinking of yourself as a brand, you become more conscious of what you do and the decisions you make. This includes what you post on social media, the comments you make on blogs, how you present your business, and so on. To get started, take some time to envision what sort of brand you want to be. When people think about you, what should come to mind? Finding some answers to this all-important question will help you set your brand mindset.

Audit your current brand

Next, audit your current brand. What most people don’t realize is that whether you are aware of it or not, you do have a personal brand. What we can call a passive personal brand. Auditing it will help you determine whether it aligns with the active personal brand you want to build. An uncomplicated way to do the audit is to Google your name. What comes up? Is your name associated with the right things; things that align with your vision and goals? If not, then the next steps will help you right the ship.

Pick a niche

One of the main challenges people face when it comes to personal branding is picking a niche, or put simply, specializing. For instance, if you visit a real estate agent’s Twitter profile, you may find they tweet about cooking, cars, houses and everything in-between. While this is okay on a personal level, it does not work well for your personal brand. Instead, have a personal profile and a work profile. As a real estate agent, you want your audience on social media to know you for the work you do. This will help you focus your efforts on your niche and grow your personal brand in the right direction.

Give of yourself

Now that you have developed a brand mindset, audited your current brand and picked a niche to specialize in, it’s time to give back. Nothing makes a powerful impact as much as selfless giving. Give of your knowledge, experience and talents in your niche. This means visiting forums, social media, and other online and offline spaces and offering your insights. When you help others, you become an authority to them, and this will do wonders for your personal brand. This doesn’t mean you have to hold talks and be a keynote speaker. Something as simple as replying to a tweet about an area within your niche will do. Remember, the more value you create, the more credible your personal brand becomes.

Set up your brand HQ

Your personal brand needs a HQ. This is where everything Brand You resides, just like any other notable brand. To start with, having a website gives you control over your brand narrative. It helps you craft the exact story you want your audience and potential clients to buy into. In addition to this, make sure all your social media profiles align with this central pillar of your personal brand. Once done, supercharge your HQ buy adding a blog. This will build your search engine profile but also signal to your audience that you are an authority in your niche.

Be purposeful in your brand building

Building a personal brand is a lifelong process that requires consistency. Being purposeful will help you keep your brand on the up and up. Some practical ways of being purposeful include being careful what you post to your professional AND personal social media profiles, creating high-quality content for your blog, writing well-researched answers on forums and blogs, etc. Nothing undermines a personal brand as much as thoughtless messaging. Rest assured, as the saying goes, the Internet never forgets.

Focus on growth

Lastly, be ready to constantly reinvent and re-engineer your personal brand. A static brand soon becomes stale and forgotten. Keeping your brand fresh and relevant will ensure you continue to build your influence and authority in your niche over time. A great practice is mirroring bigger brands and tracking with their brand building efforts. Because they employ armies of PR and branding executives, you can benefit from their efforts, albeit indirectly. Look for trends, new ways of messaging, things to do and things not to do, etc. Piggybacking on these brands will help you stay fresh and relevant to you audience.

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