Professional branding toolkit

A professional brand is a concept that conveys what service or product you offer and why it is valuable. Once you establish your professional brand, you’ll be able to quickly convey what it is you do and why an employer should want you to do it.

Elements of a brand

• Emotional qualities: Descriptive words that you want others to associate with you.
• Your target role and focus of work: This will be a combination of a target role and the essential skill(s) that you offer related to that role.
• Visual associations: For online tools, colors, pictures, images, and other visual cues that tell the story of your brand

To make progress on your professional brand, follow these steps

1. Research professional brands in your field
2. Draft of a professional brand statement
3. Test out your professional brand on a trusted advisor, colleague, coach, or friend.

Research Professional Brands

Take a bit of time to research how individuals and leaders in your field of interest approach their own professional branding by going to their LinkedIn profiles, personal blogs, social media profiles, etc. Observing the techniques of people who already have a strong brand is likely to help you understand how to build your own. Start by identifying one to three people that you can research. Consider well-known leaders in your industry or executives in big name companies. Visit their professional social media profiles and observe the descriptive words they use, the skills and abilities they focus on, and the visual associations they provide.

Draft of a professional brand statement

Follow the structure to write one or more professional brand statements.

Here is a list of descriptive word ideas.