A strong brand creates value for its customers by providing them with unique benefits that they cannot get from competitors’ brands
Brand development is an integral part of scaling a successful company. A strong brand allows a company to stand out from the competitors and create a unique identity for its customers. But a brand is not only a nice wrapper with a beautiful name and logo. First and foremost, it is the experience that a customer receives when interacting with a company, a so-called “aftertaste”. Such “taste memories” form a subtle mental connection between the brand and the consumer. For example, Coca-Cola tastes like the upcoming New Year holidays. WOG is not about cars, but primarily about the people who drive them, and monobank sounds like a personal Сat purring. In other words, consumers buy goods and services not because they like their image but because of the impressions and emotions they get. Branding is not only about large companies or corporations. A brand can even be a single person who is followed and listened to by a huge audience. For example, David Beckham became a brand ambassador for Maserati and promoted the values of the premium car brand. Footballer Oleksandr Zinchenko represents the United24 initiative and organizes charity matches in support of Ukraine, raising large amounts of money. An ambassador is a channel that helps to increase brand awareness, trust, and popularity. Thanks to their popularity and reputation, ambassadors help to increase the company’s influence in the market and draw the audience’s attention to key marketing activities and events. The fact is that consumers trust people more than companies. Involving bloggers, influencers from other fields, athletes, or celebrities helps to create a positive brand image through association with these people. If an opinion leader is a serious, responsible, and reliable person, then the company itself will be perceived as such in the eyes of customers. A successful personal brand is a powerful tool for marketing strategies because it introduces services and products to consumers through a friendly handshake from their favorite influencer. Therefore, if you feel that your experience and knowledge should be in demand and work for you, develop your personal brand!
What is the role of a personal brand for HR professionals?
In today’s world, a personal brand has become an important asset for achieving success in various areas of life: career, business, and family. Thanks to the development of social media and digital technologies, people have more opportunities to express themselves and be heard by the entire world with just one short video posted. At the same time, popularity is not everything, because building a personal brand is a long and painstaking process that requires a lot of dedication. HR professionals understand like no one else how much effort it takes to grow a professional dream team and how much energy they need to devote to keep their colleagues enthusiastic and prevent burnout. Every HR department has its own David Beckham or Alexander Zinchenko, people who are equally dedicated and sincere in communicating the values of their companies. They are not only the voice, but also the soul of the business. For HR professionals, creating their own brand can be a new stage of career and personal growth. A personal brand is a new level of professional development when HR becomes an ambassador of its own expertise and begins to share his or her unique experience with others, influencing the worldview, mindset, and opinions of the audience. Given the current trends, now is the best time to start building your own brand, and here are some key factors that will help you do so:
- Social media is currently at the top of marketing trends. It allows you to use it as the main platform to promote yourself, your values, and your ideas. The most popular platforms today are LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. These platforms help to create an expert image, increase your visibility, and provide tools for interacting with the audience at any time and from any place;
- Companies’ trust in influencers continues to grow. In 2024, 59% of marketers surveyed plan to increase the amount of money they spend on influencers’ content. For an HR specialist who positions himself as an expert and opinion leader, this is an opportunity to attract the attention of big market players, who will offer collaboration;
- Hyper-personalization has led to an even greater segmentation of the audience by interests and needs. This phenomenon has become logical in the context of ultra-high competition, as many similar offers lose their identity and become invisible to consumers. People are looking for services and products that match their values and worldview. That is why marketers often involve “small” influencers, who have a smaller audience with a narrower range of interests, in their campaigns rather than those with millions of followers. Nowadays, anyone can find a podcast that suits their taste on streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music, from their favorite TV show discussions, such as Talking Sopranos, to conversations about “Business during a crisis” by AIN. In short, hyper-personalization helps to create a personal brand. It is an opportunity to stand out, to pull out your trump cards, something you are really good at, and to use them to play with an audience that will definitely love you;
- Blurring of business borders. As Ukrainian companies actively and strategically expand into global markets, employers are hiring professionals with the highest level of international expertise. In this context, an HR professional’s own brand becomes an additional tool that can help declare his or her competitive advantages.
So, as you can see, the above conditions not only contribute to the creation of a personal brand but also indicate that for experts who want more, it is a necessity today. Let’s take a look at the perspectives an HR specialist who starts presenting himself or herself as a brand will discover:
- Increased awareness and trust. Creating a strong personal brand will allow you to stand out among candidates, clients, and partners. Comments under interesting posts you publish, likes from your followers, comments under your webinars, speeches, or mentions in the media will be your best recommendations. If your personal brand is highly developed, you will become an attractive candidate for various companies that value expertise and an individual approach to HR tasks;
- Recruitment of talented candidates requires less effort. All you need to do is upload a story or post with an offer to work with you, and candidates will come to you. A strong personal brand will help you attract the attention of professionals, as they will be more interested in working with you as a recognized and familiar HR expert;
- Strengthening your own professional authority. Unfortunately, in some companies, the position of an HR specialist is still perceived as an administrative position rather than a key role that helps to shape and support strategic business processes. Once you have created your personal brand, you should constantly share your HR knowledge and insights. This will help increase your expertise and build your credibility as a professional. Your opinions will be taken into account, as you will gain the trust of a large audience;
- An opportunity to escape the routine. While performing your job duties, you do not always have enough time to devote yourself to the aspects of work that attracted you when you started your career. Often, routine kills creativity, so HR professionals create a personal brand to implement their wildest ideas that they have always omitted because of their everyday routine;
- Developing a professional network. You will realize that by building your own brand, you will be surrounded by like-minded people with similar values. You will become not just a part of the HR community, but the one who shapes it. It will be much more difficult to succeed without the support of colleagues. Therefore, your network of professional connections will expand as you develop your personal brand.
- New career opportunities. A personal brand is primarily about what you can bring to the HR industry. The more unique information and experience you have, the more valuable you will be. That’s why new opportunities will chase you like it’s a safari. Companies will offer you interesting projects, participation in events as a speaker, coaching, workshops, and leading positions;
- Contribution to the development of the HR industry. Your success story will be a significant contribution to the development of the profession. You will be able to highlight those important aspects of HR’s work that were previously unknown to business.
As you can see, the benefits are quite significant, and this motivates HR professionals to actively develop, increase their influence on the industry, and unleash their potential.
How to become an opinion leader that people will follow, like, and subscribe to?
To begin with, it is worth noting that to create a personal brand, you need to gain some experience and work your way up from a junior to an HR professional to gain enough knowledge. Your knowledge is an essential part of a strong brand, but let’s take a closer look at what you need to start creating it.
So, having gained the necessary experience, you can identify your strongest areas of expertise and use this information to define your uniqueness. Conduct a comprehensive self-analysis of your skills, interests, and values. Ask your colleagues, partners, or clients for help, and ask them why they feel comfortable working with you, what their first impression was when they met you, what associations they have with you, and what areas people consider you an expert in. Try to identify the commonalities between the answers. They will help you define your uniqueness. Analyze the industry, find out what has not been said yet or what the weakest points are, and think about how you can use your uniqueness to highlight or solve certain problems.
Determine who your potential target audience is and which social network they prefer. Explore the tools offered by this network for promotion and initially use all the opportunities provided by the platform. Find out what kind of content your followers prefer: short videos, short posts, photos, streams, or interactive activities. At first, as an HR manager, you may lack the experience to perform such an analysis, so feel free to contact your marketing colleagues or ask a blogger friend for help. Read how your potential audience communicates and adjust your tone of voice to find common ground. Give people what they like best, and feel free to get rid of activities that do not work. Be interested in your audience’s preferences, and make sure your personal brand matches those interests. Over time, it will help you later, as you become an opinion leader. Once you have attracted your first followers, do not leave your audience alone; otherwise, they will get bored and go elsewhere to find fresh and interesting content. Try to post regularly and develop content habits: on Mondays you have an overview of HR news, on Wednesdays you have a post about the weirdest jobs, on Fridays at 19:00 you start a live stream, and on Sundays at 11:00 you release a podcast. In this way, your regular content will gradually integrate into the audience’s daily schedule. In addition, building a strong profile on social media and being active there will allow you to establish new professional connections.
Now let’s talk about content. Love what you do, because if your activities are insincere, the audience will quickly figure it out. That is why there are many popular bloggers who simply film their lives. People like to watch real people. Be yourself.
True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed. Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.
An HR brand is much more than just sharing your everyday life. The content you create should be valuable for your colleagues. Don’t copy what others have already talked about. Don’t share content that your audience may have already seen elsewhere. Always remember to be unique. Share tips, address interesting issues so that your expertise has its own style and is recognizable. Write articles and look for opportunities to publish them on special HR blogs, so you can be heard in the professional community. Provide more practical case studies, for example, tell us about the difficulties you have encountered during your career, what conflict situations you have had, and how you resolved them. At the same time, once you have chosen the content, do not forget about the cover. Create your own visual style, create high-quality videos and visuals, and use the same fonts and color palette. Don’t neglect AI tools to create content more efficiently and save time.
Don’t forget to take part in HR events, such as webinars, conferences, and seminars, where you can share your experience and knowledge with other professionals. Participate in such events not only as a guest but also as a speaker, moderator, or expert. Be a consultant and a mentor by taking the initiative at various professional events. Usually, large events are highlighted in the media. Extra personal brand PR never hurts. The HR Pro Awards is the largest event for HR professionals in Ukraine. The organizers of the event aimed to identify and highlight new HR approaches and unique projects. The award promotes the expansion of the Ukrainian community of HR professionals and strengthens the image of talented professionals in the Ukrainian labor market. Applications for participation in this year’s award are now open. Such nominations in the Personalities category as HR of the Year, HR influencer, and The Future Star are ideal for HR professionals who want to develop their personal brand or want to create it. Thanks to the involvement of reputable international experts, HR Pro Awards 2024 is an opportunity to introduce yourself to the business community and expand your professional network. So, if you have great projects that you are proud of, it’s time to take part in the HR Pro Awards 2024 event and present them.
Remember that a personal brand needs to be constantly fueled by new knowledge. You must be ready for development. Always pay attention to technical innovations in HR technologies. Try out innovative solutions created by modern developers and become a highly competent expert. For example, SMART business, a leader in developing and implementing high-tech solutions, offers a comprehensive SMART HCM & LMS solution for building a modern HR ecosystem. This product allows HR managers to bring their work to a whole new level by providing tools for automating recruiting, onboarding, goal setting, employee training, analytical reporting, and other key management processes. SMART HCM & LMS is a Ukrainian solution powered by Microsoft technologies, which means that the skills of working with global technologies will make you not only a local but an international expert.
Who should inspire HR professionals who want to create a personal brand?
There are many successful cases of building a personal brand. This fact does not mean that you now have fewer chances to become successful. On the contrary, the HR community is very open and friendly, and opinion leaders in this area never stop sharing useful insights from their experience.
You can learn a lot about personal branding from the Punk Rock HR podcast. It was founded by Laurie Ruettimann, an opinion leader who started as an HR manager and became one of the top 5 career coaches in the United States. Laurie’s success story is a complicated one, as she has experienced burnout, lost faith in herself, and reinvented herself by putting her well-being first. Lori also wrote a book about the importance of a personal brand, Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career, which has been highly praised by HR professionals around the world. In each episode of this podcast, Laurie discusses key topics related to the modern labor market with influential experts.
Another source of inspiration can be the podcast You Are the Brand by Mike Kim, a strategist for opinion leaders, business coaches, and entrepreneurs. Mike Kim wrote a bestselling book about building a personal brand in eight effective steps, and the podcast is an opportunity to follow these steps together with Mike, the person who built this path to success.
Impact Makers is a weekly podcast by Jennifer McClure, a speaker, business coach, and human capital management consultant. The podcast focuses on HR leadership, career, and human resources, and all these topics are addressed in an unusual way. For example, the title of one of the topics is “The Power of Nonverbal Communication: Insights from a Counterintelligence Agent with Derik Clark”. Sounds interesting?
The world of HR is diverse, as its main component is people, who are also unique in their own way. Perhaps that’s why your potential audience expects something that no one else has talked about. Find the topic or area that interests you the most and analyze it very precisely. This way, you can find something new for yourself and use this knowledge to build your personal brand. And the HR Pro Awards 2024 can become a platform where you can and should present your identity or learn from the experience of talented colleagues. The event was created and founded by the Ukrainian HR PRO Association, the official representative of SHRM, the world’s most reputable human capital management organization. The award was co-organized by robota.ua, the first online job search platform in Ukraine, which has become a favorite platform of most Ukrainian HR professionals. The SMART business team was also involved in developing and supporting the award portal for a reason. The company has been strengthening the HR industry with its SMART HCM & LMS solution for more than five years. Thanks to this comprehensive tool, hundreds of business representatives have already been able to optimize a huge range of HR tasks, from effective hiring to detailed and human-centered HR analytics. So, joining the award as a participant or partner means joining an all-Ukrainian event with the best HR experts. Start creating your personal brand today, and the HR Pro Awards 2024 team will support you and help you!
