Personal Brand and Visibility: How to Stand Out from the Crowd

Personal Branding and Visibility

“One of the most important skills in a career for everybody, particularly women, which nobody talks about is visibility. Your company is responsible for providing employees with opportunities. However, you are responsible for your visibility and being considered for these opportunities.”

In Northern Ireland, compared to other regions of the UK, we have a ‘no bragging’ culture. Often, we choose not to promote or celebrate our skills, achievements or ambitions due to fear that we will be seen as ‘blowing our own trumpet’ or ridiculed by colleagues and competitors. Similarly, we are also guilty of shying away from accepting complements and merits on our skills and performance due to fear of appearing conceited rather than humble.

Ask yourself the question, “What if I was not afraid to promote myself and was acknowledged and celebrated by others. What doors could this open for me”? This blog is to encourage you to break out of this stereotype and promote yourself through personal branding to increase your visibility.

What is the difference between the two?
Though these terms are often used interchangeably. While they go hand in hand, there is a difference:
Personal brand: this is something which you create, define and have control over, similar to a company brand. Incorporating your passion and skillset, which support and enhance your reputation (digital and in person).
Visibility: the extent to which you are seen and attract attention from your target audience. There are different levels, you can be merely seen or seen as the ‘go to person’ and subject matter expert

Where do I start with wanting to create/define my personal brand?
Your personal brand should be authentic. It should not be false or forced.

A great place to start can be establishing, or reminding yourself of three things…

Values
Values are, “the beliefs and principles which you believe are important in the way that you live and work.” They are standards of behaviour and what we stand for. The link below will take you to a list of 300+ values.
🔗 List of Values
Perhaps identify 5, these should be values which you live by effortlessly.

Passion and Cause
Passion is ultimately, “An emotion where you feel strongly about something and being driven to do something about it.” A passion can be something light hearted and fun such as a hobby or interest. It can also be more serious such as aligning yourself with a cause.

A cause is, “A principle, aim, or movement to which one is committed and is prepared to defend, champion or advocate.” This could include women’s, LGBTQIA and animal rights.

Skills and Qualities
Many people will jump straight to their job. While your job is a big part of your life, it is important to remember that it is your profession, not your entire personality.

Your skills and qualities extend far beyond your job. A skill is your ability to do something well. While a quality is an attribute or characteristic which you possess.

Once I am comfortable with my personal brand, how do I make myself visible/ increase my visibility?

Promoting yourself can be dauting when doing it for the first time. You will be glad to know that there are different places to promote and different levels of promotion.

Places to Promote
A great place to start can be internally to your colleagues, before promoting yourself externally to the local business community and wider public.

Most SMEs and large organisations will have a ‘Employee Engagement Forum’ for private communications amongst employees within the organisation (think of it like an internal Facebook). Here, an employee can post to ‘All Company’ or a specific network/community group. Network/ community groups can be location specific, project specific or a hobby/interest group. Within Kainos, our forum is Viva Engage.

By promoting yourself internally initially, it will act as a safe space where you will be supported and championed by your colleagues. A great tip can be asking your team members to engage and support you!

Once comfortable promoting yourself internally, you can now promote yourself externally. This could be through your own social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Before doing so, make sure to update your profile! Here are a few top tips:
Profile picture: Make sure to use an appropriate headshot (there is a time and place for funny filters). If you are thinking to yourself ‘I haven’t had a headshot taken since before covid’’ or ‘I have worked from home since covid where I don’t need to look corporate’, you can now use AI to create one for you which is true to self. There is a rising trend of using a solid block colour for a background in your profile picture, as studies show this captures attention.
User name: Many people are now include an appropriate emoji in their user name. There are two main advantages to doing this: to increase your visibility and support your personal brand (For example, as a tech recruiter I incorporated the ‘ ’ emoji).

Then, you can take it to the next level by leveraging local organisations to promote yourself to their wider online audiences.

Levels of Promotion

There are varying levels of promotion to help increase your visibility amongst relevant audiences, to include colleagues, the local business community and wider public.

Like and Engage: If you are not yet confident enough to create your own posts, you can ‘piggy back’ on others. The most straightforward way to do this is by liking and/or engaging with any posts which interest you. You will then become visible to the author’s network through the engagement. I would cavate this by saying to be mindful if the post is relating to a topic which could be viewed as controversial or negative. While we are all entitled to our opinion, these do not always need to be broadcasted in a public forum.

Resharing: Next, you may want to reshare a post which is of interest to you and add your opinion summarised in a few lines.

Creating your own posts/content: By this stage, you should hopefully feel confident to create your own posts/content and share via your personal profile. This could take the form of: writing, graphic, sound bite or video. A few top tips:
Emojis and graphics: Where appropriate, be sure to include. According to some studies, these can increase your visibility and engagement rate by 25%!
Hashtags: A hashtag is a word or number following the # symbol. Be sure to include those that are relevant, as users often follow hashtags alongside individuals and companies, so your post/content will appear in the search of like minded individuals. Helping not only to increase your visibility, but grow your community and network.

Collaborating with others to create posts/content: Now, you should be incredibly engaged with your own audience/network and want to expand and grow it. The easiest way to do this is to ‘piggy back’ on others. This could be another individual or local organisation. Top tip, the Women in Business network offer members numerous ways to collaborate and promote themselves to include:
-Creating a '60 second’ member profile
-Publishing a blog
-Delivering a webinar/ round table talk
-Award submission

What does good look like? Who can I look to for inspiration?
I have selected a few members of the Women in Business network who I feel have a strong personal brand and visibility:
-Eimear Gourley (NI Property Girl)
-Dr Pragya Sharma (Gran Lab)
-Marcia Cassidy (Thursday Thought Coaching)

Each of these women showcase that when personal branding and visibility/promotion are done well, it will result in opening doors (internally and externally), growing your network and being seen as industry professional and the ‘go to person’. While each of the women above are self-employed, if you’re employed, your employer should be inspired by employees with strong personal branding, not intimidated or undermined.

In the words of Garrison Wynn, ‘People buy from people they trust, and people they like’.