When you develop your personal brand, you need to watch your attitude.
I don’t mean this in the “shame on you” sense. I’m referring to the unique attitude that you create when you develop a personal brand.
Your attitude is one of the most essential components of your personal brand. Here’s how to shape it.
Every Personal Brand Has An Attitude
No matter what you do with your personal brand, it’s going to have an attitude.
You can either choose to intentionally shape that attitude, or allow it to get shaped by the things that you do (or forget to do).
An attitude isn’t inherently good or bad. It simply is. Your approach to shaping that attitude is extremely important for your future success.
Emphasize Just A Few Things
Every individual is a complex set of passions, motivations, drives, goals, experiences, emotions, and thoughts. There’s no way you can convey everything about you in a personal brand attitude.
That’s why you need to pick just a few things. (I discuss this more at the end of the article.) Whenever you write, blog, or speak, keep these few things in mind. Try not to stray too much off topic, because it will dilute the attitude that you’re trying to create.
Aaron Agius uses this approach, branding himself as an online marketer, web strategist, and entrepreneur. These three things help to shape his attitude.
Your Attitude Is Unique
In my guide on Building Your Personal Brand, I talked about something that is really important for personal branding: You are unique.
The world is full of people that are trying to be just like all the other people. What’s the good in that? You have something unique to bring to the world — something that only you can do and be.
Don’t shrink from being who you really are online. Your true attitude deserves to be seen.
The most successful personal brands are those who don’t shrink back from who they are.
Darren Rowse is one of those successful personal brand creators, and he is unashamed of who he is. It’s given him a great platform — literally and figuratively — for continued success. He includes a video on his “about”page, which helps to further showcase his uniqueness.
Select Your Fans
You’re not the only one who gets to create your personal brand attitude. Other people help you by writing testimonials about you.
The great thing about these testimonials is that you get to select which of these you showcase. I’ve chosen a few of these for my personal blog because I believe that they accurately reflect who I am.
Let The Haters Hate
You can have attitude without being annoying. But, let’s face it, some people aren’t going to like you. That’s true in real life, and it’s true in your personal online brand.
You can’t make everyone like you, and you don’t need to try. As long as you are who you are, the right people will gravitate to you. The others? They don’t matter; don’t worry about them.
When I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I got really disgusted with people — mostly millionaires — who wouldn’t give me the time of day. The fact is, I misunderstood them, because I misunderstood a lot of life. That’s often the case with people who don’t like your personal brand. They might misunderstand you, and there’s not much you can do to help them out with that.
Take my friend Timothy Sykes, for example. Almost every single picture of him shows him with a smirk.
I happen to know that Tim is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. His personal brand attitude is intended to convey an attitude that is core to his business — a challenging, go-getter attitude. Tim wants to attract people who are driven to succeed in a rough-and-tumble industry. Haters are gonna hate. And that’s okay.
This attitude not contrary to who Tim is, but it showcases a side of his attitude that he wants to leverage for business success.
What Are The 3 Most Important Things About You — Things That You Want Everyone To Know About?
I don’t mean to be morbid or overly introspective about it, but here’s what I suggest. Imagine it’s your funeral. What are the three things that you wish people would remember about your life?
If those things are the most important, then use those things to shape your attitude.
I recently asked one of my consulting clients this question, and he immediately responded by talking about his dad, a first-generation immigrant, a hard worker, and a loving father. The personal brand my client wanted to communicate was one of family devotion, respect, and recognition of his heritage.
But there was more. He also wanted to be defined as someone who was aggressive in the pursuit of his goals, and “hungry” (his word) for the next big thing. These were the things that shaped his approach to business and life.
Here’s an example. Chris Drucker, is a great businessman, but he’s also a guy who loves his family. He conveys his values in this brief story about himself on his blog:
Let Your Opinions Be Known
Your brand attitude turns on your opinions.
What are opinions? Opinions are the personal feelings that you have on certain issues. These are the viewpoints that will shape your attitude.
The rise of Tim Ferriss’s personal brand started with the publication of his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. In that book, Ferriss dispensed his personal opinions freely. He kept on unleashing his viewpoints and opinions in subsequent books.
His opinions, backed by research and experience, shaped Tim’s personal brand. For a while, he became one of the most talked-about individuals in lifestyle design, business, fitness, and cooking, because he was outspoken about what he believed and why.
Conclusion
Creating a personal brand takes a long time, so it logically follows that your attitude takes some time to develop as well.
Your brand attitude isn’t going to come out right the first time. It takes a lot of consideration to figure out just how you want to sound. Plus, you gradually understand how people perceive you. Even though I’ve been developing my personal brand for years, I’m still trying to get it right.
As you focus on your unique individualism in a few key points, your attitude will emerge. Don’t shrink back from being who you are. Boldness is one indispensable characteristic for creating your brand attitude.
What’s the attitude that you want to convey?
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