A few years ago, the LMF Network hosted a live workshop on “How to Leverage Your LinkedIn for Success.”
Led by Maya Welford, the session was packed with valuable insights into maximising LinkedIn for career growth. Maya emphasised the importance of building a strong personal brand as the foundation for a compelling LinkedIn presence.
Maya Welford, a multi-award-winning professional and Behavioral Finance Specialist at Barclays, shared her expertise with the audience. Notably, Maya is also a proud alumna of the LMF Network’s mentoring program.
What is a personal brand?
Personal branding, indeed, is the practice of creating a unique image and reputation for oneself in the professional world. In today’s digital age, personal branding has become increasingly important as it allows individuals to differentiate themselves from others in their industry and establish credibility with their audience.
Personal branding is unique skills and what you are passionate about and can help individuals stand out in a competitive job market, establish credibility and trust with their audience, and can lead to new career opportunities, promotions, and salary increases.
Everyone has a unique combination of skills and passions that lead to a strong personal brand, different from others in a specific industry.
How to start building a personal brand?
Building your brand can be daunting. The first step is to break it down and consider the three key themes you want to be known for.
It might be that you are already known for this or that you are at the beginning of your journey.
For example, Maya’s three key themes were:
Supporting and developing others;
Commitment with DEI;
Names, histories and related stories.
Maya uses these three key themes for her LinkedIn posts. That’s why she successfully created a podcast called “That’s my name”, where she invited guests to talk about the history and fun facts about their names.
“Which are your three key themes? What makes me unique? What is your story? What message do you want to portray?"
These are a few of the questions that Maya gave us to stimulate us in creating our Personal Branding.
Should we have a professional and personal brand?
When it comes to personal branding, there is often a misconception that your professional and personal brand need to be one and the same. However, this is not necessarily the case. While your professional and personal brands can certainly overlap and complement each other, they can also be separate and distinct.
The most important thing is to be authentic and to develop your brand around themes that you are truly passionate about.
Your personal brand should reflect who you are as a person and what you stand for.
Your professional brand, on the other hand, should reflect your skills, expertise, and experience in your chosen field.
That being said, there are many ways in which your personal and professional brands can relate to and complement each other. For example, if you are passionate about sustainability, this could be a theme that you incorporate into both your personal and professional brand. You could highlight your efforts to live a more sustainable lifestyle on your personal social media channels while also showcasing your work with sustainable businesses or initiatives on your professional channels.
Ultimately, your personal brand is an extension of your identity, and your professional brand is an extension of your career. It’s up to you to decide how you want to develop and showcase each brand and how you want them to relate to each other.
This blog contribution was made by Eleonora Papini.
Eleonora has 3+ of experience in sustainable development and international cooperation with a background in Economic Development and International Cooperation with Finance.
Her background includes working as a Project Implementation Officer in a European project about urban sustainable development solutions to value the young and female entrepreneurship industry.
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What is LMF Network?
The LMF Network is an education careers platform bridging skills and the gender gap. In just five years, we’ve worked with 100s of companies on policy and people development worldwide, launched the UK's largest mentorship programme with a 90% goal success rate, and built a knowledge and networking platform where individuals can find friends, have career conversations, learn from e-courses, and connect with mentors. We’ve been the foundation of the book Unprepared to Entrepreneur and shared our mission on international stages. Our community trust us to support their development needs, build their confidence and align ourselves with trusted, inclusive partners who can nurture and grow talent to progress in their careers. We’ve upskilled 20,000 people in 3 years — we know what we are fighting for and need your help to make it happen.