“Your personal brand is a promise to your clients… a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability.” – Jason Hartman
With the fast paced advancement of technology, comes also the change in when and how we perceive people and our surroundings. Today, it has never been easier to be perceived in a different way or to grow a massive following and become the star of your industry due to the emergence of personal branding and the opportunity of being able to cultivate our online reputation. Our online reputation can act like a double edge sword, it can either be your strongest asset or your biggest liability.
Personal branding is becoming more of a requirement for anyone looking to grow their business; get that dream job; or take their career to the next level and less of a competitive edge.
Related: 5 Tips To Do Personal Branding That Truly Describes You!
Here are 10 essential statistics, which prove the importance and value of personal branding:
- 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals (even if they don’t know them) rather than brands.
- Marketers who prioritise blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy a positive ROI.
- Sales representatives that uses social media as part of their sales techniques outsell 78% of their peers.
- Of all Internet users, 65% see online search as the most trusted source of information about people and companies. That’s a higher level of trust than any other online or offline source.
- Consistency is key: it takes 5-7 impressions for someone to remember a brand.
- 70% of U.S recruiters and HR professionals have rejected candidates based on information they found online.
- 85% of U.S recruiters and HR professionals say that an employee’s online reputation influences their hiring decisions at least to some extent. Nearly half say that a strong online reputation influences their hiring decisions to a great extent.
- Of all recruiters, 95% believe that the job market will remain or get more competitive. If you don’t stand out online, your competitors will.
- 90% of all recruiters, say the conduct online research of their potential candidates.
- Leads developed through employees’ social media activities convert 7x more frequently than other leads.
It has been shown that we trust people more than we trust brands, and we engage with people more than we engage with brands. It is vital for companies to start encouraging and training their employees to engage and establish themselves online, utilizing free tools at their disposal, such as social media, blogging, videos and webinars. This step will not only benefit the employee themselves but also your company.
People have so much going on these days that if you don’t make an effort to stand out, you risk getting left behind. Successful companies want stand-out employees, and one way to gauge that is by your online reputation.
Related: 5 Tips to Help You Create Great Content for Your Personal Brand
Interested to know how you can improve your personal branding strategies? Click Here!
