Traits of a Highly Effective Digital Brand

In the age of Social Media, you need a highly effective digital brand.

 

Building a digital brand enables you to set yourself apart from your competition by allowing you to showcase your unique personal practices, beliefs, specialties, and credibility.

These practices often include standing behind certain organizations, sharing your personal mantras and beliefs, and just being uniquely you.

highly effective digital brand

Why You Need a Highly Effective Digital Brand

Digital branding is your way of defining yourself to an audience of peers, superiors, and potential partners, based on your specific set of ideas, actions, beliefs, and styling.

It is important to build a defined brand because as my business partner (and husband) likes to say:

“A brand stays with you no matter what industry or business you are in. It can help you jumpstart new businesses and grow existing ones. A digital brand can help you establish yourself as an authority on a subject and help you demonstrate expertise in your specific domain.” – Derric Haynie, SplashOPM.

Influence Perception

If a traditional brand is defined as a non-tangible relationship that a company has with its customers, a brand in the digital age is defined by the way peers, superiors, and partners perceive you.

Having a strong, positive brand identity can be a very powerful way of influencing people’s decisions and changing their expectations.

Impress Employers

When it comes to marketing yourself to potential employers, you want to be able to do these things:

  • Define– Having a defined digital brand is one way to garner influence, create expectations, and elicit respect.
  • Sway– You have the power to sway people’s opinions of you based on the way you’ve chosen to digitally represent yourself.
  • Harness– This power of influence is extremely important to harness if you are ambitious and striving to become an authority on a subject or looking for recognition within your industry.

Digital Branding and Millennials

In the grand scheme of things, digital branding is a relatively new concept. But it has clearly had an impact on younger generations.

Attempting to appear a certain way online has been hardwired into the brains of millennials who grew up in a world where the internet became a vehicle for individual self-expression.

Think about Myspace and Live Journal.

highly effective digital brand

Decorating digital walls with pictures, posting public comments on peer’s pages, and writing out elaborate personal biographies was the start of this phenomenon of internet individualism.

The driving fuel behind this force is to be seen and understood in a socially crafted reality of our own fashioning.

But, nowadays there is a delicate balance between your online and offline self. There is a right way (and a wrong way) to create a brand identity. The most effective digital brands are consistent, authentic, visible, and strategic.

Tips for a Highly Effective Digital Brand

Align online and offline.

You must focus your online behavior to align with the way you interact in the offline realm. Consistency is key.

Be bold.

To build a strong, trustworthy, dynamic brand, you should speak your mind and be ready to stand by your statements if under examination from others.

Don’t fear ridicule.

I get it. Putting yourself out there can be scary. But, understanding how to overcome the fear of being ridiculed is paramount to your success. If you prove the strength of your brand, you just might beat your competition out of a job, and secure yourself as a niche authority.

What do you think? Anything you want to add? Let me know by commenting below.

Written by
Shana Haynie

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