Your Personal Brand: How Does Your Practice Rate?
Developing a successful personal brand can be just as important as your professional credentials and the ability to perform on the job. Businesses as well as individuals all have a personal brand whether they are consciously aware of it or not. Here is seven ways to create and maintain an impressive personal brand for your practice.
1. Pick the Right Brand
Creating a personal brand doesn’t happen by accident, or at least it shouldn’t. You need to specifically identify what makes your firm relevant and unique. How will you separate your practice from competitors and reach your target audience? The old saying, be yourself because everyone else is taken, may sound trite but it’s true. Play to your firm’s strengths and build a brand out of what you know you can do well.
2. Live the Brand
Everyday appearance and presentation is part of cultivating a successful brand. This doesn’t mean everyone in the practice has to look like a Hollywood celebrity but certain standards should be upheld. Each lawyer in your firm should be expected to dress in a professional and polished manner. Being authentic and living the brand both professionally and personally is important. Sending a consistent and clear message on a daily basis is key to building a brand.
3. Relate to Your Clients
Actively listening and maintaining eye to eye contact is important when showing empathy and building trust with clients. People will have confidence in someone they can personally connect with. Listen to what your clients are saying, and then respond accordingly. Nothing will do more to damage the brand you’re trying to cultivate than having clients who don’t think you’re paying attention to them.
4. Build and Maintain an Online Image
Having a website for your firm goes without saying, but making sure it’s maintained and professional is extremely important. Google the names of your staff online and see what’s out there. If anyone has a common name they should consider using a middle name or middle initial to be distinguished from hundreds of other people they may be confused with. Once an appropriate online presence has been achieved, monitoring that image should be an ongoing process.
5. Promoting the Brand is a Team Sport
This means that everyone in your firm is aware of the brand and how to promote it. Each employee needs to be educated regarding exactly what that means. If there’s any confusion about what’s expected the brand will suffer. This doesn’t mean that individuals within the practice can’t have their own personal brand, but it needs to be in sync with the brand the firm is promoting.
6. Keep Learning
No matter how much education or experience a person has, there’s always something new to learn. Being the best in any field means constantly learning and adapting to the changes that inevitably come along. This could mean taking part in continuing education, attending conferences, or simply staying on top of the latest trends.
7. Be Open to Change
The methods to maintain your brand are not set in stone. At some point it may be time to develop a new company logo or adopt different online marketing strategies. Any business or individual with a successful personal brand can never remain stagnant, but must constantly be developing and re-evaluating, and then making changes when necessary.
Branding will help keep give your practice top of mind awareness. Do you have further tips or success stories about your branding experiences? We would love to hear them. Share your branding experiences below.
Until next time! Be Enchanting!
