Ian Moyse is EMEA Sales Director for Natterbox. He was awarded the accolade of BESMA UK Sales Director of the year and in 2019 was listed in the top 50 Sales Keynote speakers by Top Sales World . He is widely published on matters of social influence, sales leadership, personal branding and cloud technologies.

Your personal branding matters because it is the measure of your reputation and integrity.

Especially now that consumer habits are changing to show a clear preference for choosing small personal brands with personality and stories and over big branded companies.

Personal branding done right can help you stand out from the crowd and give you a platform from which you can inspire trust in your audience.

Here are 7 ways to build your personal brand:

1. Determine which platforms your audience is hanging out on and engage with them there.

Where is your customer? What's your demographic? If 99% of your customers are B2B, LinkedIn [is a good fit and] perhaps Twitter. If they are all consumers [consider] where are they expecting to engage with you on social.

— Ian Moyse

2. Get a really good grasp of the platform and become an expert on it.

3. Look good on social media and be credible. Your picture and your profile needs to look and sound relevant to what your audience would expect for what you’re representing.

4. Know your stuff and write about it. Make your content count by giving insight and value to the reader. Inspire trust in your audience.

5. Post your content on the appropriate platform. Everyone is looking for content. Aim to put content out there that will get shared by the right people.

6. Look for the influencers and follow them to get noticed in the right place by the right people. Comment on their posts like someone who knows what they are talking about. You can even comment with an opposing view by saying “I disagree because in my experience …”

If you genuinely have a valid point, make it.

— Ian Moyse

People appreciate commentary. Comment as long as you've got context and can back it up. When you leave a valid comment, you’re going to have people going to your profile to see who this person is with this added insight or with the opposing view. They’ll want to look at your profile to see if you are credible. Make them realise that you are trustworthy, you have experience and a valid opinion. Keep impressing them and they will follow you back and engage with you.

The key here to form a relationship that is genuine and authentic. Build a conversation. Get to know them and let them get to know you. It’s not about following and getting followers and doing whatever it takes to build numbers. This is about building genuine connections with people. And that takes time, but pays off in the long run.

7. Once you've got your baseline in, it's about nurturing it and tuning it as you go. Successful entrepreneurs work ad hoc. Don’t give in to “I've got to spend five hours a day”. Instead, “I'll do social now when I'm in a taxi and I've got 30 minutes or I'm early for a meeting so I'll do bits and bobs”. Share content, comment on people’s content and take part as and when you can.

Getting your personal branding right is critical especially if you are in eCommerce. People want to know the person behind the business because they want to know who they are buying from. Personal branding that consistently represents you as a credible, reputable and relatable person will go a long way to your success.