Whether you’re the CEO of a conglomerate, the partner of a major medical practice, or an entrepreneur blazing a trail, your personal brand has never been more important than it is today.

Rapper and billionaire entrepreneur Jay-Z said it perfectly all those years ago “I’m not a business man, I’m a business, man!”

Why build your personal brand? There are so many reasons, many of which I’ve written about or been quoted about here, here and here.

Your time is valuable so let’s cut to the chase.

Even if you’ve never devoted any time and resources to building a personal brand, you still have one. Here are the four essential ingredients to help you best maximize it:

1.    Invest in a Modern, Recent, Rapport Building Headshot 

You need at least one, but ideally five variations (eg different poses, different clothing, different setting e.g. action shot (working in office or meeting clients). It should have been taken in the last 12 months (no longer).  

Avoid studio photos with marbled paper backgrounds. The headshots should be evenly lit and show your own personal spark (no stiff portraits). I personally prefer clean white backgrounds and a photo showing someone laughing, as well as one looking into the camera.  The more natural (yet polished and professional) the better.

Update your personal photos everywhere.

There should be one photo that is used more liberally than the others – this is known as your hero image.

Below is mine.

ProTip (make sure your headshot links directly back to your website when someone clicks on it to help drive traffic).

2.    Up Level Your Bio

How recent is your professional bio? If it hasn’t been updated in 12 months then it’s old news.

The purpose of your bio is to get people to read it in the first place, be impressed and want to know more.  Don’t bore them to death with detail. Instead just hit the key highlights. Balance professional interests with personal interests and don’t be afraid to let some of your personality shine through.

Next step - get an internet search done on your name and replace all your old bios wherever possible – including obvious places like your company website, LinkedIn, Boards you serve on, professional associations you’re a member of etc.

3.    Collate Your Expert Portfolio 

Get one of your team to gather together what I call your “expert portfolio” – this is a set of links and copies of all articles you’ve written, books you’ve authored, media interviews you’ve done, TV segments you’ve been featured in, podcasts you’ve appeared on etc.

Once you have these gathered together, these resources can appear under your bio as individual links, and/ or as separate section on your company website.  Each item can also be repurposed to use as helpful downloads for new clients and giveaways as expert positioning tools. 

4.     Expand Your Expert Portfolio

In this content obsessed world, it’s critical you keep producing expert positioning tools to stay ahead of the game. Articles you authored even three years ago aren’t necessarily going to hold the same amount of gravitas if you haven’t authored anything since.

Guess what the number one expert positioning tool is to showcase your leadership in an industry?

That’s right, authoring a book.

It doesn’t have to be a long book (in fact, sometimes the shorter the better as few people have the time to read a book cover to cover anymore). 

ProTip: The most important part of your book is your title, the cover design, and your bio (see point number two above). This is all most people pay attention to anyway, but remember that any books, articles etc. are being written for the benefit of attracting your ideal clients.

It needs to be written with their needs and interests in mind (don’t make the mistake of writing the book for your benefit instead).  And don’t worry if you’re not a writer.  The days of having to slug through writing a book yourself are long gone. Ghost authoring is big business (and is what 99% of celebrities use to author their books), or alternatively you can do a series of short micro books which are more easily digestible and can now be outsourced requiring just an hour of your time to make.  

Now you’ve got a game plan together to grow your personal brand, which item is first on your list?

Need more personal branding tips? Grab a copy of my book The Client Stampede on Amazon and fast forward the audio to Chapter Three.