The ability to identify your unique strengths, values, and expertise, then communicate them to your target audience through consistent messaging and content to build trust and recognition.
Self branding is not mere self-promotion. It is a systematic process of discovering your core values and expertise, then expressing them authentically. You build a consistent identity across online and offline channels, forming trust-based relationships with your target audience through content creation and networking. From personal career growth to organizational leadership, self branding is the strategic competency of designing and evolving your own brand.
You encounter the concept of a personal brand for the first time and begin organizing your strengths, interests, and values. You observe well-built personal brand examples from others and consciously ask yourself for the first time how you want to be perceived. You do not yet have a systematic strategy, but you are taking the first steps toward self-understanding.
What Comes Next
If you've checked off most of this list, you're ready for the Brand Builder stage, building a consistent profile and self-introduction based on your self-understanding. Rampersad's Authentic Personal Branding suggests starting with the smallest self-discovery habit to build momentum before expanding to full brand strategy.
A 5-stage visibility model (Resident Expert → Global Superstar) based on research with 200+ experts and 270+ clients, directly used for level boundary setting and defining behavioral characteristics at each stage.
Empirically derives 6 constituent dimensions of self-branding (cultural capital, social capital, verbal self-expression, mediated self-expression, authenticity, external image), providing a multidimensional basis for checklist item design.
Presents a personal-organizational brand alignment model and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach, providing the theoretical foundation for authenticity-based branding and a systematic execution framework.
Empirically validates with an 18-item scale that self-branding mediates the effect of perceived employability on career satisfaction across Western and Asian cultural contexts, providing experiential evidence for L3-L5 checklist items on brand effectiveness measurement.
