You have probably heard of Keanu Reeves. If you come across a news that states something negative about him, would you not hesitate to believe it at first? It's because maybe you trust him a lot, and you know his brand. Now think of this, what if you hear from a news content about a politician that you hate, doing something good - would you not hesitate to believe it at first? Yep, that's what we'll talk about.
Recently, my book Personal Branding came out. While we're having a lot of conversations regarding Personal Branding - the topic itself, today, we'll talk about something that we all probably notice/have noticed, but probably haven't given priority.
We grew up to conversations like 'Do what you want to do, don't think of others.' Of course, passion and hard work will stay in their place, but your perception towards your audience should be prioritized too.
Jeff Bezos once stated, "Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
There are things about yourself, that not everyone knows. There might be bad things about yourself such as your messed up sleeping schedule, some health-related problems that we probably keep to ourselves.
Most of the things are in the point where two of the circles are intersecting, where you as well as your audience know about you - who you are, your core beliefs, etc. If you believe that there are good things about you that you want your followers to know for a beneficial outcome, do that. However, you might want to keep some things to yourself, like your last donation, which you don't want your public to know.
There's another interesting part in the diagram - what you don't know.
That's right. There are certain things about you that your audience knows which you probably aren't noticing yet. For example, you were speaking a bit too fast in your recent video which you didn't notice, but your audience did.
Well, it's fine. You should try to know the things that your audience knows but you don't, so you can work on those. Taking feedback from surveys, or from interactive content, comments - these things will give you insight about yourself and make your audience feel important.
You can't always know everything about yourself. But you can know better, and constantly improve.