Hello Fellow Codenewbies 👋,
I've heard the term "personal brand" before, but I didn't understand it.
What is a personal brand, and what are its benefits for developers?
Personal Brands
A personal brand is a widely-recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions, and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.
-- PersonalBrand.com
Building personal brands can help us get a job, speak gigs, or develop our network.
Our personal brand should say who we are and show our personality.
How to create personal brands?
🗝 Consistency
Consistency makes us stand out. And what kind of consistencies do we need to create our own personal brands?
Consistent image
People can recognize us without thinking twice if we have the same profile picture and cover image/banner on our online platforms.
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Consistent messaging
We can create consistent messaging to tell people what we do.
Take a look at what Swyx does.
He popularized and used #LearnInPublic because he helps developers learn in public.I don't have my own messaging yet. But I do have a consistent greeting in my articles; Hello Fellow Codenewbies 👋.
I see myself as a code newbie because I constantly learn new things every day. And one of the reasons I put my notes in public is to help fellow code newbies and my future self. Consistent voice
It's about how we bring our personality and our brand into work.
Maggie Appleton is known for her metaphors and analogies when she explains concepts in techs. We also know her for her idea of digital garden.
What are the impacts of personal brands on developers?
Building authority
Personal brands can help us to build authority.
We instantly associate her with Java when we hear the name Angie Jones. Angie is well known for her work with Java, and Oracle themselves named her Java Champion. People trust her and look up to her as an inspiration and a Java resource.Building community
With personal brands, we can build a community.
Take Scott Hanselman as an example. He's been creating content to lift people up for over two decades in communities. It now leads him to work full-time with the community at Microsoft.Building expertise
When we learn something, we want to make sure that we learn from someone who knows what they're talking about.
People know Josh W. Comeau as "King of Whimsy" for his ability to create magic in a browser, and he's good at explaining the concepts.
Personal brands can help us build our value, something that can make us unique and stand out.
Final Words
We need to have consistency to build our own personal brands to make us stand out and unique, to build our own value.
So what are your plans to build your personal brands?
Do drop your thoughts in the comment below 😀
Note:
This article is written based on Colby Fayock's talk, Stand out by building a personal brand.
Thank you for reading!
Last but not least, you can find me on Twitter. Let's connect! 😊
Latest comments (6)
I think for me, it's just being consistent. This is a struggle of mine which I recognize. Thanks for posting Ayu!
Thank you for reading, Aaron! 😊
I have been thinking more about this concept of a personal brand, and I must admit that I struggle with it a bit. I see the value in a consistent message and creating/building trust with people. But I find myself wanting to be human online. I want to bring my full self to my social media profiles, not just the career woman. I also don't want to feel so boxed in around just talking about tech (or in the case of hobbies, just talking about that hobby). I want to be able to geek out on coding stuff but then also appreciate and share art and books and life hacks. I haven't seen/figured out how to do that effectively yet.
Hi Anita,
I've seen many known developers talking about code and their stack, and also sharing their personal life or showing who they are and what they're into.
Look at Emma Bostian, Cassidy, and Danny Thompson.
Developers are human first after all :)
Some people who follow you for your tech stuffs maybe don't really interested in your non-tech life, but they could still know that you have other interests.
I created my Twitter account initially for logging my tech journey.
So it's a little bit difficult for me now to put "the whole me" out there on social media. But I'm heading there though :)
At least for now, I do it in my articles.
Outside technical ones, I love writing about my personal struggles as self-taught with a toddler and communities who see me as people first :)
Maybe you can start with putting 80% of your tech things and the rest for your personal interest that shows who you really are to build your presence, and adding more and more to it :)
Thanks for this list! I follow Danny, but I'm not familiar with the others. I'll check them out.
I too have a toddler, and I'm self-teaching. I'm a systems engineer (my background is in Aviation), but I want to get into coding. I don't have a following yet, so I can brainstorm and rebrand as much as I want right now. 😂 Thanks for writing this. It's given me some things to think about.
You're welcome!
I hope you can start to build your online presence. 😃