X

The NAAHP Haitian American Leadership Award Scholarship application is open through April 26  Apply Now

NAAHP Blog

Personal Branding Best Practices From Christine Souffrant Ntim

11.5.2017

Career Advice, Leadership & Professional Development, Entrepreneurship, Education

Article By: NAAHP

Last week Christine Souffrant Ntim spoke at the 6th Annual NAAHP Conference. She participated in the Working in the Technology & Innovation Space panel discussion where she outlined the steps necessary to create a strong personal brand. We’ve extrapolated her advice below for our readers. Here is Christine’s advice for building a strong personal brand.

Start by defining what personal branding is. Your personal brand is how you define who you are and what you associate with to the world. Your brand needs to tell your network what value they will get from you.

Your personal brand likely will be an ongoing evolution. Don’t be afraid to get started because you’re not happy with your current situation. Expect your brand to grow and evolve as you grow.

You reinforce your brand every day with your words and actions. To ensure your brand messaging is strong, be consistent and repetitive. Define who you are simply and succinctly. Make sure you include a title, bio, tagline, and a summary paragraph. These elements are the scannable bites on LinkedIn that your network and audience will use to identify you. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, build it now, it’s free!

Once you’ve got your personal brand defined and an online profile, it’s important to publish. Publishing allows you to be visible and findable online. You don’t need to publish yourself everywhere to reinforce your brand. Be somewhere you choose consistently so your network can find you.

If you do not have time to write and publish your thought leadership, be a curator. We are living in an age of information overload. There is a ton of information online that you can curate for your network if you don’t have time to write. Remember, you are branding yourself an expert in your field and your curation provides value to those looking for guidance.

Now that you’ve built your personal brand, take control. You can monetize your expertise if you wish. Teach your ecosystem about your area of expertise. Record webinars, share via an email newsletter or your website. Host free workshops. To start, you may offer these items free of charge, but as your network and influence grow, you can start to charge.

Remember that building your personal brand is hard work. Don’t give up, keep knocking on doors. No means not right now, it doesn’t necessarily mean no forever. If someone says no to you at any point in your journey, try again once you’ve come farther and can prove to them your value.

Maintaining your personal brand is a lot of work as well. You need to hustle. You don’t always know who will help you in your career at some point, so be humble, put the work in, be kind, and always bring your A game.

Continue to learn. You need to stay relevant and critical to every organization. The power of creativity is more important now than ever as more repetitive task-based work will become automated and replaced by technology.

Lastly, stay positive and feel empowered that technology has democratized the world. Your voice can be heard just as loud as anyone else’s. Anyone with an internet connection can reach anyone anywhere. So start building your brand and achieving your dreams today.

To learn more about Christine Souffrant Ntim, visit christinesntim.com.

NAAHP
NAAHP

National Alliance for the Advancement of Haitian Professionals

NAAHP is focused on connecting a global community of peers with career advancement resources as well as fostering transformative relationships to strengthen Haiti through philanthropy and social entrepreneurship.

You may also like