While offering great services will make you a neat profit, having an effective personal brand will secure you a set of loyal customers that will want to try whatever you offer them at least once.

If you don’t believe in the impact that brands have on the customer base, then you might want to take a look at big-name companies such as McDonald’s, Nike or Apple, especially Apple. Whenever these companies launch a new product, the customers that are faithful to the brand won’t think twice to buy it, they might not know much about the merchandise, but they do know about its brand.

People who know how to use their personal branding will have more interactions with their potential customers than those who do not. The name of someone that knows how to sell himself will flow from the mouths of its clients to the ears of their friends, thus increasing its reach without effort.

Now that you have an idea of how brand marketing works, let’s start with the most common pitfalls entrepreneurs fall into when branding themselves.

1. Underestimating personal branding. Entrepreneurs must know that personal branding isn’t just a plus, it is something necessary that will put them ahead of their competition. If you sell a good service but you don’t put much interest in branding yourself, then you will lose clients to someone that might not offer a service as good as yours but that puts effort in his own brand. If you aren’t branding yourself then you’re not being competitive enough.
2. Not making self-reflection a habit. Knowing who you are and what you want is something of importance in personal branding. Think what is working and what isn’t working in your life so you can act accordingly, ask yourself if what you’re doing makes you happy so you won’t end up doing something that you don’t like doing. If you show yourself unhappy with what you do then it will stain your personal brand and it might be time to reconsider things.
3. Not paying attention to their social networks. Social networks are a helpful asset in building relationships with customers, they let you peek into their lives while letting them see yours. Use them to promote yourself in a natural way, post often to enter their daily lives and interact frequently with potential customers to make them remember you. If you interact with them frequently then they will be more prone to share your content. You should also be consistent, if you don’t post too often they might forget about you, but be sure not to overdo it.
4. Forgetting their friends. This might sound a bit silly, but if you’re just starting then your friends, colleagues and relatives can help you with getting some attention. You might be wondering how, but remember that they have friends and relatives too, if you ask them nicely to distribute your professional profile on their social networks then you can get some desired traffic.

Building your own personal brand will take time, be sure to ask others how do they feel about you and the services you provide, good feedback will help you with your growing but don’t let the opinions of others deviate you from what you want to be, as long as your brand is true to yourself and to your target audience, then you’re on the right track.