What is personal branding? Personal branding is all about making others aware of your skills and about what you can offer them. Independent of who you want to communicate to, be it your clients, colleagues, potential employers or any other target group, to be more successful you should influence, what others see from you, and try to make the impression you want to create. Personal branding can here create benefits to you in various ways. First it can help you to establish contacts and connections with potential and relevant business contacts and second you can identify new options to work with your clients, because others are more aware about the qualities, which you bring into a potential business relation.

People make business with people. When entering a business relation, and this includes a client relationship as well, one important aspect is trust and here personal branding can help to create that trust. When a potential client get a positive first impression of an attorney and perceives the attorney as the relevant expert for them, a new business relationship might be established without meeting in person or having a long term experience with each other just due to the good personal brand.

Since in our digital world everyone spends a lot of time online, personal branding on social media becomes ever more important, as this is typically the first impression, which you create. You must not underestimate the time, which people spend on social media, where they can easily see the profiles of attorneys and clients alike. LinkedIn is also often the first search result, when someone is looking for someone on the internet, and a well maintained and consistent profile is here key to differentiate from competitors and attract and retain clients. This is personal branding practically applied in the digital world.

Another important aspect in personal branding is, that a personal brand can only be generated over time. A reputation needs to be earned and cannot be generated quickly, even with the best personal branding practice. It is not sufficient to post relevant content and create contacts on LinkedIn and expect fast returns. You also need to stay in touch with your community to create relationships and earn a reputation. Be aware, that you have to create your network first, before you can profit from your contacts in the future.

In personal branding, two aspects are most important in establishing your brand: Clarity and consistency. Clarity is a very important aspect, because in the end the person you want to address needs to be able to understand, what you can offer them. For an attorney, this is often a potential client, so the messages conveyed in LinkedIn posts should in this case be written, that they are relevant and understandable for the client target group, and not phrased like in a communication with an attorney colleague.

The second aspect is the consistency. When creating a personal brand it is very important to focus on aspects, which can be remembered by the target group. Just communicating, that you are an attorney, is likely not enough to be personally remembered. A personal brand helps you to be identified as an expert, for example an specialist in a specific field or in a country, and helps to retain the attention of your chosen target group.