In today’s competitive landscape, building a personal brand can seem like a daunting task. However, it is an essential endeavor that can bring extensive benefits to you and your company. I’ve had hundreds of conversations with entrepreneurs, investors, and fellow PR professionals who I’m proud to call my peers about this subject, and what I’ve encountered is that there are common challenges that they seem to face when navigating the intricacies of personal branding. 

Hence, this article aims to shed light on these roadblocks, and, backed by years of practical wisdom in the field, provide actionable strategies to overcome them. 

The 5 Challenges

#1: Defining Your Purpose

From my perspective, a personal brand is a tool–it cannot be an end in and of itself. Therefore, the main question that you need to ask yourself is “What is my purpose behind investing my resources doing this?”

To answer this, align your personal values with your long-term business objectives. It is critical that you choose purposes that truly inspire you, as this will help you understand how boosting your image can be of assistance while pursuing those goals. This will lead you to discover ways in which you can leverage that brand, unlocking its full potential. It will also show you all the aspects in which the lack of a defined objective has been harming you. 

Once you have this goal-oriented clarity, your path will light up, and you will be capable of outlining a strategy and sorting out any issue that comes up with ease and efficiency. 

#2: Choosing the Right Communication Channels

You’re set on what your message is and what you want to communicate. Now, the next step is to define your target audience, as this will be the deciding factor to select the best channels to reach them. 

For example, if you are in need of investors for your next round of funding, you will be better off attending conferences and being featured in media that potential funders read–like TechCrunch or The Wall Street Journal for tech-oriented startups–rather than posting Instagram stories. If you are building a business centered around educational content, YouTube is the place-to-go. 

This segmentation is also done geographically. If your aim is to captivate the US market, then Twitter is a smart choice. The strategy would shift if you were focusing on selling in China, or the Middle East. In addition to this, keep in mind that, since there is such a vast array of tools at your disposal, you will face the ever-present temptation of using them all simultaneously. Here, discernment and focused efforts are key. Sometimes, all you need is one or two channels that are utilized the right way. 

#3: Presenting Yourself As You Are

Authenticity is something that audiences place a high value on. People want to see a real person, so don’t be afraid to show your personality and present yourself as you are. Let yourself shine through your personal brand. 

Also, build the right foundations for the way people will perceive you. Choose those domains in which you possess unrivaled expertise, and align them with your goals to craft a genuine, compelling story around yourself. Based on this, formulate three key messages that resonate with your audience. What is your mission? What are your values? 

At the same time, make sure to learn from other experts in your niche. Align your skills and knowledge with the current trends and relevant topics, as this will increase the value that you bring to your audience and keep you at the forefront of the conversation. 

#4: Developing a System For Consistency

In public relations as in sports as in anything else, consistency is the key to success. Remember that progress towards significant achievements is made through incremental steps. Small actions taken on a daily basis are what determine long-term results. This is the premise behind best-sellers such as Atomic Habits and The Slight Edge. 

The reason why most people lack consistency is that they do not have a system in place that makes it easy for some actions to become habits. To get around this, establish tangible objectives, such as publishing one LinkedIn post per week or a Twitter thread per day. 

Implementing this process means setting up a calendar that needs to be complied with. For example, if you are committed to publishing a new Medium blog post on the first Friday of every month, take the task with the same seriousness that you would give to any other project related to your business. 

To make things easier, you can hire an assistant to handle routinary tasks, such as decoding audio messages, crafting posts, and monitoring relevant events within your industry. This will free up your time and energy so it can be focused where it is most valuable. 

#5: Poor Time Management

Even if it is an overused cliché by many time management experts, the fact that we all have 24 hours in a day is true. “Being too busy” is a lie that we tell ourselves. The reality is that we all set different priorities, which become a “guiding star” to navigate our life. If our course is chartered correctly, we can accomplish a lot. If it is not, it is easy to get lost, let time pass, and then, look back and see how we have not attained what we hoped we would. 

If you have time constraints, know how to ask for help. For example, you can hire a specialist and delegate the task of generating content for you. However, you still need to be involved. I suggest spending at least 30 minutes per week preparing content, especially generating topic ideas and developing outlines. Personally, I do this on Sunday evenings. I also rely on features like scheduled posting–available on LinkedIn–and set reminders to publish my Twitter and Instagram content in a timely manner. 

Once you have the content, I highly encourage you to share it across all the media channels in which you have a presence, adapting it to fit the requirements of each platform. There is no need to feed each social media site with unique content. Instead, focus on some key insights from your pieces and tailor them to different audiences. By staying agile across platforms, you can substantially improve your presence and prop up your brand. 

Final Thoughts

Building up your personal brand can seem like an arduous journey, but once you comprehend the main challenges involved, you should be able to seamlessly flow through it. As discussed, the brand is not an end in and of itself, rather, it is a tool that you can leverage by aligning it with your long-term business goals. Then, it becomes a tremendous asset. 

By choosing the right communication channels, embracing authenticity, being consistent, and improving your time management skills, you will be able to use your existing resources to forge a compelling personal story that will click with the right audience, unlocking numerous professional opportunities on the way.