How to build a personal brand that gets you noticed

Personal branding isn't just for influencers. In 2025, a Canva survey of hiring managers and job seekers around the world found 89% of hiring managers agreed that a candidate's professional brand was important.¹ A recent Forbes article declared personal branding "essential" to professional success, citing research appearing in the European Research Studies Journal that found 93% of surveyed managers thought personal branding was either "significant" or "very significant" in its impact on overall career success.²

Personal branding is a critical career asset for business leaders and entrepreneurs in the modern work environment. This means building your brand is an essential leadership skill.

This post looks at the ways in which you can successfully build your own brand, from defining a unique value proposition to consistent networking, and considers the role of the MBA in developing some of the skills you'll need to brand yourself effectively.

What is personal branding, and why does it matter?

Personal branding is the intentional effort to create a public perception of an individual. Typically, this involves positioning the individual as an authority in their industry, an expert in their field, as a means of marketing skills and experience to potential employers or clients.³

The objective is clear: Effective personal branding helps you to stand out in a crowded market. And by standing out, you can unlock previously hidden job opportunities or build essential trust with clients.

How to build a personal brand in three actionable steps

Building a personal brand is a process. If the long -term objective is to build trust and credibility, then your watchwords should be authenticity and consistency.⁴ And patience.

Here are three actionable personal branding steps that can start you on your branding journey. But don't forget to give yourself and your brand some time to grow and mature.

• Define Your Unique Value Proposition: A unique value proposition is the differentiating factor that tells a customer why they should buy one product instead of another.⁵ Your unique value proposition has much the same purpose–it's a clear outline of your strengths, passions, and expertise that lifts you above the crowd of your peers. Identifying your unique value proposition helps you to clearly establish your brand identity. 
• Identify Your Target Audience: Almost as important as knowing yourself is knowing who you are addressing. Your audience may change over time. You might want to attract the attention of recruiters now, but in a few years, your focus might shift to clients. Be sure that you have a clear idea of who your target audience is with every communication. This will also help with the clarity and focus of your messaging.
• Create Consistent Content: Credibility, authenticity, trust — these are qualities you build over time. Consistency is the key to building brand trust.⁶ Leave virality to the clickbaiters and clout chasers. If you're building a personal brand for business, you want to convey a sense of authority and reliability. You achieve that by showing up over and over again, following through on your promises, and demonstrating you have staying power. Also, be mindful of the platforms you use for your brand. LinkedIn tends to be the platform of choice for B2B marketing and thought leadership, but consider where you are most likely to find the audience you're targeting.⁷

Common personal branding mistakes to avoid

Inconsistency is arguably at the top of the list of personal branding mistakes to avoid. If your messaging or visual identity is too erratic or scattershot, you're more likely to confuse your audience and dilute your authority than charm them with your unpredictable quirkiness. (Unless quirkiness is at the core of your brand identity.)

Inconsistency too easily reads as unreliability, which in turn undermines any effort to build trust.

Very often, inconsistency comes from trying to be too many things for too many different groups. If you're posting memes for your friends and thought leadership essays for potential employers from the same account, it will likely lead to a confusing brand identity.

When considering how to build a personal brand, keep things simple. Build an authentic voice around a specific niche that appeals to a particular audience. There's no need for your brand to be all things for all people but make sure it's appropriate for your intended audience.

How long does it take to build a personal brand?

There is no set formula for how to brand yourself, no how-to guide that you can follow for guaranteed results in a predictable amount of time. How long does it take to build a personal brand? Essentially, it takes as long as it takes. Even overnight success is famously often the product of a lot of unseen toil and effort, or as McDonald's founder Ray Kroc put it, “I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.”⁸

Building a reputable brand is typically a long-term investment. Expect it to take months, even years (perhaps not 30), of consistent effort to start to take effect.

At the same time, don't leave it to chance. Set measurable goals and targets that you can use to gauge whether you are making progress or need to recalibrate. For example, you can set yourself network engagement goals or monitor views as a proxy for overall reach. In the modern day, building a personal brand has a lot in common with running an effective social media marketing campaign.

Elevate your professional presence with an online MBA from the University of Kansas

When you combine a strong personal brand with advanced business credentials, you give yourself a powerful competitive advantage.

The online MBA from the University of Kansas School of Business provides a balanced curriculum to help you develop subject-matter expertise, leadership capacity, and the ability to market yourself effectively to employers, clients, and peers. This includes core courses in marketing, managing people, and strategic management, as well as electives in areas such as digital and social media marketing and entrepreneurial marketing.

Explore the program's course descriptions, admissions requirements, and tuition information on our website. And when you're ready to discuss what an MBA from the University of Kansas can do to elevate your professional presence, schedule a call with an admissions outreach advisor.