1 What have I learned?
Throughout this course, you’ve considered a variety of brand elements and how you might use them to promote yourself effectively to colleagues, peers and employers. By working through each activity, you’ve investigated or re-evaluated your:
- current brand – how you currently describe yourself and what you do, and how others describe you
- brand values
- brand strengths
- brand personality
- brand story
- target audience
- tactics for promoting your brand − online, in writing and in person.
You’ve also looked at what you want your brand to do for you and the career goals you’d like to achieve.
Activity 1 Putting it all together
Review your notes and responses to each activity, then summarise your key learning points in the boxes below. Don’t make these notes too detailed – bullet points will capture the key points.
If you have printed out the PDF document of all your answers to the activities, refer to that now. If you haven’t and would like to, choose the option ‘Download your answers for the documents on this course’ on the left-hand side of the page.
Week 1 – Where am I starting from?
e.g. Describing my brand to a stranger. What do I want my personal brand to do for my career?
Week 2 – Understanding marketing principles and practices
e.g. What do you do? What colour is my brand?
Week 3 – Personal branding explained
e.g. How could a personal brand help me at work? Can I be authentic at work?
Week 4 – Developing my personal brand
e.g. Identifying my values. Describing myself.
Week 5 – Promoting my brand to employers
e.g. My audience. How adaptable am I?
Week 6 – Promoting my brand online
e.g. My LinkedIn profile. Choose a platform.
Week 7 – Promoting my brand in writing and in person
e.g. A personal profile for my CV. Opening lines.
Discussion
Summarising your learning in this way allows you to pull together aspects of your personal brand and highlight the things you want to change/develop. When you view all the different facets collectively, your brand and the actions you need to take should start to become even clearer.
In the next section you’ll finalise your brand, checking and developing your responses to key activities from previous weeks.