Why Developers Need To Build Personal Brand

Hello Fellow Codenewbies ,

I've heard the term "personal brand" before, but I didn't quite understand what it is.
What is a personal brand and what are its benefits for developers?

Personal Brands

A personal brand is a widely-recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions, and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.
-- PersonalBrand.com

Building personal brands can help us get a job, speaking gigs, or to build our network.
Our personal brand should say who we are and show our personality.

How to create personal brands?

Consistency

Consistency makes us stand out. And what kind of consistencies do we need to create our own personal brands?

• Consistent image
  People can recognize us without thinking twice if we have the same profile picture and cover image/banner on our online platforms.
  

• Consistent messaging
  We can create consistent messaging to tell people what we do.
  Take a look at what Swyx does.
  He popularized and use #LearnInPublic because he helps developers to learn in public.

  I don't have my own messaging yet. But I do have constant greetings on my articles; Hello Fellow Codenewbies .
  I see myself as a code newbie because I constantly learn new things every day. And one of the reasons I put my notes in public is to help fellow code newbies and my future self.

• Consistent voice
  It's about how we bring our personality and our brand into work.
  Maggie Appleton is known for her metaphors and analogies when she explains concepts in techs. We also know her for her concept of digital garden.

How personal brands give an impact on developers?

• Building authority
  Personal brands can help us to build authority.
  When you hear the name Angie Jones, you instantly associate her with Java. She is well known for her work with Java. She's named Java Champion from Oracle themselves. People trust her and look up to her as an inspiration and a Java resource.

• Building community
  With personal brands, we can build a community.
  Take Scott Hanselman as an example. He's been creating content to lift people up for over two decades in communities. It now leads him to work full-time with the community at Microsoft.

• Building expertise
  When we learn something, we want to make sure that we learn from someone who knows what they're talking about.
  People know Josh W. Comeau as "King of Whimsy" for his ability to create magic in a browser, and he's good at explaining the concepts.

Personal brands can help us building our value, something that can make us unique and stand out.

Last Words

We need to have consistency to build our own personal brands to make us stand out and unique, to build our own value.

So what are your plans to build your personal brands?
Do drop your thoughts on the comment below

Thank you for reading!
Last but not least, you can find me on Twitter. Let's connect!

Note:
This article is inspired by Colby Fayock's talk, Stand out by building a personal brand.