Conducting a personal brand audit involves taking an honest and critical look at your personal brand to identify areas of strength and weakness. After you’ve decided whether you want to be an online or offline founder, your next step is to conduct a personal brand audit.

Define your brand pillars

Before you can assess your personal brand, you need to define what it is. Consider what you want to be known for, what sets you apart from others, and how you want to be perceived. This will serve as a baseline for your audit.

Ideally, you want to go through the entire Starter Programme to define your personal brand mission and values. You are as much a project as your business, likely even more. Creating your brand pillars is crucial to your own personal success.

Review your online presence

Go through your social media profiles, website, and any other online platforms where you have a presence. Look for inconsistencies in your messaging or visual branding, outdated information, or anything that doesn’t align with your brand.

Start assessing and evaluating the content you’ve created, shared, or published. Look for patterns in the topics you cover, the tone of your writing or messaging, and how well it aligns with your brand. Consider whether you need to create more content or revise what you already have.

Google Yourself

When it comes to conducting a full personal brand audit, one of the first and most important steps you should take is to Google yourself. This may seem like a simple and straightforward task, but it can actually provide you with a wealth of information about how you are currently perceived online. By searching for your name and any variations on Google, you can see what types of content, images, and information are associated with your name and how visible your online presence is.

This can help you identify any areas where your personal brand may need improvement or where you may need to take action to ensure that your online reputation is consistent with your personal and professional goals. So if you haven’t already done so, take the time to Google yourself and see what comes up – it could be the first step towards building a stronger and more impactful personal brand.

Evaluate your engagement

If you’ve decided to be a visible founder, look at your level of engagement with your audience. Are you responding to comments, messages, or emails in a timely and professional manner? Do you engage with your audience regularly? This will help you identify areas where you can improve your engagement and build stronger relationships with your audience.

Your actions are just as important as the content you put out. You want to maintain a professional and reliable presence.

Research your competition

Conduct research on your competitors or others in your industry who have a strong personal brand. Look at what they are doing well and what they are not doing so well. This will help you identify areas where you can differentiate yourself and stand out.

Get feedback from your circle

Look at any feedback you’ve received from clients, customers, or colleagues. Consider the positive and negative feedback and use it to improve your personal brand. Further, speak to your friends – getting their take on your personal brand identity. This can also be a great step when initially building your personal brand pillars.

Set goals and take action:

Based on your assessment, set clear goals for how you want to improve your personal brand. Then, take action to make the necessary changes and improvements. Remove content that is outdated and off-brand, start creating your new online identity. This is as much a marketing exercise for yourself as it is for your business.

If you’ve chosen to go offline, then this is your time to clean up and start taking deactivating/closing your accounts.

Next Steps

Now that you understand how to conduct a personal brand audit, we recommend either working with us to do a thorough personal branding audit, or proceed with the following steps:

○ Start by defining your personal brand pillars
○ Review your online presence
○ Take action & implement your plan