Developing a personal brand can take a great deal of time and hard work. While it might have taken you many months or years to build a positive reputation in your industry, one small or large mistake could ruin your image overnight, and it might be impossible to recover.
Unfortunately, this could impact your career, trust, and finances. If you want to continually protect your reputation, read the following five ways you could potentially destroy your personal brand.
- An Incriminating Social Media Post
Every action you take could negatively impact your personal brand. For example, that seemingly innocent photo from a night out with your friends could impact your reputation. It is, therefore, vital to think carefully about the image you project online and ensure your posts continually reflect your image. If you are worried about your social media posts working against you, set your profiles to private to separate your personal and professional life.
- A Criminal Conviction
Unfortunately, the decisions you make in your personal life could potentially affect your career. For example, a criminal conviction cannot only lead to a prison sentence, an expensive fine, and the loss of a professional license, but it could potentially destroy your reputation in an industry forever. For this reason, it is smart to hire the best criminal defense lawyer for effective legal representation.
- Lying to Clients
Your personal brand should be built on honesty and trust. Sadly, if you fail to live up to expectation or are routinely dishonest with your customers/clients, you could seriously damage the brand you have carefully built. It is crucial you do not make any false claims or statements, which could come back to haunt you at a later date.
- Inconsistent Branding
It is likely your clients are looking to work with professionals who have exceptional attention to detail. That is why you must develop a consistent brand, which should feature the same tone of voice, branding, messaging, and authenticity. If you don’t, you could confuse your target audience, which could lead to a loss of trust and credibility.
- Maintain Your Professionalism
To develop a strong personal brand, you must aim to maintain your professionalism at all times. For example, you could potentially ruin your reputation by:
- Missing important deadlines.
- Gossiping about others.
- Avoiding your professional responsibilities.
- Showing up late to meetings or appointments.
- Blaming other people for your mistakes.
- Failing to respond to a client’s emails or calls.
It is critical to develop a brand based on integrity and respect for others, which will ensure you don’t gain a reputation as lazy, rude, a shirker, or gossipmonger.
Conclusion
A rock-solid personal brand could help you to climb the career ladder, acquire new clients, and improve your financial future. However, to gain a positive reputation in your industry, you must focus on maintaining your professionalism at all times, which means focusing on honesty avoiding incriminating social media posts, and, of course, a criminal conviction.