06 Sep Personal Branding ROI: How to Measure It and Why It’s Worth the Investment
Here you, every single day, posting content. Great content, I might add. You type your thoughts and freely give value away, hoping to one day receive the favor in return.
Your follower base grows, your engagement skyrockets, and you spark interesting discussions. You’re in personal brand heaven — you’ve got something to say and people listen.
So now, you start thinking: why am I doing this? What’s the benefit of expressing my thoughts and adding value to my network? Maybe you do it for fun, for sparking a great discussion, for meeting new people, or to monetize.
Whatever your aim is, it’s hard to quantify the return on your investment in personal branding. Many people give up on personal branding because they can’t clearly see an ROI for sales or revenue.
Often, they’re right, there’s isn’t a magic formula to measure the ROI of your personal brand. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be measured at all.
If you want to develop your own brand, it typically takes a month to define and about nine months to build. So this is a long-term investment unless you’re willing to spend lots of money.
Now let’s get to the juicy part of the article.
How do you measure the ROI of your personal brand? To answer this, I need to split the answer in two buckets: the short-term ROI and the long-term ROI.
Your short-term personal branding ROI
As you share knowledge, help your network through your connections, and build a community, your goal is to measure the impact of your efforts. Here are four key metrics to watch for short-term success.
Engagement
You may have lots of followers, but how many people are actually reading and paying attention to your content? Engagement is so important in personal branding, it trumps most other metrics.
Take note of the views, comments, re-shares and likes on your posts — this will guide you in measuring the level of engagement with your audience.
Reach
Who’s following you? What’s your audience size across your platforms? If you’re looking to establish yourself as an expert in your field, having a solid following online will add legitimacy to your personal brand.
As you continue to invest in your personal brand and growing your system of connections, keep track of your following on social media.
Speaking engagements and features
The purpose of growing your brand is that you can position yourself as an expert so that more people know you and see you as their go-to for a certain topic.
A great way to measure this is to keep count of the media you’re being featured in (online and offline) and the speaking engagements you’re being invited to.
Traffic to your site
If you have a website, your social media content should be directing people there. Tools such as Google Analytics can help you analyze organic and paid traffic to your website. This will help you measure the impact of your personal brand.
Keep a close eye on what pages people visit most and how much time they spend on these pages, so you can keep tweaking and optimizing content.
These are all fun metric which will give you a positive kick, guide you in the right direction, and fuel your motivation. But in my opinion, the best ROI are the long-term ones.
How do you measure the ROI of personal branding in the long term?
When executed well, personal branding compounds and gives back much more on benefits in the long-term. Here are the pillars for determining the long-term ROI of your personal brand.
Purpose
This word gets thrown around a lot, but it’s truly a precursor to long-term joy and fulfillment. Living and preaching a life in line with your values, helping others, and contributing to those around you is a great gig.
Through personal branding, you’re ultimately defining your purpose and who you can benefit most with your work. This, my friend, is the best past to long-term satisfaction.
Thought leadership
Through personal branding, you’re on the way to becoming a leader and having a positive impact on people. You’re inspiring others by speaking up and sharing value.
I often receive heartfelt messages from people who thank me for a post they related to, helped through a tough time, or guided them to improve. Knowing I make a difference, even a small one, in people’s lives gives me incredible joy.
These types of messages are what keep me going, and they will inspire you to do the same too.
New opportunities
Personal branding can really open doors. I’ve gotten the opportunity to contribute to relevant publications, speak at conferences, and get to know other leaders in my industry.
Of all the ROI, this is probably the most tangible one. Personal branding is powerful and can bring many opportunities as you are noticed for your skills and experience.
Investing in your future
Whether you work for a company or own your own business — there’s a good chance it won’t be the sole thing you work on forever.
If you only focus on furthering the company’s brand, the moment you leave, you leave that brand behind. Wherever you’re off to next, you have to start over from scratch.
If you build and nurture your brand, whenever you go, your brand will follow you (and so will your followers). Your personal brand is yours.
Having a strong personal brand is an investment in your future too, whether it be a new job or following your purpose and values.
This is my take on how to measure your personal brand’s ROI and its key components. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you’ll really see the results.