Personal Branding // Branding Journey 2020

Today’s post should be a little review on my personal branding story 2020 and how, when and where it all started. At the end I’ll provide a short outlook on what’s coming next.

It started exactly one year ago – I traveled to Switzerland, my home country, for a conference and it happened more than once that someone said “You work in Science, Technology and Innovation in Vancouver? Really? I didn’t know Vancouver is an innovation hub”. Meanwhile, in Vancouver they talk about being the next Silicon Valley. So I decided to become more active on LinkedIn for my new contacts all over the world to see what I’m doing in Vancouver and what the city has to offer (because it has a lot!!). The feedback on those posts has been good and while I didn’t do it consistently the whole year, I still try to post a Vancouver-related topic on LinkedIn every now and then. My number of followers increased tremendously. I’ll write a separate blog post on LinkedIn one of these days.

However, my personal learning journey started in March when the pandemic hit us and I suddenly had so much time to read and write at hand. I realized that it’s time to go ahead and create that writing website I had in mind for so long. For months and months, I tried different things – should I write about books? Opinion pieces? About moving abroad? How do I want to brand myself? Knowing that branding yourself is an on-going process, it has been nevertheless a rollercoaster and I’m still on the ride. I feel like it’s boiling inside of me and I’m so close to my goal but I’m not there yet. Do you know that feeling?

After a podcast in summer, I realized that I had to start working on my personal branding strategy because I wasn’t happy how I “sold” myself. Like many Swiss, we tend to be too humble and too shy to talk about ourselves and our accomplishments. I needed to embrace the North American spirit of confidence.

In October, I started to share posts on Instagram and this blog about personal branding and I realized how many people felt the same way. It opened a whole new world for me and I connected to so many of you. Over the last couple of months, I published a few articles about how to start your personal brand (here), how to work on your perception (here), how to position yourself (here) and why we all need an elevator pitch (here). It has been a few weeks that I haven’t published something and I have to admit that I had a little inspiration low and writers block. Personal branding is such a big topic and sometimes I’m losing myself thinking about it too much. But the exchange with you is always very valuable and just this week I had a conversation that inspired me to write this and a few other posts.

So here is what you can expect next, many posts are some kind of annual review:

1. The Personal Branding To-Do List

2. This year in review: The good and the bad

3. Five new connections that inspired me this year

4. Goal setting 2021

5. How to LinkedIn

If there is something you would like to discuss or read about, let me know in the comment section or contact me on Facebook or Instagram!