Do not self-promote, but provide added value to the audience

Introduce yourself in a few words..

My name is Kameliya Kamenova and I believe that only inspired people can create positive change in business. That is why years ago, for my professional realization, I chose the field that is the intersection between inspiration and business – the field of marketing. I have been working in it professionally for over 20 years and through the platform I am developing “MarkeTHINK zone”, I strive to showcase good examples from the field of marketing, as well as to provide advice from my personal practice that can inspire professionals to follow them, becoming at the same time a better version of themselves not only as professionals but also as individuals.

How would you define a personal brand and why is it so important today?

The personal brand is most succinctly said the way the world perceives you as a professional in your field. However, before reaching it, there is a lot of work that needs to be done, many questions that need to be asked and answered sincerely, in order to create a true, authentic personal brand with a mission and added value. The personal brand is becoming increasingly important because in the digital age we live in, in the vast ocean of information, social platforms, and content, the only way for a professional to stand out in the field they work in is through the creation, development, and maintenance of an authentic personal brand. Here, the key word is “authentic”.

How did you start building your personal brand? What motivates you?

What motivated me was the noise. We live in a world with a lot of noise, with a lot of information, with a lot of everything and everywhere. And in all this noise, there is at the same time so much comparison, copying, imitation, and unfortunately mediocrity, that the most effective and working way for a person to be noticed non-selfishly and at the same time useful with the added value they want to give is to be authentic against all this background and in all this noise, building their own unique personal brand.

What are the most important elements of a successful personal brand?

There are many. But one of the most important things is the foundation on which you stand to build it, because without a stable foundation, you will only build a purposeless sandcastle, without value, content, and stability. First, it is important to have asked yourself the right questions regarding what your strengths are that you want to use to develop your personal brand – what are you good at, what is your passion, what from your professional experience so far has proven that you can be useful to the audience? What is your vision? What exactly do you want to do? How to position yourself? What is the added value that you want and can give in the most effective and useful way for others, so that you become the preferred professional in the field you work in?

And after you have asked yourself the right questions regarding your professional development and how you want to position yourself, comes the key moment – the moment of the right answers that you must give to yourself. And these answers are usually the most difficult, because they require a high degree of self-knowledge, real self-assessment, sincerity towards yourself, and the elimination of all self-deceptions and prejudices.

How to find your niche and unique value?

The formula is passion, enthusiasm, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and a constant desire for self-improvement. Without these ingredients, it is impossible to find either your niche or your unique value.

Should the personal brand be built around personality or around expertise?

Every person is unique in themselves. But when we talk about a personal brand, it definitely needs to be built around the expertise that a person has developed at a professional level and which can provide added value to the audience, to be useful to them, so that by using this added value, people can achieve their business goals and plans.

But at the core of an expert, there is also the personality, which must also develop and improve. You cannot expect to be a good expert if you are not good as a person – it is like interconnected vessels, they are mutually linked and one influences the other.

What first steps would you recommend to someone who is just starting?

Building a personal brand is a process, indeed a long process, that starts first with the right choice of the field in which a person wants to develop. This is a fundamental first step. After you discover this field, comes the “easy” part – every day for years do everything that depends on you, learn new and new things, apply them, experiment, improve through your mistakes and achievements. And only then comes the moment of expertise around which to build the personal brand.

What platforms are most suitable for developing a personal brand today?

Here, the slippery moment is that platforms do not develop the personal brand – they communicate it. Before reaching the platforms, the personal brand must already be developed and have seeped into every area of your life. The platforms are the next step after the development of the personal brand – namely its communication. And the choice of platforms always depends on the target audience that the brand has targeted and wants to positively influence.

What role does authenticity play in the personal brand and how to maintain it?

As I said at the beginning, the key word in personal branding is indeed “authenticity” – without it, a person is just an indistinguishable part of the noise that surrounds us. And for its building, it is important to be above the norm, above the average, above the mass with the uniqueness of the added value you give to people. And maintaining authenticity comes from your motivation – from the right motivation for the right goals, based on business ethics and standards.

How to create content that engages and builds trust?

First, we must become personalities that engage and build trust, because behind every piece of content stands the personality of its creator. And my experience has proven that people who are true professionals distinguish the professional in front of them and the authenticity of the personality behind it, within 3 seconds of the conversation and at the first sentence in the content created by them.

Then comes the moment of curiosity, which I mentioned earlier as one of the important factors along with the desire to continuously develop – to be able to identify who the best in your field are and learn from them; to enhance your skills in every possible way – through books, through seminars, through conferences, through courses and trainings; to develop the ability to sift the wheat from the chaff and distinguish the false and the mask from the true value. Only then can you create quality content that engages and builds trust.

What are the most common mistakes people make when building a personal brand?

Self-love. I often come across content that is created for self-promotion, not for providing added value to the audience. It is not professional, for example, to develop a podcast with a declared mission in a given professional field, in which the author literally while talking on a given topic starts to talk about their personal life to the point of even crying in front of the audience that listens to them, recounting his difficult moments, and so on. It is often not realized that although the phrase “personal brand” contains the word “personal”, the personal brand is not related to personal confessions, but to the personal contribution you give to others.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions – I would add that predominantly these good intentions are also very noisy. You will recognize them by the noise.

How to deal with negative comments and criticism?

This is a necessary evil. Not everything can be monochrome. It is inevitable that there will be negative comments and criticism – not everyone will like you, not everyone will understand you, but the good thing is that not everyone is your target audience. And your people will recognize you and will inspire you further in return, which will give you additional motivation to continue with a high spirit, regardless of negative comments and criticism.

How to avoid burnout when investing a lot of effort in your personal brand?

When you invest a lot of effort in something that is an organic part of you, that inspires you and from which you see the positive effect on your audience, then there is no burnout - then there is excitement and an irresistible desire to give more and more and the results of your work make you feel like a person without limits. If burnout is present, it will be a symptom that somewhere along the way you have given yourself an insincere answer to the questions from the base I mentioned at the beginning.

A strong personal brand can lead to more opportunities (jobs, partnerships, clients)?

At one point, when what you do is authentic and of real value, things just happen, they find you, come to you, and want to stay with you. If the personal brand is created with the aim of not providing added value to the audience, but simply to accumulate hollow popularity, that is not the right motivation and in the long run does not lead to success.

What are the best ways to monetize your personal brand?

Through persistence. If you want to be heard in all this noise, you need to be persistent and not elevate your importance to the level where you think that just because you published one post in a given social media this week, that is enough. It is never enough. You must always give more and more – this is a daily job, and not a hobby to fill up spare time when there is any left.

Here, the formula is persistence in following the previously established strategy, not just for its own sake. When you are boiling and bubbling in this, ideas inevitably come to you – every day new and new. Your audience gives you hints in everyday interaction with them. It is necessary to simply be able to hear them – whether they need a free online seminar or prefer to communicate with you in person at live seminars. Whether the live seminar should be boutique or for a wider audience. Whether to create free useful content that can be downloaded and thus create a hunger in the audience to want more because they have rediscovered themselves in the previous one. In the noise, it is very important not only to be able to speak so that you are visible, but also to be able to listen.

When is the right moment to start offering paid services or products?

When you have reached the volume of target audience that allows you to monetize your services. You cannot expect that someone will sign up for a course just because they came across your ad on Facebook, in which you are campaigning for it. Before that, the audience must have organically discovered you, recognized themselves in you, believed in you, and realized the added value you can give them. Without this, everything else is a pose and self-love, which usually leads to the effect “easy come – easy go”.

Which personalities with a successful personal brand inspire you and why?

I really like this question because it contains the key to personal branding, namely the word “personality”. You cannot build a personal brand if you have not first built yourself as a personality.

Over the years, I have been inspired by personalities who embody qualities such as persistence, consistency, inspiration, strength of spirit, courage to be who they are, with combinative thinking, decisiveness in their decisions, and dedication in realizing them – such are Seth Godin, Richard Branson, Simon Sinek, Anna Wintour, Maria Shriver, and many others. The good thing is that when a person is curious, they find new and new ones.

What three specific things can people do today to improve their personal brand?

You cannot improve something that does not yet exist.

First create.

Then develop.

After that improve.

And always, whatever you do, ask yourself the question: what added value do I give to others with this?

And do not stop!