To work on the personal brand, to gain visibility, recognition and transmit confidence. And this is well known by the entrepreneur Africa Lucena, who started 3 years ago with her blog about entrepreneurship and personal branding and has managed to make her passion her profession. Now helps entrepreneurs, freelancers, and companies to boost their Brand, is a co-founder of Coffee Blogger Almería and last March was one of the speakers at the Congress Costa de Almeria Digital Day 2018.
How was your experience at the Almeria congress in which you participated last March 23 as a speaker?
It has been a wonderful experience. For me, it was a great challenge, since it was my first time as a speaker at a conference of this magnitude. All the speakers who participated are highly acclaimed professionals; They have been and are my references and those of all of us who are dedicated or passionate about the world of digital marketing. We must congratulate Jorge Ortega and the entire team he surrounded himself with. Because they made it a success. I think that the almost 400 people who live the experience that day will have the same opinion.
When did you start with your blog ‘A brilliant idea’ and what it was that led you to start?
It was an idea that had been around for a long time, and in the end, I decided to create it in 2015. My goal has always been to help people interested in the world of digital marketing and, specifically, in the personal brand, a theme that I’m passionate. After almost three years, my blog has evolved and is no longer called “a brilliant idea”, it is my own brand, africalucena.com and I hope to continue offering interesting content for my readers and that they will be curious about working with their personal brand.
What is personal branding?
The personal brand, in the first place, is knowing who you are, what you do and what you contribute value to others. A well-known definition would be “personal mark is the mark you leave on others”. Because in the end, the personal brand is to be in the mind of your potential client, to think about you when you need a product or a service that you offer. That reminds you ” of the footprint you have left” and you are the chosen option.
What are the benefits of working it?
Working or managing your personal brand provides you with many benefits, for mentioning some:
– Self-knowledge, knowing yourself, your strengths and also the weak ones. For in both cases, enhance or improve them.
– Visibility, they know you and relate your name or your business with the service or product you offer.
– Positioning within your sector, make a hole and be recognized professionally by your specialty.
– Trust, work your brand makes the humanizes, there is a person behind that name or company, and that conveys confidence.
“The personal brand is to be in the mind of your potential client and to think of you when you need a product or service”
With what difficulties can a person who does not work his personal mark in today’s working world find himself? Do you think it is essential to find work, clients and contacts?
Being one more in a working world with so much competition is a great difficulty. If we work our personal brand, we know that we can offer the rest of the product differently, show our value proposition. And the most important thing is that it is clear to the person, client or contact that he gets if he hires us.
What personal profile should your personal brand work?
I would tell you that anyone should work it or manage it. Because understood as we have defined it before, it is to show your value proposition and how you can help others. So anyone should work their brand so that others know what benefits they get when they hire it.
Maybe at that time, they do not need your services, but they will know that for a future you are there, what advantages they will get from you and where they can contact you. See your works in a web, read what you know about your specialty/sector in a blog, see the recommendations that your clients make of you, etc … is the result of working your personal brand.
What advice do you give to improve it?
To start improving your personal brand my recommendation would be to start by answering 4 very basic but complex questions:
1. What differentiates you from others? Here you have to analyze yourself and get your skills, in what you are good and you contribute value.
2. What are your goals? Knowing where you want to go is very important to draw a road map and follow that path.
3. What is your market? Who should you direct your efforts to communicate? Who can help you achieve your goals directly or indirectly?
4. What is your starting situation? After analyzing all the above, you have to know at what point of the path that I have mentioned before you find yourself, to be able to advance.
In the talks and workshops that you teach, what are the main doubts or fears that your students face?
Well, a widespread doubt is not knowing how to show the value proposition that each one has. Other doubts that always arise in the workshops is not knowing what they are good at, what differentiates them or who may be interested in what they know how to do. In the end, most do not know where to start, they go like “chickens without heads” stumbling. What I always try in my workshops is to provide them with a roadmap that helps them follow a more or less defined path to achieve their professional goals. Either to work for their own account or for others. Because not everyone serves or wants to undertake.
You also offer consulting and mentoring services. What kind of professionals come to you and how do you help them?
Well, I work with several types of profiles. The first would be with young people in search of employment, who need to work on their personal brand to show their value proposition both in their CV and in a job interview in a way that differentiates them from the competition and performs a search of professional projects with objectives well defined.
A second profile would be the young entrepreneurs attached to the programs of various institutions with whom I collaborate as a trainer and mentor. Most have just started their business idea and in the digital marketing and personal branding part, I help them through mentoring sessions to define objectives, strategies, better tools and applications for their business, search for suppliers that help them to implement them or training for doing it themselves if that were the case.
And a third profile with which I work would be women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, who would like to position or improve their brand, thanks to digital marketing tools and strategies, but I always start by working on their personal brand.
Which book do you recommend to anyone who wants to go deeper into this topic?
To deepen more about the personal brand I always recommend reading the references of the personal brand, such as Andrés Perez Ortega, who has many books, but first of all, I would recommend “Personal Brand for Dummies” and Eva Collado Durán with her book “Brand you are”.
There are many more that I would recommend, from Neus Arqués, Alfonso Alcántara or Xavi Roca. In my blog, you can consult the list of essential personal brand books in your library.
