Empowering Healthcare Professionals through Personal Branding
By Claire Sakaoka, Owner, Chief Strategist
As a healthcare professional, you dedicate your lives to caring for others (or supporting those who do so directly or indirectly). But have you considered the importance of your own personal brand? In a digital world where first impressions are often made online, it’s crucial for healthcare professionals to take control of their online presence and showcase their expertise. By intentionally crafting your personal brand, you can establish yourself as a thought leader and industry expert, opening doors to new opportunities and professional growth.
What’s the perk of building your online personal brand?
You control the narrative. Once you determine who you want to be in the eyes of the Internet, there’s no stopping you. Are you tired of those pesky board meeting minutes where a local reporter misquoted you, popping up on page one of Google search results? You can move it lower in search by populating the web with content you created. If you aren’t thinking intentionally about who you are and what you stand for online, you are missing out.
Do you rely on the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” to define your personal brand?
I frequently hear, “The people who know me know I’m a great person to work with and really know my stuff.” Which is great. We all hope those who’ve gotten to know us will understand who we are and why we do what we do. I refer to people in this camp as your inner circle. If we compare this circle to the rings on an old oak tree, this inner circle would be the ring closest to the tree’s center. These are the people you call on without hesitation, and they answer every single time.
But what about everyone else? What do they do when they try to get to know you? They Google you, look you up on LinkedIn—they may even try to find your Facebook profile. Before people reach out in this digital world, they want to feel like they know who they are trying to contact AND (this is important) why you are the one they should contact. What do you know that they need to know more about?
This is where your online brand (which you control!) picks up the slack. Let your website, LinkedIn, and published articles tell your story for you. Unless you have an unlimited inner circle to draw from for business or to build your personal brand, creating your online persona is key to reaching your goals.
Let’s get to work.
This article will explore the steps to building a strong personal brand that will help you stand out in the healthcare industry. From creating an information hub on your website to utilizing the power of LinkedIn and publishing insightful blog articles, we will guide you through establishing your online persona. By leveraging these strategies, you can effectively communicate your unique perspective and knowledge to colleagues, potential employers, and clients.
Join us to discover how personal branding can empower healthcare professionals like yourself. By the end, you’ll have a solid foundation to amplify your voice, share your story, and achieve your personal branding goals. Let’s explore the world of personal branding tailored specifically for healthcare professionals!
Determine what you want to be known for. This step is key and may take some coaching or deep contemplation. Everyone is an expert in something, so I often advise starting there.
Build a website that serves as your information hub. When you create a website containing your name in the URL, it will usually rank on the first page of Google search results. The one exception is if you have a common name (sorry, John Smith), then generally searching your name plus the industry you serve will have you popping up in no time.
Create and optimize your LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is where budding thought leaders and industry experts get their chops. If you aren’t quite ready to go all in and build a website, you can start building your online personal brand by learning to use LinkedIn to the max. As with your own website, LinkedIn has great search engine credibility and appears on the first page of search more often than not.
Write and publish blog articles. This is often where I lose people. They think, “I’m not a writer,” or “Nothing I know isn’t something you couldn’t already Google the answer to.” While that may technically be true, your perspective makes the information unique. Whether you realize it or not, how you approach and process your subject matter differs from everyone else.
Promote your blogs. You can do this by posting them to your website blog and then creating a post on LinkedIn, linking to the article, or creating an article on LinkedIn (if you don’t have a website) and housing your articles there. As you publish your blog on LinkedIn, a post will go out to your network.
Once you lay the online foundation above, with time and diligence in the content creation process, you’ll be deemed a thought leader and industry expert in your specialty area. It happens naturally and with great authenticity. We can employ other strategies and tactics to further differentiate you from the pack, but these are the basics and provide a good starting point.
Are you interested in talking about this and seeing how it might work for you?
Let’s chat! Please feel free to drop me a DM or contact me here. I’d love to hear your story and help you set yourself up to achieve your personal branding goals.