To me, great personal branding is the ability to act on your passion and make the world remember you for it. Think Rihanna, Bono, Oprah, Snoop Dogg. It’s not just about people remembering your name, it’s about how the things you do or create make them feel. With the boom of social media, many people have made creating the ultimate personal brand their number one priority. Yes, having this branding is important, but the way you achieve it is even more critical.

As with any branding, building and maintaining your personal brand relies on consistency. What some fail to realize; however, is that consistency does not mean being a “one trick pony”. Consistency is not monotony, it is not staleness. Consistency in personal branding is the ability to be who you are day in, day out, in everything you say or do. The people who attempt to build a personal brand based off of who they WISH they were or perhaps who they believe people want them to be, often fail.

In my professional (aka personal) opinion, the rules to establishing and maintaining a solid personal brand are:

1. Be consistent – Don’t shock your audience with sudden changes or endeavors that just simply don’t align with who you are.

2. Be original – This doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to be the wheel that you were born to be.

3. Be genuine – This should be easy. Just don’t lie and don’t fake it.

4. Be fearless – Putting yourself out there isn’t easy, but if you want to have a strong brand you cannot be afraid of failure.

5. Take Ownership – Success or mistakes, own it. People love honesty and integrity.

6. Do Good – As Gary Vee says, “Doing the right thing is always the right thing.”

Whether you’re a musician or public speaker, keeping these guidelines in mind at all times is a sure-fire way to make sure your brand is impactful. Our world is noisy, people have the attention spans of goldfish, and almost everything we want is just a few clicks away. When building a personal brand, you cannot afford to be timid or messy.