5 steps to build your personal brand as a nutrition professional

Did you know that personal branding for healthcare practitioners is just as essential?

We are exposed to various kinds of healthcare brands every day in TV commercials, magazine or website advertisements, food packages, or billboards. These are full-fledged businesses.

Personal branding is commercializing and monetizing your personality and career, as opposed to an organization and its services. This may sound like it comes naturally, but in reality, it takes many calculated efforts. If you are a dietitian or nutritionist, here are a few steps that might be able to help you build your personal branding.

How to create a personal brand

Find your niche

As nutrition experts building their personal brand, the first thing to do is decide on the niche market. There are various kinds of dietitians and nutritionists, including clinical, industry, research, media, and community.

Marketing to a niche is more accessible than to a broader market because a niche caters to the specifics. The only catch is that there should be a market.

As a dietitian or nutritionist establishing your personal brand, you can discover your niche market by asking yourself the following questions:

• What are the demographics that you are interested in working with? For example, are you an expert for a particular gender, age, business sector, physical abilities or disabilities, or dietary needs?
• Or do you want counseling people with specific psychographics, values, and interests? For example, athletes, students, busy families working full time?
• What is the location of your clients? Are you keeping it local or global?

Engage with your audience through social media

An active social media presence is a crucial part of brand building, and this includes your personal branding as a dietitian and nutritionist.

It's essential to connect to the community, give potential clients an easy chance to seek your guidance, and respond to professional growth and development opportunities.

As a clinical nutrition professional, there are many benefits to engaging with the community, expressing your values, services, and accomplishments as an expert to them directly. Through social media, your clients and patients will not just continue feeling connected with you but also learn with you as you grow.

Social media is one of the easiest ways to foster this connection. Have a good presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn – the latter is particularly crucial for expert dietitians to share their credentials and accomplishments.

If you want to learn more about this, check here six tips so you can improve your relationship with clients and how to improve your nutrition practice online presence.

Stay connected with other nutrition experts

A significant part of self-branding as a dietitian and nutritionist lies not in who you are but in whom you surround yourself with. This applies to your online presence as well as a local presence at a national or local level.

Aside from getting in touch with your batch mates on LinkedIn, one great way to link arms with like-minded nutrition professionals is to connect with your Professional Association at a national or local level. For example:

• The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics;
• The British Dietetic Association ;
• The Association for Nutrition.

After that, find experts from your decided niche or area of expertise, mainly if they are locals. This approach gives you an idea of your standing in the market and the ability to get advice from other skilled professionals in the same field.

Finding them is not enough, though. You have to consciously make an effort to stay connected to them through local events or programs. Then, you can either join some programs with them or create others via social media or blogs.

Invest in continuing education in dietetics/nutrition

To be a real expert and further your personal branding in your field as a dietitian or nutritionist, you must be willing to learn and refine your skills –continuously. Here are some measures you can take:

• Keep up-to-date with the latest research. Moreover, share it on your social media or on your blog to let people know that you do so;
• Attend all the Nutrition and Dietetics conferences – perhaps hold one of your own;
• Read popular books and watch webinars from peers;
• Gain new knowledge unrelated to your professions like communication, writing, and public speaking skills;
• Join an organization or take a class at a local community college to refine the skills that you feel you want to acquire;
• Subscribe to scientific journals, newsletters, and build relationships with famous researchers in your field.

Be open to growth

If you have a private practice as a dietitian going moderately well, figure out what you can do to take it to the next level.

If you have a good standing in a community, consider expanding to another one –perhaps another city, or moving to another niche. Hence, the world is your oyster, and you want to store all the pearls that you possibly can.

There are many self-promoted experts with little educational experience in nutrition and healthcare when it comes to the dietetics and nutrition industry.

Many misinformation and dietary quacks seem to be lurking on the internet, leaving a 'gap' where people are unable to access necessary information despite desperately wanting to. With personal branding, dietitians can cover up this information gap.

Have you been building your brand for a while now? Let us know what other tips you have.

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Make sure you try the 14-day free trial and explore all the features for you and your clients.