Personal branding

This Business English lesson is dedicated to the topic of personal branding, and offers practical tips about building your personal brand. Students will discuss topics like professional image and reputation, social media presence, and the importance of managing your personal brand. Other video-based lessons that you might find interesting are: “Brand differentiation”, “Dress for success“, “How to find your passion”, “Cancel culture”, “Phrasal verbs: social media“, and “Phrasal verbs: role models“.

Speaking: The lesson starts with 6 photos of well-known people (Steve jobs, Michelle Obama, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, and Richard Branson). Students choose 2 or 3 of them and discuss different questions about them. Then, they are asked to define what personal branding is. Next, students look at different statements about personal branding and decide which ones are true. After defining what personal branding is, students look at different expressions (e.g. professional reputation, career advancement, differentiation in a competitive job market, trust and credibility) and discuss how each one is related to personal branding and the importance of personal branding. Students then look at some statistics related to recruitment and personal branding, and answer a few questions given.

Listening: Students watch a TED talk called “5 steps to building a personal brand you feel good about”. The video is divided into 2 parts. Students complete 3 listening comprehension activities.

Vocabulary: Students work on vocabulary by matching the qualities to their opposites (e.g. integrity-dishonesty, adaptability-inflexibility, humility-arrogance).

Speaking: Students take a look at different questions that appear in the video, and interview each other. They are encouraged to use the words from the previous activity.

Reading and writing: Students learn how to write their own mission statement. First, they take a look at 6 mission statements and decide which person each statement belongs to (e.g. a real estate agent, a tech entrepreneur, etc.). Then students choose 3 of the professionals and discuss which social media platform would be best for them to reach their target audience and what kind of content might their target audience find useful. After that students take a look at a few useful phrases from the mission statements. Finally, students are asked to write their own mission statements after reading a few tips.

You can use the conversation cards for additional speaking practice.