Creating a business empire is not just about producing or selling the products. If you’re sure about the product quality, there’s another matter at hand, something that all businesses should have: personal branding. The term personal branding refers to the unique value and identity of your brand that you want to deliver to each customer. It’s not that easy to create good personal branding, but it’s something that you can do with enough knowledge.
Establishing a strong personal brand can be crucial. For entrepreneurs and professionals, it’s one of the essential keys to bring you success. The task has become more important, especially if you want your business to stand out from the crowd.
With social media and digital platforms, personal branding has become something that’s more manageable. By using the proper strategies, you can effectively market your brand to get the desired level of engagement and, ultimately, conversions. Now, before actually telling you about the tips to create good personal branding, we’d like to tell you about its importance in the section below!
Why Personal Branding Matters
Your personal brand is basically your reputation. It’s the value that you want other people (or, in this case, customers) to perceive that can reflect the abilities, values, and character of your brand. In short, it’s something that makes your brand more unique than others.
There are some things you need to know about personal branding:
- A clear personal brand attracts opportunities and builds authority in your field.
- It establishes you as an expert and thought leader.
- You become recognized for what you offer – your unique strengths and promise of value.
In an increasingly digital and crowded market where the competition gets tougher each day, personal branding is vital for entrepreneurs and professionals in order to:
- Generate funding for a startup or business.
- Get recruited or promoted at the top companies.
- Build a network and client base for expanding the business.
- Monetize your skills and knowledge through various effective methods.
How to Strategically Create Your Personal Brand
Developing personal branding does take time and effort. But when you do your homework, it’ll result in something better in the form of new opportunities, connections, and visibility. Follow these steps to craft and share a compelling personal brand:
Identify Your Goals
Before you start thinking about personal branding itself, ask yourself what the true goal that you want to achieve is. What is the value you want to deliver to customers, and how do you achieve it?
Each brand or individual person may have their own unique goals. Start by making some personal goals, such as:
- Position yourself as an expert in your field or industry
- Attract media attention
- Generate leads for your business or startup
- Get recruited by top companies
- Build partnerships and affiliations
- Get promoted or change careers
- Establish thought leadership
- Grow your audience and following
Your goals will dictate who you need to reach and influence and what messages and strategies will work best. If you feel unmotivated at some moments, it’s better to check on and revisit the list of goals you’ve made. Turning those goals into a reality won’t be such an easy task. But with time and determination, success is not too far.
Determine Your Niche
Every brand needs to understand about the niche they want to focus on. Determining a niche can help the brand apply the proper strategy, whether for content-making or product marketing in general. In terms of personal branding, the way you shape the ideas or values about your brand that you want to promote is highly dependent on the niche you choose.
For example, if your niche is the younger generation, the personal branding strategies you need to take should be dynamic by using combinations of digital platforms, including websites and social media.
Start asking yourself about these questions:
- What makes you stand out from the crowd?
- What unique value, perspective, knowledge, and skills do you bring to the table?
It’s always better to identify the niche where you can provide the most value. To help you find a suitable niche for your brand, you can reflect on:
- Your professional background and credentials
- Your skills, strengths, and talents
- Your passions and interests
- Lived experiences and viewpoints
- Business ideas and insights
Look for the intersection of what you love, what you’re great at, and what people need. By doing so, you can always deliver the value your brand has in such an original and relevant way.
Define Your Brand Message
The brand message is a bridge that connects brands with customers. Creating the brand message will let you explain the brand value better in verbal and non-verbal ways. The message can not only tell consumers about your brand but also motivate them to get your products or services. Therefore, if you want it to be more successful, you’ll have to deliver a nice brand message.
Now, start crafting a clear message that encapsulates who you are, what you do, and why it matters to other people. Also, tell the audience about how your product and service can be a solution to their problems. Your core brand message should express the following:
- Your name and professional role
- A memorable descriptor or tagline
- Your key strengths and differentiators
- The value you promise to deliver
Make your message bold, concise, and consistent so it’s easy for the audience to grasp and remember.
Select Your Platforms and Channels
Choosing the suitable channels to promote your brand is highly essential. To do so in a proper way, you’ve already made the first step that we’ve recommended: determining the niche. By knowing who your potential customers are, you can find the proper platforms to use to promote your brand better.
In order to find out about it, you can always check the demographic data and align it with your niche. From there, you can optimize your content further in order to get more engagement. There are a few examples that you can consider, such as:
- LinkedIn to build professional connections
- Medium or blogging to display thought leadership
- Twitter to share concise thoughts and engage with peers
- YouTube to share video content
- Instagram to showcase creativity and lifestyle
- Podcasting to highlight conversations
Also, leverage your own website, presentations, guest articles, and interviews. Spread your brand across the channels where your audiences are actively engaged. If creating your own website, evaluate pros and cons of website builders like Squarespace. While convenient, some builders limit customization. Research thoroughly to find the best platform for publishing your personal brand content.
Produce Valuable Content
Content definitely matters, as it’s the lifeblood of your personal brand. Develop and share content that provides value and aligns with your brand platform. And, of course, you can’t create any content. You need to make sure that the content you create may have a value that can be connected to your brand. Your content should be able to:
- Demonstrate your expertise
- Address your audience’s interests and needs
- Promote your products or services
- Offer specific advice, insights, tips or resources
- Showcase your skills and perspective
Content like blog posts, videos, and infographics are recommended if you want to grab the attention of your audience. As regularly creating content is necessary, we’d recommend making a posting schedule to make sure that your audience can always be close to your brand.
Network and Collaborate
Proactively connecting with others can also help in building good personal branding. Although the steps are simple, they are something that’s easily forgotten, especially when the brand gets bigger. In order to have better engagement, you can do some things like:
- Initiate conversations and build relationships online and offline
- Engage consistently by liking, commenting, and sharing
- Join relevant communities, forums, and groups
- Offer value by mentoring, guest posting, giving referrals
- Look for strategic partnerships and collaborations
Leverage the power of partnerships and your network to expand the reach of your brand.
Track and Refine Your Brand
Consistently evaluate your brand presence and activities to identify what’s working well and what needs adjustment.
- Set Google alerts on your name and important keywords to monitor brand mentions
- Use social media and content analytics to assess your reach and engagement
- Notice who engages with your brand – your tribe is key
- Evaluate which messages and platforms resonate most
- Refresh your branding, content, and outreach accordingly
Continuously improving your personal brand will maximize your impact.
Ideal Practices for an Effective Personal Brand
By following these best practices, you can develop an authentic, compelling, and consistent personal brand:
- Show up consistently. Branding is a long game that requires persistence. Maintain an active presence on your key platforms and channels.
- Provide real value. Focus on solving problems and addressing your audience’s needs through your content and connections.
- Share your unique story. Infuse your brand with your passions, background, and purpose to build authenticity.
- Align your branding. Ensure consistency across your messaging, visual identity, and style on all channels.
- Interact and engage. Actively participate in relevant communities. Comment, share others’ content, and foster collaborative relationships.
- Monitor your progress. Use metrics and listening tools to track brand traction and refine strategies as needed.
- Be patient. Building a strong personal brand takes time and sustained effort. Trust the process.
- Stand out with boldness. Don’t play small – take up space unapologetically by letting your talents shine.
Final Thoughts
There’s nothing better than starting today. Putting in the work to develop your personal brand will empower you to share your genius, stand out, and achieve your goals. So, determine the goals, know your niche, and deliver the brand messages in the most unique way you can. Good luck!
