Personal branding involves establishing what you as an individual stand for and promoting it.
It can be a combination of your experiences and skills that are unique to you, which will set you apart as an individual. With successful personal branding, you will be able to stand out among a horde of other professionals or influencers in your field or niche.
Your personal brand should be consistent across every aspect of your online presence and existence. Your personal brand should be the same on social platforms like YouTube and Instagram. You can even take advantage of video marketing to promote your personal brand.
How to Create an Effective Personal Brand
Creating an in-depth personal brand that aligns with your values and goals takes time, hard work, and sometimes money.
Here’s what you need to do to get started:
- Determine your personal brand vision. How do you want people to look at you? Emphasize what you want the outside world to think about you. Align your business with your core values. Come up with your personal brand statement. Work out your passions, skills, and unique traits.
- Decide your niche and target audience. Who are you trying to impress? Are you wanting to offer help and support to a specific market? Look at all of the factors you came up with when determining your brand vision. This will help you see if what you have to offer to other people will actually help them.
- Determine your point of difference. Why should people choose YOU over your competitors? What makes you so special? Don’t fight against your personality. There is nobody else like you in the world. Sell that!
- Build your online assets. Successful personal brands have a consistent, authentic, definite online presence. These 12 people have demonstrated expertise with their personal branding. They know what works, what doesn’t work, and what keeps their target audience coming back for more over and over again. Work on your logo and graphics. Don’t forget about your website/blog. If you have the time and capability to do so, consider guest blogging! That definitely helps put your name out there.
- Create your blog and content strategy. Online success boils down to two critical parts: creating high-quality content and promoting your content as much as you possibly (and realistically) can.
- Create your social media marketing strategy. It’s a no-brainer that you have to be on social media today. If you are going to produce a successful personal brand, you need to spread a consistent message across every social channel where your audience hangs out.
- Outreach and make your name known. Nobody is going to magically find your account by sitting there dreaming about it. You have to put in some below grease. Do some good old-fashioned networking. Attend local events. Leave comments on social media. Send emails. Leave your business card at the coffee shop you go to every week.
Building an effective personal brand is an investment of your time. To create a personal brand for yourself, here are some other important steps to remember:
- Determine your purpose of personal branding.
- Conduct research.
- Outline your ideal brand attributes.
- Have a clear idea of where you’re at.
- Find yourself some mentors.
- Craft your brand persona.
- Optimize your social media profiles.
- Take action!
<<< How is your personal brand performing? Track your personal brand’s performance with this handy-dandy checklist here. >>>
