9 steps to how You Build a Personal Brand

 

How Do You exactly Build a Personal Brand of your own ?

Now that you know why you should build a personal brand, let’s talk about how to actually do it. Let’s break down the individual strategies you can use to build your own incredibly powerful personal brand.

Step #1: Determine Who You Really Are

The first step in creating a powerful personal brand is to determine who you are as a brand. Remember, building your personal brand is about sharing your authentic self with the world.

Tyler Basu puts it like this:

Your personal brand should not be an inauthentic persona. Branding is not about positioning yourself as something that you are not. It’s about purposefully and strategically showcasing your authentic self to your audience and your customers. Your personal brand should be a true reflection of your skills, passions, values, and beliefs.

Before you begin, you have to know some basic things about yourself.

Ask yourself:

● What unique skills do I have? 

● What are my core values? 

● What am I most passionate about? 

● What unique experiences have shaped who I am?

● How can I most effectively serve my core audience? 

● What do I have to offer that no one else does?

The answers to these questions will help you understand who you are and help shape your personal brand. You have to get to the core of what matters most to you before you can add value to your audience.

Step #2: Determine What You Want to Accomplish

Once you’ve identified the core of who you are, it’s time to think about what you want to accomplish with your personal brand.

Answer these questions:

● What would I like to accomplish, both personally and professionally? 

● What do I want to be known for? 

● If I could be the world’s foremost expert on a topic, what would it be? 

● What key message do I want to communicate? 

● If I could only give one piece of advice, what would it be?

The answers to these questions should further solidify in your mind what your personal brand will look like.

Step #3: Identify Your Target Audience

The simple reality is that you can’t effectively serve everyone. Rather, there is a core demographic of people who will resonate deeply with you, your brand, and what you offer.

This core demographic is your target audience. It’s these people whom you will serve most effectively and who will be your ideal client.

To identify your core audience, ask yourself what problem are you solving and for whom.

Kyle Gray says this about finding your ideal audience:

“The foundation of a strong personal brand is how well you understand your audience and the problems they face. Then you can define why you care and how you solve those problems, which is what you’ll be remembered for.”

 Step #4: Determine Your Unique Service Proposition

Now it’s time to identify what value you offer to your industry and your clients by developing your Unique Service Proposition (USP).

Your USP is simply your brand summed up into a single, powerful compelling statement that describes exactly what you do for your audience. This compelling statement is your brand statement. Your brand statement summarizes who you are and how you serve your core audience.

For example, your USP may be something like, “I help working moms stay on top of everything and live a fulfilled life.”

Your USP doesn’t have to say everything about your brand, but it should get right to the heart of who you are and how you help your audience.

It simply needs to be short, memorable, and describe what you do.

Avoid skimping on this step. Creating your USP gives you a high degree of clarity about what your brand is all about.

So take the necessary time to craft a USP that adequately captures your brand in a concise sentence.

Step #5: Start Treating Yourself as a Brand

Once you’ve identified the core values of your brand, as well as your target audience, it’s time to start treating yourself as a brand.

What does this look like practically?

n every communication with your audience, whether a blog post, email, podcast, social media post, etc., you stay true to your brand message.

You constantly speak about the problems you solve, religiously encourage your audience, consistently voice the message of your brand.

Just like Nike wouldn’t suddenly start talking about camping, so you must not go off brand with your communications. You constantly reinforce your USP in everything you do.

It also means creating a strong, compelling website to serve as your home base for all your online activities. Websites allow your audience to have a place to learn more about who you are and what services you provide.

You have to treat yourself like you truly are: a powerful brand that has a powerful message to share with the world.

Step #6: Optimize Your Website

Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of optimizing your online presence so that it matches your brand. You’re going to start with your website, since this functions as your “home base” of sorts. In other words, your website is one of the primary places people get to know who you are and what you do.

Your website also functions as one of the ways you turn visitors into paying clients. Your website is where clients book appointments, consume your blog, and pay for services.

First impressions are really important when it comes to your website. Visitors should be able to immediately determine how you can help solve their problems. If they can’t, there’s a good chance they’ll leave your website without taking any action.

Step #7: Develop Your Content Strategy

The primary way to build your brand is by strategically creating content. By content, I mean blog posts, videos, social media posts, emails, affirmations, podcasts, and more.

Every piece of content you share with your audience should serve to build your brand. As I mentioned before, once you’ve determined who you are as a brand, it’s important to start treating yourself as a brand.

Developing a strategic content strategy is one of the most effective ways to ensure that you’re constantly staying on brand.

When it comes to your content strategy, I like the “Pillar Method” (a term coined by Gary Vaynerchuk).

The Pillar Method works as follows:

● At set intervals (every day, every week, etc.) create a long piece of “pillar” content. This could be a blog post, video, eBook, etc. The point is that it needs to be long enough to be repurposed in numerous ways.

● Any content you produce, should always reinforce some aspect of your brand. Maybe one day you speak to a particular pain point. Another day you encourage your audience to strive for their goals. Whatever the case, it’s essential that your pillar content always ties back to your brand and the solution you provide for the people you serve.

● Take your pillar content and cut it up into smaller, shareable pieces of content like infographics, social media posts, videos, or a blog post.

● Share the smaller pieces of content across all your channels.

The main point is that everything you send out should be brand related. This is the only way to reinforce what your brand represents to your audience.

Step #8: Constantly Add Value to Your Audience

When it comes to building your brand, it’s essential that you constantly give value to your audience without asking for anything in return. Sort of like me providing you with this free eBook and masterclass to help you build your personal brand. Yes, there will be times when you invite people to buy from you or become a client, but you don’t want that to be the only message you communicate through your business.

The one thing people should take away when interacting with your brand is how much value you provide.

The way you provide value is through your content. This is why it’s so critical to have a strategy that allows you to constantly put out new content.

If you’re not putting out new content, you’re not giving away value.

Mark Lack puts it this way:

“A strong personal brand is one that has a high level of impact, which then leads to influence amongst the people who follow you. The key is to leverage social media and other social platforms and environments to create relevant and meaningful dialogues between you and the people you want to impact.”

Step #9: Build A Community

One of the best ways to build your brand is to build a community where you and the members can all help each other. The value in building a community around your brand is that it gets others involved in helping to promote your brand.

So how can you build a community?

Some simple ways to build a community include, but are not limited to:

● Start a private Facebook group. 

● Host events. 

● Create a membership site

Communities offer you a forum for your members to get to know you better through ongoing engagement with you. Once you have a community, you can regularly deliver value to a captive audience that is familiar with who you are, what your brand represents, and what you sell.

Now Is the Time to Build Your Brand

 

The simple truth is, you have a personal brand, whether you want to or not. Every single thing you share with your audience either adds to or takes away from your personal brand. You absolutely must be intentional about building your brand.

As Kathy Klotz-Guest says,

“We all have a personal brand whether we think about it that way or not. So, let’s be intentional about it.”

Thankfully, it’s not particularly difficult to build a personal brand in today’s world.

Here’s a quick summary of what we covered in this Blog :

● Identify what matters to you. 

● Define your core audience. 

● Determine your Unique Service Proposition. 

● Treat yourself like a brand. 

● Create your compelling website. 

● Develop your content strategy. 

● Consistently create valuable content. 

● Constantly bring your best self to your audience. 

● Build your community.

The more you do those things, the more you’ll build your brand and the more you’ll attract an audience of raving fans. 

How personal brand connects you

Personal Branding Connects You With More Individuals

The simple truth is, people connect better with people than they do with companies. It’s why Elon Musk and Richard Branson have more individual Twitter followers than the companies they founded.

The more you work to build your personal brand, the more individuals will want to connect with you, both in-person and online. The more you work to develop your brand, the more people will be attracted to your values, personality, convictions, the insights you have to offer, and even your personality. Once they connect with you, they will want to know more about your business.

Building your personal brand connects you personally with potential customers and clients, which then builds your business.

Pia Silva puts it like this:

“With so much content and so many small businesses popping up online, a brand that connects to a person’s face is much easier to trust faster. It takes less time and effort to build a relationship with a personal brand as compared to a business brand.”

The Power Of A Personal Brand 

Are you starting to see the power of having a personal brand? Your personal brand is what enables you to distinguish yourself from the competition. It allows you to charge a premium price for your services.

The more you focus on your personal brand, the more visible you become, and the more you become known as the expert in your field. When you’re known as an expert, your clients and customers will seek you out for your products and services, which in turn builds your business.

Kevin Stimpson says this:

“Having a personal brand is important for an entrepreneur because now more than ever, it’s important for CEOs and founders of companies/brands to come out to the forefront and connect with their audiences. People connect with people.”

It’s safe to say that there are few things more powerful than your personal brand. The more you focus on building it, the greater the results you’ll see. 

Now, are you ready to start building your personal brand?

How personal brand increase your brands visibility

 Personal Branding Increases Your Visibility

With people taking to social media to research a business before ever stepping in the door or making a purchase, it is essential you have a presence online. Let’s not forget, whether you are actively taking action to shape your brand or not, people can still write reviews about you. If you don’t have a presence online, you are invisible. Not to mention, you will not do well against your competition if no one knows who you are.

The more you build your personal brand, the more visible you’ll become. Once you are visible online, you will experience:

● More followers and connections on social media. 

● Followers willing to share your content with their tribes. 

● And so forth.

It’s a powerful cycle.

The truth is, building your personal brand and building your platform go hand-in- hand.

As your personal brand grows stronger, your platform will get bigger, which will then make your brand a force to be reckoned with.

Personal Branding Shapes What Content You Share

If you are not actively shaping your personal brand, you are probably struggling with what content to share on social media. You don't know what content to create because you don’t have any guidelines as to what your audience wants to know.

And so you end up sharing either nothing at all or whatever catches your fancy at any given moment. Neither of these tactics help you to build a strong personal brand.

When you have a strong personal brand, you have a clear identity beyond what you sell. You understand your brand message and brand values. So by having a personal brand, you are guided toward exactly what kinds of content you should share.

Simply put, you should only share content that aligns with and promotes the values of your personal brand.

What you ate for lunch is great, but it may not add to your personal brand or give value to your audience unless you are attracting people with food interests. Plates of food, memes, and other random posts are great to engage friends and family. But, if you are hoping to build trust and create a relationship with potential clients that don’t already have a personal relationship with you, they are not going to engage with your personal content.

How Personal Brand attract your ideal audience

 Personal Branding Allows You to Attract Your Ideal Audience

Being known as an expert in your field brings unique benefits with it.

When you’re known as the expert in your industry :

● It attracts your ideal audience - the people who need your help the most. 

● You get referrals from others in your industry and related industries. 

● You can charge a premium price - the kind of price that only an expert can charge.

Tony Robbins is a prime example of someone that people will pay a premium price just to attend his conferences. For years, he has shared the same message of self- empowerment. He did this by being consistent and producing content for people to see, hear, and read.

Everything he says, every video he puts out, every book he writes has the same brand message: “You can develop into a powerful individual and I can help you do that.”

Over time, he has established himself as one of, if not the, go-to person in the self- development arena.

The results?

● He attracts huge audiences of people who want to fulfill their potential. 

● Millions of people read his books and follow him on social media 

● He delivers enough value that he can charge a premium price for his services.

By consistently building his personal brand over many years, Tony Robbins now has people flocking to him for advice.

Do you want to experience the Tony Robbins effect?

If you want to be known as the go-to person in your industry, then it’s absolutely essential that you begin building your personal brand as soon as possible. You have to make yourself visible to be seen by your ideal audience. You have to clear on who you are as a brand and your message.

Personal Branding Puts You in Charge of the Narrative

As I said previously, your personal brand will evolve, whether you want it to or not. If you:

● Have a website 

● Use social media 

● Have an email list 

● Have a blog 

● Speak to groups 

● Record and share videos

...then you’re already taking steps to build your personal brand.

Everything you put out into the world is part of your personal brand. When you produce thoughtfully, planned content, you are in charge of defining exactly what your brand is all about.

The beauty of personal branding is that it ensures that you’re actively shaping your own narrative.

You’re determining what others think about you, rather than simply letting them form their own opinions. The bad thing about not producing any content is you lose the opportunity to build trust and for potential clients to get to know you enough to like you. When you don’t generate content or interact where your target audience hangs out, you are like a ghost in your industry because you exist, but no one sees you. When no one sees you, they don’t know what you stand for, whether you can help them, or if you are better than your competitors.

With every social media post you share, every blog post you put up, every email you send, you’re shaping the narrative of who you are. You’re in control of your story and how you are viewed by potential clients.

How can charge up Personal Branding

Personal Branding Allows You to Charge a Premium Price

When you craft a strong personal brand, you can charge a higher price for your products and services because they’re exclusive to you. One way to demonstrate the value of your brand is to create unique offers. This way your potential clients can view your offer as more valuable than someone that is selling a single item. Your services have to be viewed as something they can’t purchase anywhere else.

The stronger your brand, the more people want your services. The more people want your services, the higher the price you can charge.

This is exactly why Nike is able to charge so much for their sneakers. They’ve spent years building their brand into a powerhouse. Nike sneakers have become a status symbol, and wearing Nikes says something about who you are.

This allows Nike to charge exorbitant amounts of money for their sneakers The Nike brand automatically equals higher prices for sneakers.

You can take a page from Nike’s book. By working hard to build your personal brand and showing how much value you bring to the table, you too can charge a premium price for your products and services.

Personal Branding Highlights Your Expertise

Remember, your personal brand is how you present yourself to the world.

This means that a significant amount of personal branding involves the content that you share with the world.

It is important to build trust so potential clients feel comfortable purchasing from you. That’s why it is so important to create content that highlights your expertise as a business owner and a brand. The more valuable the content you share, the more you demonstrate that you’re an expert who should be trusted.

Each time you share...

● Social media posts 

● Blog posts 

● Emails 

● Videos 

● Infographics 

● Podcasts

...you have an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your field. You become someone who really knows what they’re talking about and you are viewed as a thought leader in your industry.

Through the content you share, you are also demonstrating your knowledge and insight to your audience. You’re proving just how much value you offer and that you’re the go-to person in your industry.

The more you demonstrate your expertise, the more your audience will trust you and come to you to solve their problems.

The more value you share, the more it shows people that you know exactly what you’re talking about and should be looked at as an expert. So, don’t be afraid to give a few golden nuggets of value in all of your content. People will tune in to hear what you have to say if they benefit from the information you provide.

How to build a personal brand

Why Build a Personal Brand?

At this point, you know that you don’t need to be a big company to build a personal brand. Here’s the reality, every entrepreneur, coach, consultant, author, freelancer, etc. should be building their own brand. You also know, you have to actively shape your personal brand, otherwise someone will shape it for you.

So let’s talk about some of the benefits of building a personal brand.

Personal Branding Allows You To Stand Out From The Competition

There are a lot of business owners selling the same thing you are online and offline. If you are going to have a chance to get leads on social media or have people visit your website, you have to stand out from the competition.

Your brand, values, expertise, and story all set you apart from your competitors.
Your competitors can’t bring what you bring to the table.

They simply don’t have what you have to offer. You’re unique. Only you are you.

You have unique:

● Experiences 
● Strengths 
● Beliefs 
● Perspectives 
● Skills 
● Insights

that set you apart from everyone else. By showcasing these qualities about yourself, you have an opportunity to highlight your strengths to your target audience.

And as you exhibit all of these strengths, you distinguish yourself from all your competitors.

Think about Rolex and how they’ve set themselves apart from the competition. Because they’ve focused on being exclusively a luxury watch brand, they have set themselves apart from other watch companies, like Timex.

Rolex is the brand for those who want a luxury watch, while Timex is the brand for those who want a sturdy, relatively inexpensive watch.
By working relentlessly to build their brand, Rolex has distinguished themselves from every other watch company.

The more you work to build your personal brand, the greater edge you’ll have over your competition. You’ll stand out amidst the crowd.

How to build personal brand

 What Is A Personal Brand?

First let’s ensure we’re all on the same page in terms of what a personal brand actually is. 

A personal brand is much more than a logo or a color palette. A personal brand also goes far beyond having a nice-looking business card. A personal brand is not just about having a website with your name on it, although that’s certainly part of it.

 A personal brand is about who you are, what you represent, and what you do. 

Your personal brand is how you present yourself, both online and offline, to the world. 

Your personal brand is the image you put forth. It’s what you stand for. Your values. What you’re all about. The core of who you are as a person. Your personal brand is your secret sauce – the thing that sets you apart from everyone else. It’s what makes you unique.

Your personal brand includes your: 

● Visual Characteristics 

● Values 

● Unique Skills 

● Experiences 

● Stories 

● Personality 

● Image

 And each of these features must be presented in an authentic, honest way to your audience.

Your personal brand centers around you as an individual. It’s about what you bring to the table and the value that you offer. It involves the specific ways that you solve people’s deepest pain points and biggest frustrations.

You may be tempted to think that only big companies are brands, but that’s not true. Thanks to the internet and the power of social media, we all have the tools to build powerful personal brands for our business.

When you think about it, we all have a personal brand. In fact, you might say that every person is a brand considering your brand will develop with or without you.

People can say anything about you or your business and ruin your reputation instantly. So building a personal brand is a necessity to protect how you are perceived online and offline.

So because you already have a brand, your role is to actively take control of intentionally shaping your brand.

As Influencer Marketing Hub puts it:

You can either ignore your personal brand and let it develop organically, possibly chaotically, beyond your control, or you can help massage your personal brand to depict you as the person you want to be.

In other words, you’re going to have a personal brand, whether you want to or not. Everything you share online, every review you receive, every email you send to your audience, every blog post you write, every live event you host - is all part of your brand.

Your content shapes the way people think about you and the image you put forth.

The question is whether you want your brand to develop on its own, with no guidance from you, or whether you want to actively control the process.

Obviously it is always better when you’re in control of the process of building your personal brand.

So how do you actively build a personal brand? How do you get in control of the process? How do you ensure that your brand is helping to build your business?