I’m going to ask you one question, and I want you to think about it for a few moments.
What do you want to be known for?
If someone mentions your name, business, or brand what do you want them to say?
Some people can answer this question in a matter of seconds, while it may take others a lifetime to figure out.
Let me start by stating that personal branding isn’t just for someone who owns a business.
Personal branding is also essential for any influencer, business coach, or person who wants to share their story with the world.
Whether you want to be known as the G.O.A.T. of entrepreneurs, the most entertaining speaker, or as the person who spends their life volunteering and giving back to their community, there is no wrong answer.
If you want to make an impact in the world, creating a branding strategy is definitely the place to begin.
I want to start by going over the personal branding definition — then dive deeper into the importance of having a personal brand online, talk about some personal branding tips and personal branding examples.
Most people define personal branding with a name and logo, but there’s so much more to it than that.
So, What Is Personal Branding?
Personal branding is the practice of marketing people and their careers as brands.
It is an ongoing process of developing and maintaining a reputation and impression of an individual, group, or organization.
Whereas some self-help practices focus on self-improvement, personal branding defines success as a form of self-packaging.
Your personal brand is how you promote yourself.
It is the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that you want your followers to see.
It is the telling of your story, and the impression people gain from your online reputation.
Check Out These 3 Personal Branding Tips & Examples
1. Create Content With A Purpose
Many marketers will tell you the best way to attract more people and buyers to your personal brand is to create and share new content all the time.
They’ll tell you to create more videos and write more blog posts, and eventually you’ll grow into an influential brand and reach the KPI’s you have in place.
We’ve seen that strategy fail time and time again.
That’s also one of the biggest and most common complaints we hear from businesses and brands of all sizes — they spent all of this time creating new content, but no one ever saw it or engaged with it, which is a huge missed opportunity.
Sure, every business and influencer will have to create new content at some point, but you don’t want to get in the habit of creating new content to check it off your to-do list or to waste your time filming a video for three weeks if you only get five people to watch it.
What works better is when you have a content strategy and budget in place to promote the content you already have (as long as it still aligns with your vision and goals).
We need to get more people to see and engage with the content that’s already out there.
One of our core beliefs and something we teach our clients is:
“If you’re willing to post something online, you have to be willing to spend ad dollars promoting it, and if you’re not willing to spend money on it, you shouldn’t waste your time posting it.”
Every piece of content you create should be created with a budget and a specific goal in mind.
It doesn’t matter if you created a new blog post, tweet, Instagram story, or video, you should always spend time getting your content in front of the right people at the right time in their journey.
It is also important to show people the type of content they are interested in, not what you think they want.
If you don’t know who your ideal people are or what type of content they want to see, click here to learn more about buyer personas.
2. Be Consistent, Show Up & Serve
When building a personal brand, it is important that your social media channels are consistent across every platform, visually appealing, and represent the type of influential person you want to be.
Gary V is an excellent example of someone who shows up, is consistent, and serves his audience in various ways.
No matter which social media channel you look him up on, you will see an overload of free content about side hustles and grinding nonstop until you reach your goals.
He found a niche where he could offer something valuable to the people and then became the most influential and authoritative thought leader in that space.
He serves his audience every day by giving them free content and does it without asking for anything in return.
That is what we are missing from most influencers and brands today.
Whatever niche you chose to be in, stick to it, and be consistent.
If you want to be recognized as an authoritative figure in the hustle and grind space, the majority of what you post online should be about that.
Try to avoid confusing your audience by being overly opinionated about a variety of topics.
3. Find A Unique Selling Proposition
You have to find what is unique and special to your brand that will make you stand out from the competition.
Here is an example of one of the most iconic brands in history that had great success with personal branding.
Coca-Cola was one of the first businesses to incorporate personal branding into their marketing strategy and campaigns.
They were one of the first brands to focus on brand personality and emotional advertising.
The brand created an identity that’s built around values of joy, experience, community, and happiness. They created a brand that showed people the type of lifestyle that they wanted to be associated with.
Despite how the advertising world has changed over the years, the main values and focus of the company have remained the same for over 100 years.
They knew that if they wanted to capture the attention of their audience, they had to sell not just a product but an experience.
And that is what separated them from all of the other competition.
If you haven’t created a personal brand yet and are looking to create one here are some questions to get you started or you can book a strategy session with us below:
- How will your brand make people feel?
- What makes you different?
- What are your core beliefs and values?
- What type of company culture do you want?
- What skillset(s) can you offer?
- What’s your message?
- Who are your ideal people or customers?
- How are you influential?
- Does your product, service, or brand give people a transformation?
- What problem do you solve?
- What guarantees success and failure to you?
- What’s your niche?
- Are you authoritative in your niche?
Why Is Creating A Personal Brand Important?
Your Ideal People Start To Find You
When you consistently tell your story and share snippets of your personality with your audience across social media, you will notice more people actively engaging, following, and sharing your content.
The more personality you can add to your business, the easier it will get to find your tribe.
Over time you will build this community of like-minded people who value your skills and sees you as an expert in your industry.
You will notice that people will either love you or hate you, and that’s okay!
You wouldn’t want someone who thinks you have a weird personality or someone who constantly disagrees with you to be a part of your tribe.
One of the biggest reasons for creating a personal brand is to warm up this powerful group of people who are waiting to take action on anything you have to offer.
Once you find your ideal followers, that’s when you can really start making a profit and reaching your goals.
For example, let’s say you have an event coming up in a few months and the goal is to sell out the event.
When you have the right people waiting, you could sell out the event in a matter of minutes.
You Build Trust With People Who Matter
When it comes to doing business with someone online, studies show that 70–80% of people research an influencer or brand before doing business with them.
People like to feel like they know you, especially before they spend money or do business with you.
That’s one of the reasons why personal branding is so important.
It’s a way we can naturally build relationships and connections with people throughout the world.
Because social media has become a place filled with highly reliable and resourceful information about anyone imaginable, it’s important always to show our authentic selves.
Almost everything we do can be found online, so make sure that whatever story you are selling is consistent across everything you say and do.
Consistency is one of the most significant factors in building trust with someone.
Final Thoughts
Your personal brand helps you stand out from everybody else.
Personal branding gives you the opportunity to show current and potential clients your skillset and strengths.
The key to building a successful brand and becoming truly influential is to consistently show up and be so great at selling your story that people have to do business with you.
Now, go show up and serve your audience in every way possible and show them that you are worth investing in.
When you do that, it will be a game-changer for your brand.
