Personal Branding (A Complete Guide)

‘Personal Branding is not about you. It is about putting your stamp on the value you deliver to others.’ – Quoted by William Arruda, Personal branding guru

So, do you have your personal brand? Well, you’ve certainly got to build one if want to create an identity for yourself as an entrepreneur, creator, or marketer. And since a lot of people are doing that already, the competition is getting tougher and so is the need to differentiate yourself. Learn how to build your personal brand and help your target audience identify your uniqueness. 

It takes time to develop a strong personal brand, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. After speaking with dozens of business owners and branding experts, we’ve created a complete guide that can help you create a compelling and lucrative personal brand that draws in your ideal customers. But first, we need to understand the need for creating a personal brand.

Table of Contents

Reasons For Personal Branding

With so much content available and so many businesses online, a brand that links to a person’s face builds more credibility. Developing a relationship with a personal brand requires less time and work as compared to a business brand.

• Having your personal brand positions you as a thorough professional in your field and helps you gain the trust of your audience.
• It is simpler for you to pitch and be found by media (online publications, magazines, television, radio, podcasts, etc.) if you have a personal brand. The media is always looking for specialists who can share their knowledge with their audience.
• It is simpler for other people and business owners to recognize the benefit of interacting with you when you have a personal brand that concisely describes who you are, what you do, and how you help others. You may rapidly and efficiently expand your network both online and offline by utilizing your own brand.
• You will be able to draw in more of your target clients if you develop a personal brand that establishes you as the authority in a particular sector or area. It’s also simpler to get customer referrals when you’re seen as an authority.
• Strong personal branding enables you to charge higher prices for your goods and services. You become an asset that competes on value without a brand. Additionally, your price will constantly be beaten by competitors.
• Your business will develop as time passes. Over the course of your career, you might potentially launch several companies in various areas. As you go from one business venture to another, your personal brand follows you.

Types Of Personal Branding

Personal branding is all about how your target market sees both your brand and you personally. You should take building your brand seriously and select a style of personal branding that resonates with you. It will affect how people view your business. To achieve it, you must be familiar with the primary categories of personal branding.

Connector: Connectors are concerned with forming groups and fostering relationships. These influential individuals are great communicators and masters at attracting a following. They are approachable, sympathetic, imaginative, and tolerant. 

Selective: In this category, you’ll find the brands that cater to niche markets. Selectives produce high-interest, high-quality content that they only share with selected audiences.

Careerist: Successful people in their chosen fields put their careers first. They make an effort to get in touch with them and give them data that will assist them advance in skill and gain credibility. They are respected authorities in their field, known for their extensive expertise. Famous entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Simon Senek both use their personal brands to boost their careers.

Altruist: Helping others is a primary value for altruists. They help those in need by managing charitable organizations. They dedicate their lives to bettering the lives of others by working to find a cure for the disease, aiding the homeless, and safeguarding victims of harassment, abuse, inequality, and so on. Oprah Winfrey, for one, supports female and pediatric educational initiatives, while Marlo Thomas funds pediatric cancer research.

Hipster: True hipsters value self-expression and uniqueness. Hipsters share traits with both careerists and humanitarians, but they don’t take action like either of these branding kinds. They would rather give their readers just proven advice. These labels represent cutting-edge style and originality.

Boomerang: Discussions are sparked by the contentious information shared in boomerangs. Their material is frequently unexpected, divisive, and thought-provoking. Instagram is rife with examples of boomerang personal brands, such as the @sarcasm_only and @epicfunnypage meme accounts. Boomerang brands also include news reporters.

After settling on a specific niche for your personal brand, you can begin to build it systematically.

How To Build Your Personal Brand

Here comes the juicy part! The availability of social media platforms has made it possible for anyone to establish a strong online identity. You may finally build your brand with the help of platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Create a favorable impression with an approachable manner and strong beliefs that will appeal to your audience. And how you can do that is explained in the following 6 actionable steps.

Establish a solid base 

The first thing you should do when developing your personal brand is to set a foundation upon which you can construct your brand with self-assurance and honesty. Authenticity is the most important principle to keep in mind here.

There is a widespread misunderstanding that developing a personal brand requires the creation of a persona. However, by its very nature, a persona is a mask or an act. Because it is not an accurate depiction of who you are, we might say that it lacks authenticity.

Your personal brand must never be a disguised version of your true self. It is not part of branding to position oneself as something you are not in order to attract customers. It is about displaying your genuine self to your audience and your clients in a way that is both intentional and strategic. Your personal brand ought to be an accurate depiction of your abilities, interests, core values, and core principles.

Point to note: Identifying your existing branding assets is the first step in constructing a solid foundation for your brand. You should establish your identity at the point where these resources meet. So you make a list of everything you have that relates to your brand by asking yourself the following questions: 

• In what ways have you improved yourself over time? Where did you receive your education, and what degrees did you complete there? This accounts for your competencies.
•  In what industries and fields of study do you take the most interest? Exactly what is it that you enjoy doing? This speaks about your interests.
• What are some of your most fundamental ideas and values? Just what do you have faith in? Where do you draw the line? Where do your convictions lie? This accounts for your beliefs.

After you’ve categorized your current brand assets, proceed to ask yourself brand-related questions:

• What do you want people to associate with your brand? What would it be like to be recognized as the world-leading authority in the XYZ field?
• Why do you want a personal brand? Who is it that you hope to persuade? What goals do you have in mind?
• What is the fundamental idea behind your brand that you want people to take away? Which message do you want your marketing and content to constantly reiterate? With such limited space, what single piece of guidance would you give to your readers?
• How can you incorporate aspects of who you are into your brand’s identity? Which do you prefer: a reputation for extreme professionalism or one for eccentricity and daring?

Select who you want to target 

When you’re trying to develop a personal brand, one of the worst mistakes you can make is thinking that you have to appeal to everyone. And of course, you can’t expect to get an ideal customer every time. 

In order to bring in the kinds of customers who are a good fit for your business, you have to be willing to turn away customers who are not a good fit for your company. This entails determining who your ideal customers are and crafting a brand identity that appeals to that demographic specifically.

If you strive to be liked by everyone, you won’t attract anyone to yourself. This may seem paradoxical, but it’s true. In order to differentiate yourself from the crowd, you need to be divisive. It is quite acceptable for people not to like you or find meaning in what you have to say even if they have been exposed to you or seen your message. To create a prosperous company, it is not necessary to connect with each and every customer. You only need to communicate effectively with your ideal customers.

Creating a profile of your ideal customer is a worthwhile activity that we highly encourage you to participate in. Here are some questions to help you construct your perfect client profile:

• What is their age, gender, education level, relationship status, income level, career, and other aspects of their lives, such as these?
• What do they want their future to look like? What are their hopes, objectives, and ambitions for the future?
• What exactly are they having trouble with? What exactly is preventing them from achieving their goals?

Make an offer they won’t refuse 

You need to have something to sell to the people who make up your target audience in order to establish a profitable personal brand for yourself. You need to make an enticing offer that assists your audience in overcoming a certain challenge or accomplishing a particular goal.

Many would-be business owners make the error of developing a product or service that they want, only to find out that no one else does as well or is ready to pay for it when they offer it on the market.

Because of this, it is extremely crucial to determine who your ideal customer is before beginning the development of a product or service. When you have a clear idea of the people you want to assist, you will be able to design a deal that provides just the right answer for them. Let’s see how to do that. 

The first step in developing an attractive offer is to market yourself as an expert rather than a novice. Make a bold claim about what you can do for your customers, and then create a unique service to get them there. Uncertainty and generality in an offer make it anything but attractive.

The next step is to pinpoint the intersection between your passions, skills, and the needs of your prospective customers. Make a deal that meets all of these requirements. This is what we refer to as the “Irresistible Offer Formula.” It looks somewhat like this:

What you love to do + What you do best + What your audience wants most = Irresistible offer

Once you’ve developed a compelling offer, you must communicate it effectively to your target market. Here are a couple of questions you should be prepared to answer quickly and concisely:

• To what end do you put your time? You can think of your value proposition as your reply to this inquiry. When they pay you, your customers want to know what they’re getting in return.
• Just how do you manage to do that? Create a memorable brand name for your procedure, item, or service. Giving it a memorable name helps it stand out from other products that claim to do the same thing.

Personal website optimization 

Personal websites are crucial to personal branding. You need a strong social media following, but you don’t own the platforms. Your website, where potential clients first encounter your firm, is within your control.

Impressions matter. If you want people to hire you after viewing your personal website, you must immediately communicate who you are and what you can do. They should feel they’ve arrived. If things take more than a few seconds, most first-time visitors will leave.

Prioritise converting casual visitors into paying clients. Most of the necessary components should be plainly displayed on your site.

Important features of your website’s home page:

• Employ a graphic designer to create a logo that effectively conveys your brand’s identity. Our top online business tools list includes some graphic design services we think you’ll like.
• Make sure you state your value proposition clearly on your homepage, preferably near the top. This should include who you help and how you help them.
• Get a professional photographer to snap a few shots of you. Make good use of these images on your site and on your social media profiles.
• Add the logos of any newspapers or media outlets in which you have been featured, as well as testimonials from satisfied customers, to demonstrate your credibility.
• Provide your website visitors with an obvious next step, such as signing up for your email list, attending a free webinar, or requesting a free consultation.

Let’s see what the additional pages should comprise:

• About Page: This is your story. How did you initially enter this industry? Please tell me about your background and qualifications. Whom do you serve? How do you assist them? Explain your actions.
• Products & Service:  Provide a list of the things you’re selling along with links to where people can learn more about them and make a purchase.
• Contact: Include a “contact” page on your website to let people know how to get in touch with you. Depending on the nature of their inquiry, provide them with a corresponding set of communication options (email, social media, etc.).

Personal Branding Content Strategy

Free content is a great approach to boosting brand awareness and consumer trust. Create material that assists your audience rather than trying to persuade them. This proves that you are an expert in your field.

Begin developing a content plan for your personal brand by making a list of all the topics that could be of interest to your audience. Google https://adwords.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/, http://buzzsumo.com/, and https://answerthepublic.com/ are all fantastic resources for finding trending subjects and conducting keyword research.

After compiling a list of topics to write about, the next step is to figure out what kind of content you want to make and where you want to distribute it.

Community Building

Here are some strategies for attracting customers and building your community:

Gather your followers and customers into a closed Facebook group. This will allow you to have daily, in-depth discussions with your audience and, more significantly, provide them with a community in which they can help and be helped by one another.

Hold live events so that your audience and/or customers may see you face to face. Relationships with your audience can be strengthened through informal get-togethers, private dinners, workshops, retreats, and mastermind groups.

Build a membership site where, for a small monthly charge, your customers may have access to premium materials, participate in frequent calls and/or webinars with you, and network with one another in a members-only forum or group.

Key Takeaway

The internet has made it possible for anyone to build a brand for themselves, grow a loyal fan base, and monetize their goods and services. 

There isn’t any serious competition when it comes to personal branding. There may be others in the market offering something comparable to what you do, but they are not you. In point of fact, you are truly unique and cannot be compared to anyone else. You are completely one of a kind.

This is why it’s important to learn and understand how to build your personal brand. When you establish your own unique brand, you set yourself apart from the competition because YOU are unique.