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Developing a Personal Brand – Three Steps to Take

Wondering how to become the top-of-mind provider in your industry? Looking for a plan to develop extreme influence via social media?

What Makes Personal Branding Important?

Here’s how important personal brands are: Even if you aren’t actively trying to build one, you already have a personal brand. Personal branding is inescapable online.

You’re probably managing your brand more actively than you realize. Setting up a LinkedIn page? That’s part of your own personal brand. Updated your Twitter bio? That’s part of your personal brand.

The only way to avoid personal branding is to be completely offline. Even then, your lack of social media presence is a statement in itself. Most importantly, you’ll be at a serious business disadvantage compared to the people who are online, purposeful, and posting.

Taking control of your personal brand comes with a long list of benefits including:

• More conversions and sales
• Creating connections faster and with more people
• Being able to monetize your experience and expertise

As we mentioned above, these benefits are available to companies, as well as individuals. The trick is to humanize the company brand by giving it an individual face or by creating the “feel” of a personal brand.

There are three common ways to do this:

• Leaders. Make the founder or CEO of the company into the personality that symbolizes the brand. If you’re a founder or entrepreneur, this is a great choice. You can use your personal story to sell the brand.

The 3-Step Branding Process

There are three essential steps to set up your personal brand:

1. Positioning. Define your personal brand and its place in the market.
2. Build something to demonstrate your brand. Set up your online presence and create content that expresses your personal brand.
3. Promote your brand. Choose the social media platforms that will help you grow and monetize most effectively.

For now, we’re going to take these steps in order. But don’t forget that your personal brand will always be a work in progress. There will always be space to refine your positioning, create better content, and discover new promotional channels.

#1: Position Your Brand

Let’s start with the most basic element: defining and positioning your brand.

Your personal brand = 

Something you love you do + Something that other people need and will pay for

This formula should help you to describe your brand in one simple sentence.

If you’re not sure what to put in that formula yet, you can go deeper and ask yourself some more reflective questions. Start with the first half of the formula, “Something you love to do.” Ask yourself:

• What activities or work do you find consistently satisfying?
• What are you really good at?
• What do you want out of life?
• If you won the lottery today, what would you do tomorrow?

You might come up with multiple answers. For example, perhaps you’re really good at accounting but it’s not satisfying. You love roasting coffee beans but you’re not an expert yet.

Which business should you choose? The coffee beans. If you truly love something, then you can acquire expertise. But if you don’t love something and you place it at the heart of your personal brand, you’ll burn out fast.

Once you know what you want to do (and again, there may be multiple answers), you need to find out whether it’s something that people need. They have to need it enough to pay for it and keep you in business.

#2: Build Something to Show Your Brand

Now you know who you are and who you’re marketing to.

How do you share that with everyone else? The answer is content.

Content is how we demonstrate authority, build trust, and stay in touch with online audiences. You’re going to use content to build and expand your personal brand on social media accounts.

Remember that the focus here is on your personal brand. Your content must be consistent with your brand. It needs to be genuine, consistent, and manageable so you can produce it without burning out.

Here are the absolute basics to include in your personal branding content strategy.

Photography

The internet is a visual medium. You can’t have a website or social media without using images, especially when you’re trying to promote a brand that centers on a real human being! You’ll need some well-produced, professional shots that tell your story.

#3: Promote Your Brand

Now it’s time for the third step: actively promoting your brand.

First, you defined what your personal brand meant. Then you created content and an online presence that support that personal brand. But you still need an audience… and that’s where promotion comes in.

The most effective promotion channel for any successful personal brand is social media. It’s easy to access, is often free, and gives you a high level of control over how you promote your brand. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to be on every platform out there. But how do you choose which one(s)?

To find the right promotion strategy for your personal brand, start with the three Ps: parameters, priorities, and platforms.

Parameters

There are two key parameters to consider: the time you have to spend and your goals for promoting your personal brand.

How many hours per week can you dedicate to posting, commenting, exploring, and connecting with new followers? Remember that on most platforms, you’ll need to post at least once a week. If you can’t dedicate enough time to commenting and other interactions, you’ll lose out on half the impact of social media. It’s important to find a level of commitment that’s both sustainable and effective for you.

Next, is it easy to achieve your goals on the platform you’ve chosen? Each social network is different. They have different ways to post content and interact with followers, and different rules about how you can share links or direct people outside the social network. Does your chosen channel offer the type of engagement and follower interaction you need?