The Year of the Personal Brand
The brand, it can create you or it can destroy you. Currently we are all seeing more personal branding all around us. We have more entrepreneurs and solopreneurs on the playing field. Here are some simple strategies you can leverage to start building your brand in twenty seventeen.
"Do I need to consider a personal brand?"
The personal branding push has been the standard in recent years and mainly leveraged by really unique markets or segments or who offer exclusive products. In today’s world as you come into contact with folks they are more likely to look you up on online. We are living in a digital world and ensuring your online persona is how you see should be apart of your life persona strategy as you interact with clients and or employers.
You are in control of your online persona so building it will ensure you’re putting your best first which crosses over into your world which will influence your success.
For entrepreneurs there are great benefits to creating a personal brand. In business people actually prefer the person behind the logo to the actual business because there is a connection. Creating your personal brand ecosystem can expand your business faster and acquiring potential investors and clients become easier.
Now, let’s get into what you need to do in order to start your very own personal brand:
Be visible and be active
The first step towards building up your personal brand is that you need to be as visible as possible online:
- Create a blog or a website where people can learn more about you
- Join social profiles and be active
- Join online communities and social groups where you interact with others
You don’t necessarily need to be on every major social network and start a blog. Rather, keep to what you know realistically you have the time to manage properly and stick with it.
Since you will need to be very active in order to be successful, and engage as much as possible with other people, it’s better to not stretch yourself too thin.
That said, if you’re not seen by people, you won’t be able to truly brand yourself. Find the perfect balance for yourself, so as to make sure that you are visible, but not on so many platforms that you don’t have the time to manage any of them properly.
Grow your social influence
Social media offers even the most regular of people a chance at growing their influence online. And an improved influence, means a better, stronger personal brand.
In order to become an influencer, you will need to essentially become a thought leader in your niche, a person who others look up to for advice, tips or in other cases, for entertainment.
In order to grow your own social influence, you will need to be extra active online, and preferably, also have a blog which is updated regularly with new posts. Influencers can’t grow unless there is consistency.
As I mentioned earlier, as an influencer, you become a source of great information from whatever your niche is. This means that you need to share the top content, write insightful posts of your own, provide tips and advice to others and so on.
Another important factor is engagement: just like with personal branding, if you want to grow your influence, you will need to engage with other users as much as possible. Ask and answer questions, join groups and engage there regularly to get your name seen by others, network online and at events, take part in Twitter Chats and so on. The more you engage with others, the better for your influence, and for your personal brand.
Know who you are and what makes you unique
Just like with regular brands, a personal brand needs to have a clear direction.
In order to be able to build your brand, you need to know who you are: what makes you, you? What qualities make you unique? What makes you stand out? And how can you use these for your personal brand.
This is not a question of hiding things about yourself, or changing your personality to fit the idea of the perfect personal brand. Rather, it’s about using your best qualities and always bringing your best foot forward when you’re presenting yourself to others, online and offline.
Consistency is also very important to your success – just like with regular brands. Before you start building your brand, be clear on who you are and what image you want to portray to others, and then stick to it.
Branding: it’s in the little things
With branding, it’s sometimes the little things that can make the biggest difference to your success.
For example, you could consider creating a logo for yourself. This is especially useful if you have a website or a blog. A logo can help you look more professional, as well as make your brand stand out. You can use a tool like Tailor Brands to quickly create yourself a custom logo.
Another thing that can make a big difference is including a professional signature to all of your emails.
Most email providers will let you create a signature, or if you want a more professional-looking signature and one that includes links to your social profiles, you can use a tool like WiseStamp to create it.
Live streaming
Live streaming continues to be huge this year on social media. Use this popular (relatively) new medium to grow your personal brand and reach more people.
As Facebook is pushing this feature, it’s much more likely that a live stream will pop up in people’s news feeds, rather than a regular update. It’s unclear how long this will last – but while it still is, make sure to profit from the increased reach that live streaming gives you. And, now that Twitter has also included this feature, you have even more options for platforms.
There are lots of ways that you can use live streaming, for example to perform a product tutorial for a product that your audience would be interested in, to live stream from an event, or to take an interview of an interesting person that your audience would love to hear from.
Engage with social influencers
Another way of building up your profile online is to create connections with social influencers. As they start mentioning you or your work, it can really help you build your profile, not to mention, you will also be reaching their larger than average and very engaged audience.
Search for influencers in your niche and then simply start engaging to build these relationships. A platform like Clearvoice can help you map out and connect with influencers in many niches. Engage on their websites and blogs, as well as on social media and, where possible, take it to the offline as well: go to industry events, conferences and so on as this will not only help you meet influencers, but it will also improve your own visibility. The more people get to meet you, the better the chances of your personal brand growing and evolving.
Conclusion
A good personal brand can help you achieve more success in your career, or as an entrepreneur, it can help propel your business to success, much faster and easier. Are you thinking of building up your own personal brand? What are some of the best personal brands you’ve encountered online and why.
