Tips For Building A Personal Brand

Over the past few of years, personal brands have become a big thing. The rise of social media has made it easy for average Joe’s to make a name for themselves over the internet and capitalise from it. In today’s day and age, attention is everything, so building a personal brand wouldn’t be such a bad idea. In this blog, I am going to cover the benefits of building a personal brand as well as 6 tips for getting started.

There are a lot of benefits to building a personal brand. To keep this blog as concise as possible I will only share a few with you.

Being Yourself

Being accepted for being yourself is something that we all dream of. Well, now you can! Sort of. When building a personal brand, you want to be as authentic as possible. The internet is able to see through a fake persona which will result in a long-term loss. I personally see this step as the hardest as there can be some mental barriers that you may have to overcome to feel comfortable with putting yourself out there.

Accountability

When it comes to building your personal brand, you may have to document rather than create. This could mean that you reveal future plans. In doing this you will be accountable for your actions because if you don’t follow through then your brand could suffer.

Learn about yourself

When it comes to building your personal brand, you are going to have to post content for your followers. The more content you post, the more you’re going to have to experiment and this will allow you to see what you do and don’t like in regards to the direction that your brand will go. This will help you to learn more about yourself and where you stand in your comfort zone.

There are a lot more benefits to building your personal brand, those were just a few examples.

Now that I’ve grabbed your attention I’ll go over 6 steps to building your personal brand.

Make a Start

I have briefly mentioned the benefits of building a personal brand, so what’s the first step? START. If you’re reading this blog then it’s more than likely that you’re interested in building a personal brand to some degree. Making a start is the best way to start. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but hear me out. Stop thinking about what you’re going to do and do it. As soon as that thought comes into your head, think it over for a moment or two and then execute. Write your idea down, take that picture for Instagram, make that T-shirt design, do whatever it takes to make a start. It doesn’t matter how small your first step is, as long as you’re taking it. It will be a long journey so it’s okay to start slow.

Find Your Niche/Audience

At this stage, you should have a rough idea of what you want to do. Whether you want to start a clothing brand or set up a charity for Alzheimer’s, you have an idea in your mind. With that idea in your head, you need to establish who is going to follow your brand. Who is your target audience? For example, let’s say that I want to start a music based brand. I would be targeting younger(I am young myself) music lovers who live in the United Kingdom. That is a very broad example as more information would be better. Things to keep in mind when establishing your target audience would be:

  • Age range
  • Gender
  • Country
  • Interest

When you know who your target market is, then the next step is to attract them to your brand.

Attract Your Audience

There are many ways to attract your audience and you should pick the way that is best for your business. However, seeing as this an educational blog, I have a few tricks up my sleeve for you.

The biggest way to attract your audience is with a website (and online marketing, but I will touch on that shortly). Having a stunning, easy to use website is a great way to not only attract your audience but to build trust with them. Did you know, 80% of people judge the credibility of a company based on the design of their website, according to a study conducted by Stanford University.

Social Media is the next big hitter, paired with a great website of course. On Facebook alone, there were 2.27 Billion monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2018. That’s a lot of eyeballs staring at screens. I’m a marketing apprentice, so my job is to make sure those eyeballs come across our campaigns and let me tell you, it works. Utilizing a stunning website and a great marketing campaign could be the difference between working a 9-5 or being financially free and working from home. By no stretch of the imagination am I saying it is an overnight accomplishment, it will take work, but it will be worth it.

Drive Traffic to your Website

There has to be a reason that you want to start a personal brand. You might just want people to know you exist, or you might want the attention so that you can sell a product. Whatever your reasoning is, if you want to capitalise from your brand then you are going to need to drive traffic. A good way to do this is by creating interesting and valuable content, that people will want to watch. Within that content, you should get your audience wanting more information. Get them enticed and link your website to that content so people can go straight from your status/picture/video to your website.

Make Quality Content

Quality content is hard to come by nowadays. That’s why it’s oh so important to create it. In a newsfeed full of nonsense, your content will stand out amongst the rest as long as it provides value to your audience. People mindlessly scroll through social media on a day to day bases, so make sure that your content stands out so that people don’t mindlessly scroll past yours like they do the rest.

Be Active in the Community

Last, but certainly not least, be active in the community. To build a personal brand you need to engage with your audience as much as they engage with you. Giveaways are a good way of being active as not only are you engaging, but you’re giving back and only asking for a follow and a share in return. You could also use user-generated content. This is when you post other peoples videos to your page, with permission of course. You could set a challenge for your follows and post it to social media with your brand name as the hashtag and then post the best ones to your social media pages.

Conclusion

To conclude, I believe that building a personal brand is a great way to get ahead in today’s day and age, but if your brand is a side hustle for the time being then I understand that it can be difficult. That’s why businesses like Blue Whale Media exists. We can build your online presence for you and let you worry about the heart of your business.

Thank you for reading this blog, I hope it has helped you in your quest to build a personal brand.

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