Building A Personal Brand and Marketing Yourself for Your Business
"Personal Branding" is the practice of marketing people and their careers as Brands.
Building and promoting your own personal brand is as important for you as it is for any company. Maybe more…
It’s more than a Trademark.
It is the unique combination of skills, experience and personality that you want the world to see you.
It is how you present yourself online & offline to potential clients and customers. Your personal brand is vital to you professionally.
You use personal branding to differentiate yourself from other people.
Your personal brand builds your business but it still centers around you as individual.
That means that if you’re a business owner; you have a much better chance of winning peoples TRUST.
Also, remember that personal branding is not about selling. You can use personal brand to demonstrate your knowledge and skills about your areas of expertise.
When you're building a business around your area of expertise (as an author, speaker, coach, consultant, specialist, freelancer, etc)
....the concept of building personal branding makes perfect sense.
How To Start Building Your Personal Brand?
STEP 1 : CRAFTING YOUR INFO, BRAND & MESSAGES
It’s important to create messages that will evoke a reaction or change mood. Promote a deeper connection between them and your products and services.
Start with crafting your info, brand & messages.
What is your value proposition?
Why should someone work with you?
“For business to survive over a long period, it needs to be contributing to society and peoples well - being. Otherwise, who's going to want it?
- Charles Koch -
STEP 2. CREATING SMART WEBSITES & DIGITAL ASSETS
Consider owning a responsive website or blogging site and expand to a complete marketing solution.
“Marketing is not a COST. It is an INVESTMENT".
Creating Digital Assets like a Personal Website is an important component of building a personal brand.
Having a strong presence on social media is great, but you do not own or control any of the social platforms you establish a presence on.
Your website is a platform that you own and control, and in many cases, visiting your website will one of the steps your target audience takes towards becoming your client.
First impressions are critical. When your target audience visit your personal website, they should be able to immediately understand who you are and how you can help them.
They should feel like they've come to the right place. If this doesn't happen with a few seconds, most new visitors will leave your website.
Your website should be optimized to your CLIENTS
Here are Key Elements of your Website Homepage:
- A PROFESSIONAL LOGO : get a designer to turn your name into a professional logo.
If you're looking for a graphic design service, I personally recommend : CHRISTINA of Pair Tree Studios >>
- YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION: who you help and how you help them, should be displayed on your homepage, ideally near the top.
- SOCIAL PROOF: medias, testimonials, portfolio
- A clear CALL-TO-ACTION: give your website visitor a clear next step example : joining your email list, applying for a free consultation or registering for a webinar)
Other important pages for a personal brand website:
- ABOUT PAGE : share your personal story. How did you get into your industry? What experience and credentials do you have? Who do you help? How do you help them? Why do you do what you do?
- PRODUCTS / SERVICES : make it easy for your website visitor to become client / customers. List any products, services you offer depending on you sales process.
- CONTENT and / or FREE RESOURCES: blog, posts, helpful videos, or list of resources you've created, guides or tips.
Have a "Content Strategy". Creating and distributing content is one of the most effective ways to build your personal brand and earn the trust of your target audience that you can help them.
To create a content strategy for your personal brand, start by creating a list of topics that would be helpful for your target audience. This is called "Doing Keyword Research". Learn Keyword Research. >> WATCH THIS VIDEO <<
STEP 3. BUILDING YOUR SOCIAL PRESENCE
Develop an effective social media presence.
Continue to do great work and achieve great things.
And in these days of social media, don’t ignore having presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other accounts.
Create a networking database. Keep an up-to-date computer listing or database of all your networking contacts and social media connections.
Building and marketing a personal brand is all about generating momentum – and then sustaining it over a long period of time.
Once you get the ball rolling, then keep it rolling.
