How to Become a Personal Brand
Spread the loveMany business owners are busy pondering how to generate buzz for their business endeavors. The answer to that is to become a personal brand. Here are 9 ways to turn yourself into a successful personal brand: There’s a lot of chatter about the pathways to becoming a personal brand. Personal brands aren’t […]
Many business owners are busy pondering how to generate buzz for their business endeavors. The answer to that is to become a personal brand.
Here are 9 ways to turn yourself into a successful personal brand:
There’s a lot of chatter about the pathways to becoming a personal brand.
Personal brands aren’t solely reserved for businesses or those decorated with logos and websites. Being a personal brand means authenticity, possessing firm opinions on specific subjects, and gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.
At the heart of personal brands lie personal connections and engagement with the audience, fostering a sense of familiarity and affinity. Whether it’s bloggers, vloggers, or simply intriguing individuals we’ve chosen to follow…
To some degree, we all embody aspects of a personal brand. We just don’t always recognize its significance.
In the workplace, do colleagues frequently seek your approval or advice? Maybe they rely on your insights? Congratulations, you’ve now identified your target audience.
Moreover, we’re constantly engaged in marketing endeavors. Whether it’s recommending eateries, movies, or playlists… Just five weeks back, I enrolled in a stock market investment course simply because a friend of mine had signed up and couldn’t stop raving about it.
And let’s not forget about reputation… If I were to inquire about what your friends say about you, I’m sure you wouldn’t have to ponder for too long before responding.
Congratulations, you’re a personal brand.
After I’ve clarified that we all have a personal brand, it’s clear that not everyone wants the exposure, the investment, the engagement… This means that our positioning is a real choice, and this choice has several steps to strengthen our personal brand and truly become such.
I’ve summarized 9 tips that will help you – take what’s relevant and let go of the rest…
What is the message you have to give to the world?
Personal branding is essentially synonymous with establishing authority in a specific field, where our audience or colleagues recognize our excellence in a distinct manner.
All the successful brands we’re familiar with are those that clearly offer something unique, diverging from the norm.
However, in today’s world, there’s an abundance of everything.
If you’re providing services and guidance, there’s significant refinement work ahead.
While large corporations can set themselves apart based on pricing, functional differentiation, or niche specialization, for small business owners, achieving such distinctions can be more challenging.
This doesn’t imply that you can’t succeed in creating a distinction; it simply means that it will rely more on your personal narrative, the values you uphold, and your ability to resonate with the right audience.
Becoming a personal brand commences with intentional reflection and asking yourself, “What am I truly great at?”
“What do people frequently seek my guidance on? What sets my business apart in terms of innovation?”
It may sound straightforward, but it could require a considerable investment of time.
Be patient; in the end, the payoff will be worth it
Take Yourself on a Private Date
How well do you know yourself? No, really, do you know yourself?
Personal brands grasp the boundaries of their industry. They allow room for their skills, experiences, and knowledge.
They don’t proceed until they’ve internalized all of these elements and ensured they comprehend who they are and what they bring to the table.
Sounds simple? – Not quite.
I urge you to attempt to write down all your skills, experiences, and knowledge on a piece of paper.
It can feel overwhelming.
A robust personal brand examines this list and begins “fishing” from it the experiences, skills, and knowledge that are pertinent to the field that intrigues them.
A profound familiarity with yourself, and understanding what intimidates or motivates you, will aid you in continuously exploring and refining the areas that captivate you.
I take myself on a weekly date.
Every Monday from 12:00 to 15:00, I dedicate time to business contemplation and strategy.
It’s a period when I address tasks I haven’t managed to complete, contemplate client discussions, and write content, but primarily engage in reflection.
I try to discover, on a weekly basis, whether I’m on the right path.
This time is irreplaceable.
The more I comprehend myself and recognize my value, the better equipped I am to connect with others, deliver precise value to the audience following me, and ultimately fortify my personal brand.
Flash with Your Goods
And not in a critical way.
Have you managed to understand what value and message you have to offer to the world? Show everyone who’s interested in what you have to offer.
Your emerging audience is waiting eagerly to see what you have to offer and what they can learn from you.
But no one knows what value you have to offer if you keep it to yourself, keep your ideas in your head, or stash away projects.
The fear of failure is real, but believe me, no one cares what you do or checks if you’ve succeeded or not.
The fear of digging into people’s feeds, worrying they might find us uninteresting, or might get tired of hearing from us, is actually our own self-confidence fearing the spotlight.
I quickly realized that if someone isn’t interested in what I have to say, they’ll unfriend me on Facebook and won’t follow me on Instagram.
The fact is, as time goes on, more people read my blog.
More people sign up for projects I offer. More people engage with my digital assets.
When I first started my own business, a friend said to me, “You know, I hid you. I keep seeing your content all the time.”
Was I offended? Of course. But only because I didn’t understand that Facebook had long become a tool for work. And that friend simply wasn’t my target audience. It’s okay that they didn’t follow.
If you have real value to offer, something interesting to share, a story to tell – write about it everywhere. If it’s not good for someone, so be it.
For Knowledge, There’s Google
Clearly, if someone wants to engage you as a service provider, mentor, or anything else, the knowledge you possess is important.
But when someone seeks information, it’s step by step, keystroke by keystroke.
The reason someone decides to follow your brand is your personal experience. Or in one word – Storytelling.
Every personal brand needs to think about what they want people to know about them, about their personal identity.
Share with your audience your personal experiences, things you’ve done, challenges you’ve faced, dilemmas you’ve had to deal with.
Over time, your stories and experiences will attract the right audience because they’ll understand what values drive you. They’ll see how you handle challenges, and what interesting insights you can provide for any given event, and overall, through your experiences, they’ll deduce who you are and be able to connect with you.
Ashley Graham is a well-known plus-size model in the United States and she’s going to be a fantastic example of how experience is more interesting than mere information.
To know which brands sell jeans, shirts, and accessories for full-figured women, there are plenty of articles, advertisements, and of course, Google.
On her Instagram, Ashley Graham promotes fashion brands for plus sizes. So far, nothing special.
She’s a real figure that connects with women of plus sizes because she refuses to work with brands that airbrush her. She’s both aspirational in how she celebrates her body but also authentic, discussing the challenges of her size in the industry.
Just last year, she documented her pregnancy, the birth of her son, and her adaptation to motherhood, talking about the changes her body underwent.
Ashley Graham has become a guru that millions of women around the world buy clothes from that she promotes.
So why exactly does this happen when we know brands are paying her to advertise their clothes?
Because we believe her. We identify with her and we have a feeling that if she promotes something, it’s because she believes in that brand.
Following her and hearing what she has to say is more interesting than any other article.
Her knowledge is interesting. But it’s her experience and her perspective that fascinate us.
To become a brand, we must provide our point of view, and share our experiences and insights time after time to make an impact for our audience.
Authenticity, Dialogue, and Connection to the Audience
Creating a “fake” image that doesn’t resonate with who you are or opinions that are only said because the audience wants to hear them might work for a while, but it will fail in the long run.
Just recently, I heard about a food blogger who miraculously reached 18k followers. Hundreds of followers are added to her every day.
But the rumor has it that these are “bought” followers, and the evidence from the skeptics is that the number of likes and comments hasn’t increased in months.
No one really knows if she bought the followers or not, but the mere fact that there is such a “rumor” or a feeling that it might be true proves that the connection to the audience isn’t done authentically and precisely and that the personal brand isn’t perceived as genuine in the eyes of the audience.
In my opinion, one of the standout advantages of being a personal brand is that finally, we can be who we are – the right audience will connect already.
We can talk about what we want, say what we want, and be ourselves without feeling judgmental or with a desire to seek favor in anyone’s eyes.
Being a personal brand doesn’t mean you’re in an uninterrupted monologue.
I think the fantasy is that we’ll be the flawless personal brand and people will just follow us.
In reality, it’s not quite like that.
The right audience will help us refine ourselves. They will ask us questions, challenge us with statements, and tell us what they think, want, and need.
The wisdom is to know how to listen and make adjustments that suit us and our “I believe.”
I’ll give an example.
A few months ago, when I embarked on digital wanderings, I focused on personal escorts for self-reliance.
Suddenly people started asking me about creating business storytelling in different situations: talking with a customer, networking, and even on social networks.
Posts I wrote received comments wondering about storytelling. Clients who valued my personal support asked if there was a group course they could take.
And suddenly I connected all the dots, and I realized that I needed to create a course that would be accessible to business owners.
That’s how the storytelling underground was born, that’s how my digital course was born, and that’s how this article was born.
I simply listened to my audience and gave them what they wanted from me, aligning with what my brand wanted to give and convey.
Collaboration and Increasing Exposure
Whenever I start assisting new business owners, the first thing they hurriedly say to me is, “My business needs a website!”
There’s a feeling that a website will solve all the world’s problems. But we forget that for people to find us through Google, we need to work on SEO, write content, and ensure that the website is dynamic and updated.
So the next step they talk to me about is, of course, social media. It’s a crucial part of brand building.
At this point, I’d be happy to put aside the technological aspects and talk specifically about collaborations as a driving force for brand growth.
So what do you really need to do to increase exposure in the digital world and strengthen the brand while leading opinion leaders kick outside other authorities?
There are a million things, and everything is about creating deep connections with others.
Guesting on other people’s podcasts, hosting webinars with other service providers, doing joint projects with others, writing articles for another authority’s blog, being active in Facebook groups…
And these are just some of the things you can do.
But of course, you don’t want to just be on any platform and collaborate.. It can take up a lot of time and cost you dearly.
So I think before choosing which collaborations are important to you, it’s important to answer a few key questions:
Who is your primary audience and where are they located?
If your audience is content creators, then connect with a project or something related to the content community, not to comedians.
On the other hand, if your audience is organizations, try to understand which function within the organization is important (such as HR managers), and understand where they are in the virtual space.
What comes relatively easily to you?
If you only get hives from thinking about writing deep and long content (like this article), then you probably won’t be a successful blogger.
Doing something just to mark a check, not only won’t give you the desired results – it will dilute you!
To be a successful personal brand, you need to work hard, but no one talks about hating what you do.
If you’re still not sure what you like more or less, schedule a date with yourself (section 2 above).
Be a Brand Worth Following
If you don’t have something smart or interesting to say, don’t say it at all.
It seems to contradict the recommendation above to give as much value as possible without filters.
There’s a difference between a starting brand that’s a bit shooting in the air and trying to get refinement and hints from the target audience to solidify, and a personal brand that already exists and needs to continue to provide value to followers in order to maintain and strengthen its momentum.
To be a strong personal brand that maintains its authority over time, you need to innovate. Be interesting, express a slightly different opinion, or at least a different interpretation.
Successful personal brands have an interesting brand personality.
One that captivates others and gives them a sense of closeness and deep acquaintance. Personal brands have a language, style, tone, and visual – anything that creates certainty for the followers.
I really recommend thinking often about whether the value you give to your followers is enough.
What’s the reason they’ll continue to follow you? Is the content and value you provide something only you can give, or if “Shula Cohen” signed this content, it wouldn’t make a difference?
One of my criteria for creating content is to put my fingerprint and personal style, so if someone else were writing this content, it would look and sound completely different.
Admit it, it’s worth following 🙂 and you can also follow me on Instagram.
I Have a Degree from the University of Life
A great personal brand is also, also, and also.
Good personal brands are always in question, looking for ways to develop, learn, and be in constant motion.
I believe that our real innovation lies in the intersection of different content worlds.
That’s really what sets us apart from other service providers in the same field.
The more we learn and understand different areas, the more we can borrow models and ideas from one area to another. We can sharpen our thinking to create different products that combine several skills and content worlds.
For example, my main world is storytelling, with everything involved in it (marketing, branding, writing…) and because I was a senior manager, management skills are present in who I am.
The combination of these two worlds creates new products and perspectives. For example, a storytelling workshop for managing employees, storytelling for personal branding for managers, and so on…
These worlds are not fixed.
The more you continue to learn, you can add more content worlds and thus increase your innovation and unique perspective.
Keep Going
Being a personal brand means creating content all the time.
Don’t despair when there’s not as much exposure as you expected. Keep giving value even if there’s no immediate feedback.
Two years ago, when I was walking on campus, someone stopped me out of nowhere and asked, “Are you Keren Reittler?” I hadn’t seen this woman in my life.
It turns out she was someone who followed my business page and read the content I posted, and she recognized me from the pictures.
She never liked or commented on anything, but the value reached her.
The more you persist, the more people will help you strengthen your personal brand.
In summary,
You are already a personal brand.
To become a brand with a clear statement, a verified audience, and goals you want to achieve, it’s important to build a strategic plan.
The deeper you delve into your self-awareness and understand more about who you are, the easier it will be to understand what value you have to offer and how to translate it into career and leisure fields.
And of course, for any question, feel free to reach out to me 🙂
