You might still be struggling with it but branding has given hundreds of entrepreneurs a chance to amplify their voice, grow their platforms and earn from their business but; you can’t achieve these things without understanding and using the top tier personal branding strategies for brand visibility.
I still recall when we first started some years ago, we had no pedigree, visibility or clout to get new customers to pull our business. It was tough!
There was no influencer to push us but the only thing we had at the time was the power to start from the scratch. Using the personal brand we’d managed to build from on social media, we started to push ourselves gradually.
It wasn’t easy at first but eventually, we got our first client. And then the second and it continued to grow from there. In this post, I’ll be sharing with you the insights we learned from our experience and how you can use this to shape your own personal brand.
Create your Purpose & Goals
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Personal branding is built on purpose. Without defining what you aim to achieve with your brand, it becomes very difficult to evolve the right personal branding strategies that work.
So the first step to create a personal brand is to define your purpose. Find out, why exactly are you here and what do you really want to achieve with this brand, while you’re here?
Answering this question is very crucial because it forces you to think about the most important reason your brand exists. When you’re able to do this, it becomes easier to leverage this purpose to frame the brand completely.
When we launched out back then, our purpose was to evolve innovative digital solutions for individuals, brands and businesses. We used this purpose to shape our brand while framing each of the specifics, starting with out goals.
Now, brand goals are set of measureable outcomes you plan to achieve with your brand. For example, you want your brand to become the top personal brands in tech in 5 years etc.
These are achievable outcomes with expected timelines. Using your purpose, create the specific goals that will get you to achieve the overall purpose of your brand’s existence.
It doesn’t matter that you have an already existing brand. You can use this strategy to frame it into your new or evolving brand purpose. And doing that means you must first of all, identify the purpose and then use it to shape your brand.
Know your Customer
The famous know your customer phrase, popularly called KYC in financial circles is as popular for successful branding, just as much as it is crucial for banking.
To build a personal brand that stands out, you need a solid knowledge of your target audience but unlike banking, for branding, you want to know the things that appeal to this audience and the ways you can position your brand so that it can easily resonate with them.
This is very important.
So right now, head over to research who you want to be targeting with your brand. And to do this, you have to think about your expertise and the services or products you plan to offer with your brand.
As soon as you’re sure about this, find out, who is the ideal person that will most likely be interested in this product or services either remotely or directly?
Where you’re not planning to offer services or products, you want to check out the core messaging or representation you plan to put out there and then figure out the kind of people that this brand representation will appeal to.
Identifying your target audience is one of the top tier personal branding strategies because when you’re able to get your audience aligned correctly, you can then tone up your message and brand representation in a way that gets it to appeal to this audience specifically.
Niche Down
Be the biggest fish in a small pond. This will sound anti forward looking but to create an impact faster, we had to get over to the small pond because the bigger pond was filled with bigger fishes.
As a small brand trying to create an impact in a highly competitive digital sphere, one of the key personal branding strategies you want to have in your bucket list is to dominate the small pond.
Niche down as much as you can. Yes I know you plan to build a digital marketing agency, but can you conquer content marketing first?
Can you create content and dominate content marketing for different brands before you now scale to the other aspects of digital marketing you plan to build into?
As an evolving brand in its early days, we could have started with the whole of digital marketing from day one but outside not having the resources, we also did not have the capacity to compete with the other top brands in that industry so we had to niche down.
We took it upon ourselves to pick one smaller niche, build expertise, create solutions and dominate so much so that we became quite known in that niche.
With this recognition we started to extend out tentacles to other areas. With an established reputation from the smaller niche, it became easier for clients to trust our competence as we scaled into the bigger niches.
You can always niche down to build your expertise and credibility from the ground up.
Leverage Social Media
Social media can get you right in front of your target audience at nearly zero cost. If you’re starting on a shoestring budget, this is one big platform you can start to build a personal brand, free.
To get started, understand that you don’t need all the social media platforms. Identify the top social media platforms with the largest number of your target audience, build your handles there and get started.
When you’ve created your handles, update the platform with your bio, profile images and other details, exactly in a way that aligns with your personal branding goals.
Using the social media as one of your personal branding strategies can get you a foothold in your market especially in your early days. It did that for us. And has also done the same for many others.
With social media you can create and share content organically or even promote your website and services directly, using paid advertising.
Get a Website
You can’t build a serious personal brand in this age and time without getting yourself a website. This is one of the top personal branding strategies that might sound cliché but it’s actually very crucial.
You need a website. To build a long lasting impact with your brand, you need a platform of your own, outside the social media.
I’ve come across a number of small personal brands that have focused on building a brand solely on the social media.
While this might be a good way to get started with your personal brand, it is not always the most sustainable approach in the long run because you want to build something permanent on a platform you can manage.
So instead of relying on your social media handles, take steps to get your own professional website to build a home for your brand on the net.
Start with getting a domain name. Procure a domain name that matches your preferred brand name either directly or indirectly online.
Afterwards, get a web hosting that is sufficient for your brand and head over to create your own website.
Hire experts to build a professional website for you if you can’t do it yourself. Create pages on the website to showcase your brand, your work, testimonials and content.
Create & Share Strategic Content
Content marketing is a great way to strategically position yourself right in front of your target audience.
It is the act of creating and sharing informative, educational and entertaining pieces of content with a specific audience to drive a pre-determined outcome. It is a key branding strategy for personal brands used by upcoming brands.
At some point during our early years, we relied only on strategic content marketing to drive new customers as we were not capable of using paid ads.
As a beginner that you already have accurate data on your target audience, so you can use content marketing to create and share targeted content that addresses the needs of this audience.
Done well this will create visibility for your brand either on the search engines or via the social media. And the more the right people get to see your brand either after reading your content or using direct search, the easier for them to get over to patronize you.
Outside direct sales, content marketing provides a lot of benefits for your personal brand. For example, it also positions you as an expert in front of your audience, builds your credibility while getting your footprints spread across the net.
This is one of the reasons why this marketing form is a top level strategy for personal branding used by most well known brands.
Embrace Storytelling for Marketing
Storytelling might not necessarily be your thing but in a noisy digital world where the loudest gets heard the most, you have to step up and get your stories heard, if you really want to be heard.
No, the fact you’re an introvert or you don’t really understand the concept of storytelling does not count because you have to be heard.
So you have to take measures to create, curate and share your own story. Share it across platforms like social media, your blog and third party platforms.
Outside building your reputation, these stories can set you up as a thought leader, demonstrate you as an expert that deserves attention while also attracting some key clients.
I like to mention to my students that storytelling was one of the major launch pads of our first few clients right off the social media.
So you don’t want to miss out on this as it’s one of the key strategies for personal branding that can attract leads and customers for your business.
Final Words
Amplifying your visibility as a personal brand can get you to build and grow your business in so many ways and these strategies you just read about here are the foundational steps that’s worked for many brands, including ours.
Using these will not only work for you, in the long run, it’ll help you to define and evolve your own peculiar strategies, unique to your vision, mission and goals.
In addition to these personal branding strategies for beginners, consider embracing tools like Artificial Intelligence tools to fast track and streamline your brand, from creation to brand promotion.
Engage in using innovative content forms like videos, audios and long form content to foster your brand presence; measure your brand outcomes at intervals. And finally, work with our experts to reposition your brand to thrive, reach out here.
Now it’s your turn. What are some of your biggest let downs when it comes to building a successful personal brand? Drop your comments below.
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