Branding isn’t something that applies only to companies and celebrities. Personal branding is your opportunity to express and communicate your personality, skills and values. Interested in learning more? Here are 8 ways to take your personal branding skills to the next level.
REFLECT – What are three words that describe your personal brand? This is a good starting point for anyone who has yet to begin establishing their brand. However, this question can also be a useful checkpoint for those who already have an established social media presence. Keep in mind that you could have a different brand for work, friends, side hustles, etc.
CREATE – Put together a vision board outlining where you want your life to be 10 years from now. A vision board helps you hone in on where you should be focusing and can be used as a filter to make decisions. Refer to your vision board for inspiration when crafting your message to ensure that your personal brand is consistent.
DECIDE – With more opportunities than ever to get your brand out there (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter), it’s important to decide where you should be building your online persona. It’s better to concentrate on where you think you’ll find your target audience as opposed to having a presence on as many platforms as possible and ultimately spreading yourself too thin.
REFINE – The voice, tone and language you use plays a huge part in shaping your brand. Take the time to refine these, all the while remembering to present your authentic voice.
COLLABORATE – Teaming up with others to offer special content can expose you to a whole new network of people by giving you access to your collaborator’s following. The best part is that this is also true for your collaborator making the collaboration mutually beneficial. Getting in front of as many people as possible in the online world is essential to getting the word out about yourself, your product or your brand.
UTILIZE – There are many free online tools that can help you build your online brand. Some examples are: Canva – a free graphic design tool that is very useful for those with no design experience and Pexels – which provides high quality and completely free stock photos that are tagged, searchable and easy to discover. Start using these tools to enhance your content.
NETWORK – Your online community contributes to the success of building your brand. Make a point of sharing, liking, commenting on other people’s work to grow your following. Spending time each day strategically looking for people who you want to be in your audience can go a long way, but remember, you can’t just shout at people, you have to engage with them in a meaningful way to ensure that they will join your community.
MAXIMIZE – You need to create enough content to keep your audience engaged, but where will you find the time to write all of these posts? Ideally, you should invest a substantial amount of time in curating creative content that is relevant to your personal brand. While it’s important to schedule this time on a weekly basis, if you find inspiration during odd hours you should go for it, because next week you might not find the same motivation. Once your posts are ready, you can schedule them to post automatically at a time when you find you get the most follower engagement.
The list goes on! Do you have any other personal branding tips? Share them in a comment below or share them with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!