Guest Blog – How to Create Your Personal Brand: Tips and Step-by-Step Instruction

Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Victoria Beckham – do you know all these names? No wonder! These people have not only become successful, they became brands. Yes, this concept is no longer associated with goods or companies. Today, a personal brand is an opportunity to stand out among representatives of one niche, become recognizable and get a loyal audience. 

This is a competitive advantage and an excellent tool for promotion in the service sector, used by photographers, psychologists, HR managers, Internet marketers, copywriters. The list can be continued indefinitely, because everyone can create a personal brand for his / her specific goals. How to create it, what to start with and how to promote it? We offer you to read this step-by-step guide, where you will find answers to all of these questions.

Decide what you are good at

To understand how to create a personal brand, let’s start with identifying a niche or, in other words, the area where your personal qualities will show up on the best side, develop and start making money. SWOT analysis is a method of strategic planning that identifies factors of the internal and external environment of a person, company, or organization. It will help to find out what you are good at.

Thus, this analysis will help identify the best qualities, abilities, skills, existing of an expert opinion in a particular issue, “twists” that distinguish you from dozens of people. Also, with its help, you will be able to identify your weaknesses, which can become an obstacle to your goal. Further, following the SWOT, you will find out what opportunities you have to achieve what you want and what obstacles may arise in the process. Having assessed the whole situation, proceed to the development of the concept of a personal brand. Without it, it will be difficult to move forward and get a loyal audience.

SWOT analysis is a deeper and more elaborate method of determining who you are and what you want. However, if it is difficult to analyze yourself in details, sit down, focus and answer the following questions:

1. Who are you, what skills do you have, what knowledge or skills do you want to share with others?
2. What associations and thoughts should people have when they hear your name?
3. What is your target audience? What should people know about you and why?
4. What methods can you use to convey information about yourself to the audience?

It doesn’t matter which formula for determining the goal of creating a personal brand you use, the main thing is to get a clear and understandable idea of who you want to be: cheeky, funny, gentle, strict, friendly or official person. Based on this, build a strategy: from creating a profile to filling it out and attracting potential customers, consumers, sponsors using content.

So, you have identified your strengths, understood how you should appear in front of the public, the only thing left is to critically look at yourself and answer the question “Do I correspond to the image being created?”. It is possible that you need to make changes to your appearance and lifestyle.

Who needs a personal brand? Almost all specialists and experts: from a stylist, hairdresser, lashmaker to a builder, interior designer or clothing designer; from copywriters to TOP managers, SMM specialists, SEO specialists, and web developers; from a writer, musician, an artist to a teacher of various disciplines; from a pastry chef to a handmade master. Everyone who sells services or goods needs a personal brand.

Find your target audience

We have already mentioned the concept of “target audience” in the first paragraph. These are people who will be interested in you.

You can determine who is included in your target audience by drawing up its portrait. Describe the age, gender, needs of people who could use your services or buy the goods offered. This is a small part of the parameters required for analysis. In total, all usability can be divided into those who:

• will pay you;
• has an impact on those who will pay you;
• act as a supporter of ideas.

An important factor in identifying people who are willing to pay is determining their needs. Based on them, you will create a USP (a unique selling proposition) and make potential consumers interested.

Should you start developing a brand with the creation of a website?

While figuring out the answer to the question: “how to make a personal brand”, many people tend to immediately start with creating their own website. This is a fundamentally wrong strategy, requiring significant financial investment, time and nerves. To begin with, it will be enough to determine the optimal social network for yourself or start a blog, learn how to communicate with the audience, feel it, and identify successful “twists” and only then proceeds to the next step – the website. In this case, the chances of success and popularity are much higher.

Think about the visual part of your brand: colors, fonts, and logo

Thinking about how to create a personal brand history should be one of your first steps. This part also refers to promotion, because you need to tell the audience who you are, what you are doing and why they need to listen, see, post. Successful storytelling is a twist of all popular brand people. Do you something similar.

Due to the fact that the modern world is absorbed in social networks, the development of a personal brand directly depends on the visual perception of your page. To attract people, it is necessary to:

• think over the color scheme, for example, all posts should be in the same colors;
• post only high-quality photos;
• make a unique video, photo and text content;
• have a “twist”, which will become your visiting card.

Here are more details about the latter. You can do something like this through, for example, naming. McDonalds is a vivid example: it adds the prefix “Mc” to almost all of its dishes.

Particular attention should be paid to the logo, which is a distinctive sign that will only associate with you. It is applied on business cards, envelopes, used on social networks, in the emailing, etc. Special online services can help create the logo of your personal brand. Logaster  is one of them. After going through a simple registration process, you will get the opportunity to generate not one, two, or even five logos, but a huge amount. In addition, you can influence the color scheme and logo shape by setting the parameters.

Monetize your work

There are a few ways to earn money due to the development of a personal brand:

• sell goods;
• offer paid services: webinars, studying courses;
• recommend other people’s goods and services.

You can use one variant of monetization or combine several, for example, sell training courses and recommend courses related to your subject, receiving a fee for mentioning them.

As a conclusion, we offer you a small checklist for creating a personal brand:

1. Determine who you are, what you want and what you can offer (a niche where your knowledge and skills are revealed as much as possible).
2. Make a portrait of the target audience, identify their needs.
3. Create a unique page design on the social network where you think your personal brand will be better promoted.
4. Create a promotion strategy, having thought over the content, design, topic of posts.
5. Respond to all user comments, analyze, look for how to surprise your TA, respond to their needs.
6. Monetize your work
7. Start earning on your personal brand.

Creating a personal brand is a complicated and long process. However, if you are determined, persistent and active, the result will come soon: you will become recognizable and get the desired income. Remember, you need to constantly develop your personal brand, skills, and always learn new things. Be successful!