In the digital age, trust has become a huge part of marketing. People don’t want information from faceless corporations. There’s no trust there, no human face they can look into.
That’s why personal branding has become more important than ever before. Figureheads like Neil Patel, Gary Vaynerchuk, and popular social media influencers have achieved extreme customer loyalty, fame, and wealth by perfecting their personal brands.
While it might be easy to view these titans of personal branding on a whole other level, you can duplicate their success. By employing a series of actionable strategies, you can perfect your personal branding and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
This article will go in-depth on personal branding, including what it is and why it’s so vital to your success. Then, we’ll close out by detailing several actionable personal branding strategies you can implement right away.
Are you ready to be the authority in your industry? If so, then read on.
What is Personal Branding?
A personal brand is the brand reputation and identity surrounding an individual personality rather than a business. For example, Apple has its own brand as a business. However, when Apple founder Steve Jobs was alive, he was famous for doing presentations on new products.
His personality, wardrobe, and natural charisma were a part of his personal brand. This brand existed outside of Apple, but it still worked hand in hand with the company he founded. In the case of Jobs, personal and business brands fed into one another, each helping the other grow.
Why is Personal Branding so Important?
In today’s competitive business landscape, personal branding is crucial in establishing oneself as a powerful and influential entrepreneur.
Gen Z is one of the most socially conscious generations in history. They prefer a personal connection with the brands they do business with.
Gen Z buyers prefer to do business with brands that align with them socially. That means you need a strong personal brand that showcases who you are and what you’re about.
It’s why influencer marketing has become so popular. The influencer marketing industry will hit over $21 billion this year. That’s a form of marketing that fully relies on the personal brand of influencers.
These social media personalities have built successful and popular personal brands. By doing so, they hold the trust of their audiences.
When these influencers say a product or service is good, their audiences listen.
Personal Branding Strategies for the Digital Age
In the following sections, we’ll break down several strategies you should use to create a winning personal brand. Following these strategies could translate to increased customer trust and loyalty.
1. Set up an LLC
Personal brands need to protect themselves legally. Before launching your brand, you must set yourself up as a business. That’s why knowing what an LLC is and how to start one can be a game-changer that will help you hit the ground running and avoid issues in the future.
Here’s why understanding the intricacies of LLCs should be a part of every aspiring entrepreneur’s personal branding strategy:
Credibility and Professionalism:
Being knowledgeable about LLCs shows your commitment to professionalism and sound business practices. It demonstrates your legal and financial understanding. That, in turn, enhances your credibility in the eyes of potential clients, partners, and investors.
The ability to confidently discuss and navigate the complexities of forming an LLC reflects your expertise and professionalism, ultimately elevating your personal brand.
Liability Protection:
LLCs offer limited liability protection. This protection shields your personal assets from business liabilities. By having knowledge about setting up an LLC, you can emphasize your commitment to protecting clients, partners, and stakeholders.
This understanding showcases your dedication to responsible entrepreneurship. It instills confidence in others and positions you as a trusted and reliable business professional.
Enhanced Business Flexibility:
LLCs provide entrepreneurs with greater flexibility regarding management, taxation, and ownership structure. By incorporating this knowledge into your branding, you can highlight how you adapt to changing business needs while optimizing operations.
This flexibility demonstrates your strategic thinking and entrepreneurial acumen, positioning you as a forward-thinking leader in your industry.
2. Identify a Target Audience
Before you start developing a personal brand, you first need to figure out who this brand is trying to reach. Who are your ideal customers, and what are their values and pain points?
When you know everything there is to know about your ideal audience, you can better target messaging. Not only does that targeting encompass your overall message. It also means you can solidly generate an audience to target with boosted posts on social media platforms.
Some information you should know about your target audience includes their:
- Age
- Gender
- Occupation
- Geographic location
- Income
- Interests
- Preferred media type
- Preferred contact method
- And much more
3. Take Stock of Your Existing Branding Foundation
If you’re not starting entirely from scratch, you likely have a lot of content sitting around on your website. It’s important in the early phase of putting together a personal brand that you do an audit of your existing online presence. It can help you determine what you still need to do and what to remove.
For example, let’s say you have blog posts on your site that appeal to your target audience as part of your personal brand. They could be very useful with a few updates. However, you should cut blog posts that contradict the direction you’re looking to go. This avoids sending mixed signals to your audience.
That goes for social media content as well. Go through your old posts, tweets, and statuses to see what fits in with your public face and what doesn’t. Nothing can derail your personal branding faster than an old tweet going viral that stands in contradiction to your current messaging.
Remember, the point of personal branding is to instill trust in your audience. Auditing your existing content and social media presence can help with that.
4. Prove Your Knowledge and Authority
When you want your personal brand to stand out in a crowded industry, you’ll need to prove that you’re worth listening to. That means demonstrating knowledge and authority.
People need to know that you’re a source of quality information. You can prove this by creating content related to your niche and directed at your target audience.
For example, a series of informative “How-To” home improvement guides could help solidify your authority if you’re selling power tools. Just make sure the content is genuine, actionable, and accessible to your target audience.
For example, if your audience frequents YouTube, then launching a video blog will help you reach them en masse.
5. Engage Your Audience on Social Media
Social media are where personal brands live and die in the modern marketing world.
Your social platforms are how you and your audience can communicate with one another. Engagement is going to be a huge part of your personal branding. That means sharing fan content, responding to comments left on your posts, and responding to direct messages on Instagram and other platforms from followers.
Take fitness personality Remmington James as a solid example of this. He’s a fitness coach and personal trainer who also sells a brand of protein bars called Anabar. He’s developed a personal brand through YouTube content focused on creating diet-friendly versions of popular fast food items.
When someone creates one of these recipes and shares photos or videos on Instagram, he shares it on his Instagram stories. This tactic encourages viewers to prepare these recipes and interact with Remington’s social media accounts.
By rewarding his audience with acknowledgment and sharing their successes, he creates a system that produces user-generated content that feeds his personal brand.
Pro tip: Using the right tools can help save you time and money. Whether you use a social media planning tool to schedule posts ahead of time or a full content marketing calendar, these tools will keep you on track to meet your goals.
6. Network
If you start to view every other personal brand or social media account as a competitor, you’ll never get anywhere in establishing your online presence.
Of course, there will be some direct competitors. But it’s important to understand who’s a competitor and who’s a networking opportunity.
Someone trying to move the same products to the same audience would be a competitor. But someone else in your niche serving a different need of your audience could be a potentially lucrative partnership.
Through networking, you can find opportunities for cross-promotion. These mutually beneficial partnerships can elevate both brands and create opportunities for new revenue. For example, appearing on someone’s podcast can be a great way to introduce your personal brand to a whole new section of the audience.
In the ever-evolving landscape of business, nurturing strategic agency partnerships can be a game-changer. Embrace the power of collaboration and explore new avenues of success in your industry!”
Then there are opportunities for influencer marketing campaigns. You can put your personal brand to work promoting an ally’s products or services. That allows you to leverage the trust established with your audience to earn extra revenue.
Of course, the opposite is also possible. You can have someone else use the power and authority created through their personal brand to push you and your services. This effective marketing channel can generate brand awareness and give you immediate clout with the audience.
7. Create Effective Content With Personality
For content to succeed in solidifying a personal brand, it stands to reason that there’s a unique personality behind it. Even though you’re selling products or services, when it comes to personal branding, you’re selling yourself.
That means establishing a brand voice. This voice can include elements of your content like:
- Your overall tone
- A logo
- Video introduction
- Music
- Wardrobe
- Font
- Color scheme
- And more
There are tools you can use to help inject more personality into your personal brand. First, you have image editing and logo creation platforms like LOGO.com, Adobe Photoshop, and Canva. Then there’s editing tools like video templates from Envato Elements, or video software like Power Director or Wondershare Filmora.
Even text-to-speech software, like Lovo, is now for more than just converting text into speech. These platforms have become instrumental in crafting a more human and personal connection with an audience. This rings especially true in the realm of personal branding.
In an increasingly digital world, that human touch is something people crave. With some of the best text-to-speech software available today, you can imbue your content with a level of personality and intimacy. By generating human-like speech, these tools allow your audience to hear your messages, which can evoke more personal and emotional connections.
Lovo stands out in this regard. This advanced software goes beyond simply converting text to speech. It allows you to adjust the pitch, speed, and volume of the speech, adding an extra layer of customization to your content.
As a result, you can mold the delivery to fit the tone and style of your brand. That guarantees it truly reflects your personality and resonates with the audience.
Furthermore, using text-to-speech software allows for diversification in content delivery. It provides an alternative means for your audience to consume content.
8. Remain Consistent
In personal branding, consistency is key. Consistent messaging can comfort your audience. Wildly deviating from your established personality and branding can be jarring and cause them to abandon you.
Consistency is vital for all brands. And that includes your branding from platform to platform.
For instance, suppose someone subscribes to your YouTube channel and clicks through to your social media pages. They should find consistent messaging and overall visual style.
That means the same logo, colors, and tone. Your written content should also be consistent with how you sound in video or audio formats.
You can’t have multiple personal brands. That means how you present yourself on YouTube needs to be the same as how you are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and your blog.
Bottom Line
A personal brand can be hugely impactful in making a splash in your industry. By following the actionable steps in this guide, you can create a personal brand that will leave an impression on your audience. It’s the first step in establishing authority in your niche.
With established personal branding, you can win the trust and loyalty of valuable customers. The audience you bring together can even become a community centered around you and your established brand. Once you have that kind of customer loyalty, the sky’s the limit.