Personal Branding 101
How do you brand yourself? Well, here we have gathered the 5 most successful tips in this infographic by The Logo Company
First of all, personal branding is basically, the practice of creating a unique identity that shows one’s core values, skills, and personality traits to differentiate oneself in a competitive market. Wow, but how is it done? Well, it involves having a consistent brand presence online and offline to build a positive reputation and enhance credibility, visibility, and influence in your personal and professional life.
If you look closely at the infographic you will see that the top 5 successful tips to brand yourself are the following:
- 1. Define Your Unique Identity
- 2. Craft A Memorable Brand Story
- 3. Showcase Your Expertise
- 4. Build An Online Presence
- 5. Focus On Consistency For Brand Longevity
1. Define Your Unique Identity To Brand Yourself
Sounds easy but its rather complex. You’ll need to be authentic above all as people need to trust you. Secondly you need to share the same values as your customers. You also need to connect on an emotional level so that people feel that you are with them every step of the way. Look for a perfect name. All of this also requires that you make a lot of research into your target demographic so that you can calculate and understand what will be important to the consumers that you are branding yourself to.
2. Craft A Memorable Brand Story
Above all, to be able to create a memorable brand story you need to make it simple. It has to be just simple and memorable. Therefore it is extremely important to remember that people remember a good simple story rather than list of facts. Nobody remembers facts anyway. Just think back at your school years and think of how much you managed to remember (or rather forget)
Your story need to be simple and clear to follow on your website, and of course on any other marketing, advertising materials. Make sure that all your branding is cohesive and follows your values and motto. Colors are going to be very important so study the color emotion guide before you start printing all your material out. Making sure everything is in the correct logo dimension
A bit surprisingly to some, but don’t focus on your products. Focus on how you brand yourself and the selling will follow. Don’t look too closely on the details but follow your instincts and how you want your brand to be. The success will take time as branding yourself is not an easy task, BUT it will happen if you just don’t spam people with reduced priced product with no story behind it.
3. Showcase Your Expertise
Well, it’s obviously extremely important to know what you are doing. To be a professional in your area is crucial otherwise it does not matter if your story is perfect and your branding colors are aligned. You really need to brand yourself as an expert in your field. Be your own brand ambassador and live it.
Furthermore you have to be a bit smarter than your average customer as people need inspiration and someone to look up to. Going back to your school years again, remember the inspirational teacher? He/she was perhaps not always the best at teaching you stuff but had the power to inspire you. After all, stories and inspiration comes from having a deeper understanding of your area of expertise.
Videos tutorials or in dept blog and guides can prove to your potential customers that you know what you are talking about. Use the social media to spread your good word. Perhaps use humor to attract people in, depending on your products of course.
4. Brand Yourself By Building An Online Presence
Most of all, you need a website that shows your core values and tells people exactly what and who you are. Try not to make it too complicated. Take a look at The Logo Company home page. Its simple yet gives customers a clear message of what we do. Team up with a professional website designer, you won’t regret it just don’t over complicate it. After all, if people want to buy from you, its because the have emotionally connected with you.
First impressions are so important when your brand yourself and its easy to forget the main message. The first 10 seconds are crucial and you dont get a second chance unfortunately.
Here again, social media can help you get your website known out there. Perhaps you can go through how it was for you to create a website. Small genuine stories will help you brand yourself and people will then relate to how confusing it might have been the first few weeks to have web designers understand what you needed your website to do. Perhaps use the help of a social media influencer. Their expertise on how to connect to people can be very useful for you.
Of course, plenty of followers on social media are good to have but it takes time. Nothing happens overnight. Don’t buy followers as its pointless and people are good at finding everything suspect nowadays. A bit like the schoolteacher that, even if you had a perfect test result, knew something was wrong. So don’t cheat!
5. Focus On Consistency For Brand Longevity
Stay the same. Be you and be genuine. Above all, stay true to your values and be consistent with your messages. To present yourself in the same way every time is crucial to improve brand visibility. If you stay consistent when branding yourself you can improve visibility with as much as 3.5x.
By the way, did you know that 90% of your consumers expect to see the same consistent branding of yourself on all your marketing channels? Make sure your stories are updated and portrayed they way you want them to.
The color palette that you use is so important so settle for a maximum of 3 colors and go for it. Use the same colors everywhere. On your website, your social media channels, your t-shirt or your coffee mug in the morning.
Brand Yourself – Be A superstar
Last few words, be consistent, true to yourself, genuine and an expert in your area when you brand yourself and you can’t go wrong. Dream big, be a superstar and take care of yourself as no one else will do it better.
Feel free to share the infographic but don’t forget to add our name to it.