Crafting Your Personal Brand: A Comprehensive Guide to Building a Strong Online Presence with Content
In 2023, everyone has a personal brand. Including you.
But what is it? Well, it's how you promote yourself and the services you offer online. And in a world where your online reputation can be your strongest asset, a strong personal brand is more important than ever.
This can be done through the magic of content marketing. Or to put it simply, the way you create and share content online from blogs and videos to newsletters and podcasts.
Hungry for more? Keep reading for our comprehensive guide to building a strong online presence with content.
TL;DR
Have you ever wondered what it takes to craft your personal brand and build a strong online presence through the power of content marketing?
Well, you're in luck! Here's a quick rundown of how to do exactly that.
From sole traders and small business owners to entrepreneurs and corporate brands, building a personal brand with content can help you not only expand your reach but attract the right people at the right time.
This can increase your brand loyalty and cement you as a thought leader within your industry.
Personal branding goes hand-in-hand with content marketing. Without personal branding, your content will lack authority and individuality. Without content marketing, your personal branding efforts will fall flat.
In today's digital world where everyone is vying for attention, a strong online presence is the only way to stand out from the crowd. The best way to do this is with content.
But where do you start? The journey to a strong personal brand requires a few simple steps:
- Identifying your target audience
- Defining your brand
- Developing your content strategy
- Creating quality content
- Leveraging social media
- Building an email list
- Collaborating with others
- Monitoring your results
That's a lot of information, so let us break it down for you.
Your target audience is the people who would benefit from your unique skills and expertise and help you build a strong online presence. This can be your friends, family, colleagues, followers, or just strangers on the internet.
Defining your brand is easier than it sounds and simply requires a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) and a personal brand statement. These are short and snappy sentences that explain who you are and what you are trying to achieve.
Developing your content marketing strategy is simply determining the type of content you want to create and share to help your audience know what to expect from you.
Creating first-class content that is a cut above the rest will help you achieve your goals and grow your online presence as you build a personal brand.
Leveraging social media is making the most of the easy-to-use and completely free tools at your disposal. This can end up becoming your most valuable asset when building your personal brand.
Building an email list can help you get your audience's attention and inspire them to take action.
Collaborating with others can help you expand your reach and enjoy expert advice and guidance within your industry.
And finally, monitoring your results can let you know what is working and what isn't. This will allow you to adapt and optimize your strategy going forward.
Once you've mastered those steps (which we cover in greater detail below), you should be ready to start your personal branding journey.
Why Building a Personal Brand With Content is Important
Building a personal brand goes hand-in-hand with content marketing. While you can have a personal brand without optimizing your content marketing strategy, you are only as good as the content you share.
But in a world where content is king, it makes sense to have a content strategy in place. This can help you climb to the top of the ranks and stand out from the crowd whether you are an individual or a business.
For example, if you want to expand your social media presence, you must know what kind of content performs well on each social media network. Simply reposting the same content across your entire online presence looks lazy and won't help you reach your goals any quicker.
Before you start building your brand, you should know the difference between good and great content. Always strive to post content that resonates with your audience. After all, if your readers don't engage with your content, what's the point?
Brand recognition can be the difference between success and failure and great content can help to draw the reader in, make them stay, and keep them coming back for more.
The more you put into your content marketing, the more you and your audience will get out of it. This can help you gain the trust of your existing readers and attract potential customers. If you can't create valuable content, how can you expect to build a strong online presence?
This is especially important in an era where short-form content reigns supreme and you only have a few seconds to capture the audience's attention.
Whether you're great at writing short and snappy social media posts, are in the process of writing an e-book, or have mastered the art of email marketing, your content marketing strategy will help you expand your online presence.
Identify Your Target Audience: Who You Want to Reach and Influence
When it comes to crafting your personal brand, identifying your specific audience is crucial. Just as you would as a business, this can help you determine who will be consuming your content and what kind of content to create in the first place.
The first step in identifying your audience is deciding what you have to offer and why people might be interested in it. While it may make sense to go ahead and create content that appeals to everyone, this is impossible and, quite simply, a waste of time and money.
By knowing exactly what you can provide to a select group of people, you can get to work crafting content that will resonate with their needs and wants and inspire them to take action.
This can be done by asking yourself a series of questions, such as: Who am I trying to impress? What do I want to achieve? Who can help me achieve my goals?
One of the biggest mistakes people make when identifying their audience is targeting the wrong people. This can happen if you haven't thought about your personal brand and what you want it to achieve and is a common mistake among corporate brands.
For example, if you don't know who you are and what you represent, how are you supposed to know who will benefit from your content? This can lead to you portraying an unrealistic version of yourself which can make it difficult to establish trust with your audience.
Another common mistake is identifying your audience but failing to create content that suits their wants and needs. You took the time to identify your audience so why would you not create the kind of content that adds value to their lives?
Whether it's posting a blog post that is too jargon-heavy or a video that completely misses the mark, you could be wasting time and money and losing your loyal following at the same time. This is a slippery slope to a personal branding disaster.
Define Your Brand: Your Unique Value Proposition and Personal Brand Statement
Crafting your personal brand is simple enough but defining it? That's the tricky part.
Before you kickstart your personal branding strategy or even your content marketing strategy, you must get to the heart of what makes you "you". In other words, what makes you stand out from your competitors. This can be more difficult than it sounds.
Strong personal brands are successful because they had a good idea of who they were and what they were trying to achieve from the very beginning. This can understandably take some trial and error. But the sooner you define your personal brand, the sooner you can get to work building a strong online presence.
The first step to defining your personal brand is determining your Unique Value Proposition (UVP). This is a short sentence that essentially outlines your personal brand and what unique benefit you can provide.
What makes you different? Why should someone follow you over someone else? What do you have that others don't?
Most people struggle to talk enthusiastically about what makes them better than others so if it doesn't come to you straight away, don't worry. This process will be much easier once you have identified your audience and what their pain points are.
As well as your UVP, your personal brand statement should also help you define your personal brand. This is essentially a mission statement or elevator pitch that explains what you do differently as a brand and what you can bring to the table.
Writing a personal brand statement can take time but, as with anything that can help you grow your online presence, it's worth taking the time to do right. If you're struggling, start by listing your key skills and experience and fitting them into your brand statement wherever possible.
Another tip is to keep it short and simple. When it comes to personal brand statements, there's no room for repetition or unnecessary words that don't add to what you're saying.
Develop Your Content Strategy: The Types of Content You Will Create and Share
When crafting your personal brand, your content marketing strategy is one of the most important things you must consider. Put simply, it is what is going to help you achieve your goals as a personal brand.
Developing a content marketing strategy can help you know what content to create and share and let your audience know what to expect. This will create a sense of consistency across your personal brand which will keep your audience engaged.
Whether you want to boost brand awareness, improve SEO performance, or increase brand loyalty, the type of content you will create and share must reflect this. The first step in developing your content marketing strategy is knowing what you are working towards.
For example, if you want to become a thought leader within your industry, posting free content on relevant topics can help you attract engagement from industry experts. Or if you want to rank highly on search engines, your content strategy should focus on the top-performing keywords in online search engine results.
Some of the things you should think about before you develop your content marketing strategy are:
- Who will be reading your content
- How your content will solve the problems of your audience
- What makes your content stand out from the crowd
Once you have developed your content marketing strategy, you can get to work crafting a content calendar that outlines what kind of content ideas you want to publish, where you want to publish them, and when you want to publish them.
Create Quality Content: How To Develop and Share Content That Resonates With Your Audience
Once you have developed your content marketing strategy, you can get to work developing content that relates to your audience. Because you are writing about yourself, nobody can create better personal brand content than you.
However, while creating content might sound simple enough, it can be difficult to know what content formats will resonate with your audience - and what won't - before you post.
This is where your content marketing strategy comes in. As long as you have identified your audience and what content they are likely to engage with, you should have no problem creating content that makes an impact.
For example, writing a new blog post about something you are passionate about or something you are an expert in will come across as honest and authentic. This can create trust between you and your audience and increase brand loyalty.
Another way of building a strong online presence is guest posting or guest blogging. This is when you write blog posts for similar websites within your niche. This can attract high-quality traffic to your blog that can become part of your regular audience.
When it comes to growing your online presence as a personal brand, repurposing content across different social media networks can also be a great way to expand your reach and target different audiences. This can be as simple as taking quotes from long-form videos from your Facebook and turning them into social media graphics for your LinkedIn profile.
Leverage Social Media: How to Use Social Media Platforms to Build Your Personal Brand
In today's digital world, social media is the best - and easiest - way to build a personal brand. It can allow you to publish free content that reflects your brand voice and shows off your unique skills and talents.
However, it's not about how often you use social media but how you use it.
For example, you could be posting across your social media networks up to five times a day but if it isn't valuable content, you're wasting your time. If you're posting educational content at the same time every day, on the other hand, your audience is more likely to stop and read what you have to say and look forward to more content.
So, before you publish a blog post on social media, ask yourself if you would stop what you're doing to read it and, more importantly, if you would like, comment, or share it with a friend.
While it can take a while to build a strong online presence, engagement should be one of your main goals from the start. This is what exposes you to a bigger audience and helps you network with like-minded people that can help you grow your personal brand.
Another top tip for leveraging social media is to find groups about certain industries or topics related to your personal brand.
This can be done by searching for a keyword on Facebook or LinkedIn and joining groups that sound like they would be beneficial to you.
Some larger groups can be overcrowded with people trying to plug their own personal brand but smaller groups may be more helpful in helping you find people at a similar stage in their journey as you.
Sharing posts can also help you make the most of social media. While it may not necessarily be your personal brand content that you're sharing, as long as it's relevant to your audience, it can be a conversation starter.
And it may even encourage that person to share your content too!
Build an Email List: How to Use Email Marketing to Build Your Personal Brand
There is a common misconception that email marketing is not as important as other forms of marketing in today's social media-driven landscape. But that couldn't be further from the truth.
According to Statista, 4.1 billion adults around the world use email compared to only 2.96 billion active Facebook users at the end of 2022. That's a difference of 1.14 billion people.
Most people also tend to check their email more than they check their social media because it's where important or time-sensitive information tends to be sent.
Unlike social media, where algorithms filter content, recipients are also guaranteed to receive every single email sent to their address. This gives you greater organic reach which will increase the chances of a customer making a purchase based on the information contained in the email alone.
The only problem with email marketing is that people can be harder to reach through email than through social media. Unless someone has subscribed, you don't have their permission to send marketing emails. As a result, they are unlikely to be interested in what you have to say.
But there are ways to maximize the subscribers you do have, whether it's 50 or 500.
For example, segmentation can allow you to send personalized emails to each subscriber based on where they live or what key aspects of your brand they are interested in. This will ensure the content they receive is relevant and interesting.
When it comes to email marketing, your subject line can also have a huge impact. It is essentially what determines whether someone will read or ignore your email. The best subject lines are short, snappy, and invite the reader in.
Think back to the last time you opened an email from a person or a brand that you don't usually open emails from. What was it about the email that made you open it? Did the subject line catch your eye the second you saw it in your inbox? And, more importantly, did the content match the subject line?
Collaborate With Others: How to Build Relationships With Other Personal Brands
Aside from guest posts, there are other ways to build relationships with others while remaining true to yourself. Joining forces with thought leaders can strengthen your personal branding because it can expose you to fresh content ideas and prospective clients.
But how do you go about building relationships with other personal brands? Here are a few tips.
Firstly, you must build trust with whoever it is you are networking with.
Whether it's a friend, mentor, or boss, trust is the first building block of a successful, mutually beneficial partnership.
Secondly, you must always be yourself. Trying too hard to impress someone will come across as inauthentic and this can sever relationships before they have even begun. It can be tempting to oversell yourself or make false promises to fit into a certain group but this will only make things worse further down the line.
The whole point of collaborating with other personal brands is to help yours grow so being dishonest won't help anyone in the long run.
Finally, research is key when it comes to building relationships with other people. Reaching out to someone without knowing what you want to get out of the collaboration is a recipe for disaster - as well as a waste of your time.
Before you contact the appropriate people, be prepared to ask questions about their own content marketing goals and how they align with yours. If it seems like a good fit, it could be the start of a successful personal branding relationship.
Whether it's every day or every week, you must also get into the habit of networking with thought leaders on a regular basis. This is one of the quickest ways to build a strong online presence and you never know where your next collaboration could come from. Sometimes the best new ideas come when you least expect them to.
Monitor and Analyze Your Results: How to Measure Your Success and Optimize Your Strategy
There is no shortage of information online about how to measure the success of a content marketing campaign for small businesses but what about personal branding strategies?
The only way to measure the success of your personal branding strategy is to analyze your results. This can then allow you to make the appropriate changes and optimize your strategy as necessary.
One of the easiest ways to measure your results is to take a look at each of your social media profiles. How many profile views have you received? Are you creating engaging content that is getting likes, comments, and shares? Are your engagement levels higher than they were the last time you checked?
This might sound like a lot of work but it only takes a few minutes to pick up on something that isn't working and this can end up saving you a great deal of time and money in the long run.
Similarly, a good way to measure your results is to compare them against your personal branding goals. So, if your main goal was to expand your reach within your niche, your follower count can tell you how many people are looking to you for industry knowledge and expertise.
If your main goal was to grow your thought leadership, the number of comments on your blog posts can be a key indicator of your success. If the comments are directed at you, answering questions can also increase your status within your industry.
Another important but lesser-known indication of success is how you rank when people search for target keywords on popular search engines. If you can optimize your site's rankings, there is no reason why you can't compete with big brands in your industry and achieve a similar level of success.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Building a Personal Brand With Content
Building a personal brand might sound easy enough but it can be easy to make silly little mistakes that cost you time and money - especially if you're just starting out.
Here are just some of the most common mistakes people make when they build a personal brand with content and some final tips to help you avoid them:
Not knowing what you want
The main goal of personal branding is to identify your unique strengths and talents and how they can address the pain points of your audience. It's about more than just selling "you".
So, why do so many people make the same mistake of not knowing what they want to achieve? If you don't know what you want to be known for yet, wait until you do know. You might have to do a bit of soul-searching or it could just come to you when you're not looking for it.
Knowing why your personal brand exists can help you craft your content marketing strategy and determine who you want to market it to. If you don't even know who your audience should be, they won't either!
This will also help you when it comes to creating a content calendar and drafting a mission statement.
Trying to be someone else
In a world that values transparency, the best thing you can be is yourself. This is especially true when it comes to personal branding.
Trying to be someone else might sound like a good idea at the time but will only set you up for failure.
For example, think of your favorite influencer and why you like them so much. It's probably because of their unique personality or, simply, what they have that others don't. Everyone has a UVP, you just have to find out what yours is before you can market it to the world.
Once you know who you are and what you want to convey, stick with it. Switching your focus every other month can get tiresome and will make your audience second-guess the authenticity of every single piece of content you post.
Overthinking
We get it. Selling yourself can be daunting. But overthinking everything and chasing perfection will only lead to imposter syndrome which can have a detrimental impact on your success.
One of the best ways to stop overthinking is to think about what you really want to achieve. Whether it's becoming a good writer, the most trusted source within your industry, or the next Bill Gates, visualizing your goals can help you bite the bullet and get stuck into the content creation process.
Another great way to stop overthinking is to simply publish content. If you know what you want to achieve and have a clear goal in mind, nothing is stopping you from creating content and pressing "publish".
You'll soon get a good idea of what works and what doesn't and will learn from your mistakes through trial and error.
Examples of Personal Brands Built With Content
Some people just know how to build a strong online presence that blows everyone else out of the water. But how are you supposed to differentiate between good and bad personal branding?
The answer to this question lies in who springs to mind when you think of a particular industry. For example, when it comes to business and entrepreneurship, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, or Jeff Bezos is probably the first person you think of.
Here are some examples of famous faces that built their empire through content marketing:
Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk, or GaryVee, is a self-made media personality that made his millions through various forms of content marketing such as investing, writing, podcasting, and vlogging, just to name a few.
He also founded an advertising agency, restaurant reservation platform, and communications company, all of which owe their success to content marketing.
Considered an industry leader in the field of digital marketing, Vaynerchuk is an excellent example of a personal brand built on content.
Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi
As a long-time writer, Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi has dedicated her time to becoming an educator and, in doing so, has become a thought leader in her field.
She went from posting written content online to running a newsletter where she shares snippets of what helped her climb the ranks of entrepreneurial success.
Now a 22x Top Writer on Medium, she is a great example of a personal brand built on content.
Neil Patel
When you think of digital marketing, you probably think of Neil Patel.
Having got his start by simply emailing an entrepreneur he looked up to, he has now amassed an empire built on marketing, blogging, and investing.
With over 2.4 million blog readers and 1.6 million social media followers to date, he certainly knows a thing or two about the power of content marketing.
FAQs
How important is a personal brand?
In a world where everyone is trying to make an impression online, a personal brand is essential. Having a powerful brand can give you a competitive advantage against your competition.
Can I grow my personal brand without content?
Content marketing is one of the most important features of personal branding. Without it, you will find it extremely difficult to grow and maintain a strong online presence.
What are the best social media networks for personal brand content?
Each social media network has its own culture and strengths. However, the best social media networks for personal branding are generally considered to be Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-users-worldwide/
