When you decided to start or grow your business, you probably decided to create or have a logo made, right? This is just one piece of your personal branding. It’s a part of what makes you stand out against the crowd of other people in your industry. Having a logo or website is part of your essential marketing tools.  

Why does it matter so much to create an identifiable personal brand? 

Let’s say someone comes across your profile on Instagram or Facebook. You market yourself as a luxury nail salon that is booked 3 months out. They scroll through to see a brightly colored graphic of an upcoming deal you’ll be offering. Underneath that is a blurry photo of a reposted meme. Before that is a Happy Holidays post with a happy snowman. 

I’m not saying that if you’ve made a few of these posts here and there on your pages, you’re damaging your brand. But to others, it may not make sense if you’re a luxury nail service with no images of your clients, zero testimonials, and confusing captions that don’t draw in your clients. 

So how do you create a brand that is easy on the eyes, captures people’s attention, and turns followers into clients or leads?

I’ll break it down into steps. 

Choose Your Space and Stay In It

Oftentimes many professionals like to claim they’re “a jack of all trades”. They are willing to wear whatever hat the client needs them to wear. 

The problem with this tactic is that business owners end up stretched too thin and feeling like they can’t meet every client’s particular and unique needs. 

Being specific in exactly what you do for your clients, your process, and the results you deliver will end up attracting only the people you want to work with because you have exactly what they need. 

By saying you do anything and everything for anyone, you’ll have a lot fewer people who search specifically for you. They want to hire someone who is an expert in their field. Lose the hats and commit to mastering the one thing you know you’re kick-a** in.

Who, What, and Why

When it comes to describing who you are, what you do, and why you’re so passionate about it, you’ll find a lot more success in keeping it short and simple. It takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for people to form an opinion about your website (8ways, 2019).

Your statement should be something along the lines of 

“I do/am (your service/expertise) for (the type of client or customer) to (the tangible goal or result for your client).”

When presenting your personal brand on social media you can say something like “I am passionate about serving the local community by finding their perfect homes”

You want your brand statement to be a condensed version of everything you do so potential clients understand what you do and why it’ll help them achieve their goals. 

Gaining Traction With Influencers

When I say influencers, I don’t only mean people with thousands of followers. There are local influencers as well who are tapped into communities and groups that may propel your business. 

The first step to working with any type of influencer is doing your research. 

Some great tools are Google and Instagram. Depending on your niche, you can use either to do a general search for local people. For example, searching in your local hashtags and seeing who comes up at the top of the Recents page is a good way to see people who have been boosted by the algorithm. 

If you’re using Google to search, you can search for something like “Top Marketing Specialist in my area” and from there finding a means of contact is simple. 

Reach out to see how you might collaborate. This could mean writing a guest post, co-authoring an ebook, or simply sharing a piece of your content with the influencer’s audience.

And if all else fails, you can hire someone to find you those top connections. We love this incredible boutique business, Business Brand Ambassador, founded by the ever so talented Erica Peart-Rowe. She takes your brand goals into account and finds your perfect connections, relinquishing you of doing all the hard work of finding out who matches your ideals. You can find out more about how to get in touch with her at https://business.loudounchamber.org/list/member/business-brand-ambassador-llc-26316 

Create Consistent Content That You Love

One of the challenges when it comes to content marketing is knowing what works and what doesn’t.

To put it simply, the best content strategy is the one that works for you. If you attempt to replicate someone else’s formula, you may end up with a completely different outcome than them.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with this step so to keep it from stressing you out, think about the parts of it that you enjoy.

If you enjoy writing blogs, dive into that. If graphic design is more of your thing, let that be your strong suit. If you feel like there’s nothing you’re good at online, remember you’ll always be amazing at being you. Your passion for what you do can pioneer the direction you wish to head, but you have to let others see it. 

Above all else, keep. Showing. Up. You might not like going through and liking comments, but it’s still important that you do. Maybe responding to DM’s gives you anxiety. There’s an automated system for that (many, actually) like Bigbangram.

Focus On Your Audience

If the content creation aspect starts to feel overwhelming again at any point, remember what you show up on social for. Your audience. The people who are interested in what you have to offer. Consider their needs, wants, likes, and ideas. 

What are their worries? What sort of content would help them solve an issue they have? Where do they look for answers? What can you provide to make their lives a little easier?

When you step back from thinking about what you don’t like about your content and start thinking about what your clients do, you begin to see a clearer picture of how to better serve them. 

Recap

• Niche down. Speaking to too many people means you’re speaking to no one.

• Understand your brand statement. After your logo, this is the first thing people see from your brand. Make it memorable.

• Connect with people who will help you be seen, but remember you need to have something to offer as well.

• Personalize your content strategy. If you love interior design, incorporate that into your content. Let people see what ignites your spark. (This gives you a niche and relatability as well!)

• Remember who your target audience is. At the end of the day, you’re showing up online to serve those people. Take their needs into account, answer their questions, offer solutions to their issues.

Those are our top 5 personal branding tips. I hope that you take these ideas and incorporate them into your 2021 content!

Comment down below to tell us about your personal branding goals for 2021!

Cheers,

The A-Team