How to Build Your Personal Brand

Everyone, no matter who you are or the industry you work in, has a personal brand. It’s something that will pop into the minds of your customers and followers when they hear your company name.

Your personal brand is also something that comes up on Google whenever anyone searches for you and it’ll also be spread across your social media profiles. Therefore, your personal brand is exceptionally important for your business and its reputation. So what exactly is a personal brand and how can you build it up?

 

What is a personal brand?

A personal brand should be thought of as what people think and say about your company, as well as their general perception of your business overall. It should work to encapsulate your work. Use it to communicate what you do, how you do it and where your company is going. It’s something that, when done properly, will set you apart from your competitors on a level that other things cannot.

Your personal brand should:

• Represent your values
• Portray your emotions
• Be unique
• Be trustworthy
• Be authentic
• Build a reputation that can help you grow both professionally and personally
• Explain exactly what it is you stand for
• Detail who you are

 

Why is it important to build your personal brand?

Your personal brand helps to tell a story of who you are, personally, and how your company came to be and why. These types of anecdotes can establish your company and boost your career. But telling a story about how your company started is only one way in which you can build your personal brand.

Building your personal brand to a highly-professional and detailed level is highly-important as it:

• Highlights your business’ strengths
• Establishes your business’ reputation
• Builds trust between yourself and your customers or clients
• Communicates unique attributes that only your business can bring
• Signals to potential customers/clients that you’re up to the job
• Can help you break into new fields
• Has the potential to help you unveil new products or services that are different from the norm

 

How to build your personal brand

There are several ways in which you’ll be able to build your personal brand. As discussed, it’s an important factor when it comes to marketing your business and it helps agencies such as us here at Kumo Digital to optimise your website and online content.

This, together with a well-built personal brand will help to drive traffic to your website and social profiles and, in turn, it will improve leads and sales. Essentially, building your personal brand is highly-beneficial, so it’s in your best interests to build your personal brand by doing the following things:

 

Ask yourself: who am I & what do I want to achieve?

Your personal brand needs to be an honest reflection of who you are, what you do and what your business goals are. You should also think about the skills you have and what you can offer that your competitors cannot. You should think really deeply about your answers and try to be as authentic as possible.

You should start by asking yourself some of the following questions:

• What is it that drives me to run your business?
• Are there any areas of my business that I excel in?
• Is there an aspect of my work that drains you either physically or emotionally?
• Are there any parts of my job that I feel fuels me?
• What settings do I work best in?
• Which parts of the industry do I find most interesting?
• Where do I want to be when it’s time for me to retire or change career paths?
• What impact do I want to have on the world via my business?

It’s essential to keep in mind that your answers to the aforementioned questions might well change and that’s absolutely normal as both yourself and your business adapts. Your personal brand will evolve as you do and that signals growth and development for your business which is, of course, extremely positive.

It might also be that you can’t answer these questions alone, so you should ask co-workers, friends and even your family for help, especially if you’re looking to add a personal touch to your business brand. 

However, if you’re confident of your answers, you should still consult those people and run your answers by them for a different angle/input. This is because they’ll see you in a different way to how you see yourself.

Once you have solid answers and have run them past other people, you’ll be able to expertly craft a brand image that seamlessly aligns with your business and everything it stands for.

 

Clearly define your audience

It’s imperative that you know and understand your audience before trying to establish a personal brand. This way, you can direct your marketing directly towards those who will have an invested interest in your company and everything it is you do. Niche marketing is the best way to gear your personal brand towards those who are highly-likely to come across your business and the products and services you have on offer.

Some of the other benefits of niche marketing include, but are not limited to, the following:

• It will help your company to stand out from your competitors
• You’ll be able to quickly level-up in your specific niche
• It will help to improve customer relations which will, in turn, help to build a solid reputation

 

Make sure your website is fully-optimised & your social profiles are up to scratch

You need to make sure that your website is as optimised as it possibly can be. This helps to build online trust between yourself and your potential clients. If you don’t have a website, or if it’s old and in need of an update, then you should consult a digital marketing agency, such as us here at Kumo Digital, to help build you a site that you can be proud of.

Your website should also include a wealth of information and a number of different pages. As a basic number, you should look to have around 5-8 pages as an absolute minimum, regardless of the products or services you offer. To add a more personal touch to your website, you should include the following pages alongside your products and services pages:

• About us
• Meet the team
• Accreditations
• Certifications
• A page dedicated to your social profiles and networking
• A gallery of images or a case study page
• Testimonials
• Reviews

With regards to your social networking, this is an important aspect of owning and operating a successful business in this digital, modern age. Depending on your tone of voice and how professional you want your business to come across, you could have a dedicated profile on at least one of the following social networking websites:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Tiktok

If you’re an experienced law firm, for example, with a team who have many years of industry knowledge and expertise to draw upon, then TikTok or Instagram might not be the most appropriate social networks for your business to appear on. LinkedIn, Twitter and even Facebook might be better for you.

However, those who want to advertise their paintballing business might wish to create reels on Instagram, post photos to Facebook or short videos on Tiktok. It’s also important to consider your target audience.

According to Wallaroo, 60% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24, with only 25% of overall users coming in between the ages of 25 and 44. Armed with this information, it’s safe to assume that if you’re targeting an older demographic, then TikTok might not be the social media platform for your business to use. 

Facebook, on the other hand, have users that span, on average, from the age of 25 to 34, with those between the ages of 13 and 17 making up the smallest number of users, according to Statista. Therefore, if your demographic falls into a slightly older age group, but still considered to be young, then Facebook would be ideal to advertise your business on.

For Instagram, 59% of overall users fall between 18 and 29-years-old, with 33% coming in between 30 and 49, according to The London School of Economics and Political Science. In fact, 17% of teenagers said that Instagram is the most important social media platform to them, with 90% of users being under 35-years-old, according to the same organisation.

With this in mind, if you don’t want your business to be portrayed as a wholly professional company, Instagram would be a worthwhile platform to appear on, especially if you’re targeting people under the age of 35.

Twitter, on the other hand, is used mostly by those between the ages of 25 and 34-years old, as reported by Omnicore. So, much like Instagram, this would be a great social media platform to be on, especially if you’re wanting to add a touch more professionalism to your brand.

If you’re wanting to target an older demographic, then LinkedIn would be better for your business. This is because, according to Hootsuite, the majority of users in this case are between the ages of 46 and 55, with 29% of users being over the age of 56 and 27% coming in between 26 and 35-years-old. With only 16% of users being between the ages of 15 and 25, LinkedIn might not be the best place to target a more mature audience.

 

Develop a solid content strategy

A content strategy is useful for far more than just writing blog posts and making infographics. You’ll need a content strategy for a whole manner of different things, including website pages and marketing campaigns. You cannot run a successful marketing campaign without first developing a solid content strategy and that’s where your copywriters should come in. 

From macro to microcopy, they’re best suited to developing a strategy and executing written content to get the best possible results for your business. You could go in-house with your content writing or you could outsource this work so you have more time to focus on what it is you do best.

Here at Kumo Digital, we have a specialist team who can meticulously put a content strategy together for you and deliver it to an exceptionally high standard every single time. If you do not have an in-house marketing team, then try to refrain from writing content yourself. 

This is largely down to the fact that your website content, no matter where it’s placed, has to be specifically written to ensure you appear in the SERPs through the use of keywords and other elements. This is why it’s best left to the professionals.

 

Try to build a community

Having a few social media profiles will help with this, but you’ll also need to become more hands-on with what you do. Examples of what you could do include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Attending industry-relevant events
• Donating some money to appropriate causes
• Being a sponsor for some small-time football teams, for example
• Offering to donate some products or services for charity causes and events

You need to be prominent within your community in order to build that trust within the local area as well as further out. It’s also worthwhile writing an article, or having one written, that details the events of the day and/or what it is you did for a specific cause, organisation or charity. This shows that both yourself and your business are aware of current affairs and issues and are willing to lend a helping hand where possible.

This way, potential customers will think more highly of you in comparison to your competitors who may not be doing anything of the sort. It also helps to build a solid reputation and retain it as well.

 

 

Kumo Digital is a specialist digital marketing agency with over two decades of SEO, PPC and content experience to draw upon. With a solid team at the helm of everything we do, you can rest assured that we’ll be able to help build your personal brand by optimising your website and improving your content to the point where you can proudly advertise your brand, increasing leads and sales as a result. For more information about how we can help you today, get in touch with a member of our friendly, knowledgeable team – we’re always happy to hear from you.