Are you looking for ways to build your personal brand in 2023? Check out our complete guide on how to brand yourself on social media and grow your audience.
Are you thinking of growing your brand online? If so, this can be a smart and lucrative move.
According to statistics, 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals over those of brands. If you want to carve out a career as an influence or authority, improving your personal brand online can be a profitable path.
Besides this, personal branding is also great for enhancing job prospects and building a reputation within your industry.
However, before you get started it’s essential that you do a bit of research on how to brand yourself successfully. Sloppy personal branding can do more harm than good, which is why you need to read our guide on comprehensive personal brand building.
Read on to find out everything you need to know to build a personal brand you’ll be proud of.
Define Your Audience
One of the first steps for successful personal branding is defining your audience. Even though personal brand building centers around you as an individual, this doesn’t mean that you can’t fine-tune its presentation to appeal to your audience.
Start off by determining the audience you are trying to target. If you have your sights set on building a career as an influencer, then your target audience might be people with similar demographics and interests.
On the other hand, if you want to build a personal brand in order to advance in your existing career, maybe you want to target CEOs and executives within your industry.
Or perhaps you’re looking to market your services as a consultant? In that case, you’ll want to target people who are in need of your services.
Once you’ve defined your audience you can then tweak the voice of your personal brand so it appeals to this set of people. Although this might sound inauthentic, it’s actually perfectly natural.
For instance, if you’re targeting an audience of people who are your peers, you might want to adopt a causal language style and tone. On the other hand, if you’re targeting CEOs and executives, then your personal brand persona might need to be a little more formal.
Write a Personal Brand Statement
Once you’ve defined your target audience, the next step in personal brand building is crafting a brand statement. This brand statement should align with your goals, values, and offerings.
For instance, if you’re are aiming to start a personal brand as an influencer, your brand statement might be to inspire and empower others within a specific niche, such as self-improvement, fashion, fitness, interior design, etc.
Or maybe your personal branding is centered around making you stand out as an authority within something like B2B marketing? If so, your brand statement might center around giving B2B organizations the strategies they need to supercharge their marketing methods.
Build a Personal Branding Strategy
One of the most important parts of building a brand online is building a personal branding strategy.
A personal brand strategy is vital for a number of reasons. Firstly, it helps to promote your brand and get it in front of more people.
The right strategy is also important for establishing trust and building a positive reputation. The right branding strategy will allow you to both build and maintain a strong online reputation within your niche.
Formulating a personal branding strategy requires some forethought and planning. Begin by identifying which platforms and channels you need to use to reach your audience.
If you’re targeting people in corporate positions, you will probably want to leverage platforms like LinkedIn. On the other hand, if you are targeting a young audience, you will likely be better off focusing on platforms like TikTok.
Besides this, you should also look into what other avenues you can leverage to increase your reach.
For instance, you might want to invest in email marketing, or devote time to public speaking engagements or writing a book. Or maybe you want to gain valuable exposure through things like podcast interviews or guest posting.
Promote Your Personal Brand
Once you’ve devised your personal brand strategy the next step is to start promoting.
Your brand strategy will inform how you do this. However, here are some key methods for personal brand building and promotion:
- Blogging
- Guest posting
- Interviews
- Social media marketing
- Books and ebooks
- Creating video content
- Website creation and SEO
- Email marketing
In the beginning, trying to carry out all of these promotion methods can be overwhelming. Instead, focus on a few, and slowly grow your promotion channels over time.
Brand Yourself on Social Media with Valuable Content
One of the biggest components of marketing yourself online is creating valuable content. Whether this is compelling images and captions for Instagram, valuable blog post content, or captivating video—the key to successful online branding is content creation.
Everyone has different strengths, so analyze yours and isolate which types of content will serve you best. For instance, you might not have a way with written words, but perhaps you have a powerful personality that really shines on camera?
If so, you might want to consider making video your main content type. To cater to SEO, you can always repurpose video content into blog posts.
Or perhaps you’re a demon when given a 280 character limit? If yes, then Twitter might be your most powerful promotion method.
On the other hand, maybe you have a talent for photography and visual storytelling. In this case, photos might be your medium of choice, and Instagram your ideal distribution channel.
No matter what types of content you focus on, make sure that it is the best quality possible and valuable for your audience. Not only will this help to grow your following and your reach, but it will also establish trust and position you as an authority.
Engage With Your Audience on Social Media
When marketing your personal brand online, it’s essential that you engage with your audience. Whether that is through social media, blog post comments, or email, it’s imperative that you respond when your audience interacts with you.
This interaction shows your audience that you are a real person and one who cares about the people who follow you.
According to statistics, 77% of consumers are more likely to buy when the CEO of the business uses social media.
As a personal brand, you already have an advantage, because people are drawn towards people, not corporate entities. If you can engage with your audience, this will further cement the connection.
Now You Know How to Promote Yourself Online
Now that you know about personal promotion, all that’s left is to start.
But before you do, you should call us.
Online reputation management is a key component of successful personal branding.
What’s more, it’s best implemented right from the word go. Investing in reputation management from the beginning will help you win trust and establish your name as an undeniable niche authority.
Here at NetReputation, we specialize in helping individuals and brands build strong online reputations.
Contact us for a free reputation analysis today.
by Net Reputation