Guest Post; Fundamentals of Personal Branding

This is the first for the Coherent Creative blog, a guest post… It’s from one of my LinkedIn friends, “Your Friendly Neighbourhood Social Media Specialist” Chloe Fox. Chloe runs Level Up Social Media Management – who will work with your business to devise a unique, tailored marketing strategy backed by expert knowledge, proven to get results.

Check out their website here: www.level-upmarketing.co.uk

The post originally appeared here.

Becoming the Next Richard Branston;
The Fundamentals of Personal Branding

So you’ve heard of the chicken or the egg conundrum… But what about the Brand or the Man?

What came first; Microsoft or Bill Gates? Amazon or Jeff Bezos? Virgin or Richard Branston? Do you like Virgin because of it’s great holiday deals – or is it because of its company culture; born from its founder’s values that are still made clear in every post, interview and video featuring or written by Sir Richard.

Regardless, it’s clear which of the above is more valued by consumers, with each company having significantly less engaged followings and followers than their respective creators.

Why is that?

Well it’s because people buy from people.

It’s because we’d much rather trust a friendly face, can believe the values and personality of a person over a brand, and would rather be told what to buy by someone who has a reputation as an expert in their field than a logo with a self-proclaimed tagline.

So how do you get started building your brand ? Don’t worry, there’s no secrets here! Keep reading and we’ll let you know….

Before You Start…

Reality check coming in hot!: Building a personal brand takes time and commitment. It’s not just posting everyday, but becoming a voice of influence among a crowd; an expert in your field who shares their knowledge, engages with others and provides value to their audience’s social feeds.

It requires consistency and confidence – and won’t happen overnight. Now we’ve got that little disclaimer out of the way let’s get to it!

STEP ONE: Who are you?!

Seems simple enough, right?

The number 1 step to creating a personal brand is establishing what that actually means for YOU.

What’s the purpose of your brand? Your underlying purpose may to be support your company brand and ultimately make sales/grow your business. But the everyday purpose may be to interact with your customers, educate your audience, or entertain your industry.

Next, establish what your tone of voice will be. Do you want to take a light-hearted, perhaps ‘cheeky’ approach? Or do you want have a more authoritative tone?

Will you use casual language/ curse words or lots of jargon? Think about how accessible you want your posts/brand to be, and who your target audience are.

STEP TWO: Who is your audience?

Who’s going to be listening to what you have to say? Truly understanding your target audience – who they are and what they want to hear – will ensure you build a following that is relevant and engaged with you and your brand.

Start by thinking about the individuals within your target audience; are they experts? Or students? Do they want answers to their questions or top tips to get ahead in their industry? Look at the demographics of your target audience; how old they’re likely to be, what earning bracket they’re likely to fall into.

This will help you to best discover WHERE your audience are. Each social media platform has a most and least engaged demographic group – you don’t want to be talking to the wrong one!

STEP THREE: Finally, time to decide what you’re going to talk about exactly.

Keeping your talking points relatively niched will help to ensure a well-targeted audience and better quality content – after all, when was the last time you saw Jeff Bezos share a cute dog pic?

This is where you build upon who you are; decide what your expertise is – it’s okay to be broad at this point. Perhaps you’ve worked in the IT industry for the last 20 years, or been a clinical psychologist for the last 35 years.

From there, break this down into 3/4 niched topics that you’d like to be best known for.

For example; you run a SaaS company and have done for eons, along the way you’ve become interested in:

• SaaS in Fast-growing Tech Companies
• The Future of SaaS and emerging technologies
• The underutilised benefits of SaaS in the public sector

Feel free to niche down into something that you’re passionate about even if it isn’t mainstream. Your passion will be well received.

So you’ve figured out who you are, who your audience are, and what you want to talk about. What’s next…?

Time to get posting! After all, you’ve got to start somewhere…

Need help? Find out how we can work with you to build and grow your personal brand with our Introduction to Personal Branding Package.