A personal branding worksheet to help you get started.
In today’s day and age, we can really be whoever we want to be. Social media has given us a platform to really show the parts of us that we want and hide the parts we don’t. Are you a funny person? Well, now you can upload short skits that you come up with to Youtube. Would people consider you attractive? Well, a lot of those people have monetized their personal brand on Instagram. So what are you showing to the world?
In this guide, we are going to discuss what a personal brand is, how to create an attractive personal brand, what would happen if you utilized the internet properly to create your personal brand and we include a personal branding worksheet that you can use to create your own personal branding strategy that you can find HERE.
What is personal branding?
Personal Branding is the you that you show to the world. It is the skills, talent, knowledge, and way that you portray yourself.
For the most part, everyone has a personal brand, and in the end, you need to really figure out what you are trying to accomplish with what you are putting out.
In this article, we will be focusing on building authority and credibility in your niche. Niche meaning, the specific thing that you want to focus on! The best personal brands are specific. This can help you build a following in your topics community.
The big three things we are going to focus on are: knowing your target audience, building relationships, and content creation.
How knowing your target audience can help build your personal brand and contribute to your personal branding worksheet.
Imagine seeing an older male dressed up in a suit talking about women’s rights. Doesn’t seem right, does it? You get 7 seconds to make a good first impression. If you can’t relate to your target audience’s pain points or tickle their fancy, your personal brand will never take off.
What does target audience mean? A target audience is the specific group of people that you are trying to influence. To fully engage with potential fans, you need to know the 4 Ws. Who is your target audience, What do they want, why are they are looking up content in your field, and which online platforms are they on. These will also be addressed in the personal branding worksheet.
Who is your target audience?
When you think of your end goal with personal branding, what do you think of? If you are trying to sell a course, think about who would buy that course. What are their demographics? Psychographics?
After you figure out your goals for personal branding, the who is the second step to figuring out your personal branding strategy.
What does your target audience want?
There are many different reasons someone may be looking at content. Your job is to figure out what kind of content your audience wants. What does that demographic deem important? Is it education, humor, inspiration?
Figuring out what your target audience is into, is an important strategy to gain followers.
Why is your target audience looking up content in your niche?
In today’s day and age, Youtube has become very popular to educate the population. You can literally learn how to build a computer on Youtube if you had the patience! In this example, the why would be, because they want to build a computer. Well, why do they want to build a computer? Maybe because they want to start their own custom computer business, or they just love to build things. Either way, figuring out the why of your audience is important.
Once you understand the why, you can start giving people what they want. Maybe you find that your target audience wants quick How-to videos. Why? Because they are trying to learn how to build a computer, quickly without any fluff.
When you start creating these videos and give that information out for free, people will respond. Now people see you as a credible figure because you are teaching others how to do that. They figure you must be qualified if you are teaching.
Everyone is a guru or teacher nowadays. Some of these people who claim to be gurus, have never even had success in that niche. But you know what they are good at? Personal Branding. They have created authority and credibility simply by releasing content that others find important.
Which online platforms are your target audience on?
Different social media platforms tend to draw in different user demographics. In the article, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/, Sprout social touches on the different user demographics for different social profiles.
Facebook, for instance, has the most diverse user base when it comes to age. Tik Tok is great for reaching a younger audience. Figuring out where your potential audience is, is crucial for you to decide where to distribute your content.
How to use Content Creation to build your personal brand.
Content creation is key for building loyal followers. Remember that your relationship with the web is like any relationship. You can’t do something nice for your partner once and expect it to hold weight. The longest-lasting and best relationships are the ones where you are constantly doing nice things for your partner.
I like to think people fall into two categories: content creators or content consumers. Content consumers love to ingest creators content, they’re practically insatiable. Content creators need to cater to the consumer’s hunger and give them what they want. More content!
Remember, that it typically will take you a few tries before you start to develop really good content. Although in the beginning, your content may not be the best, social media algorithms love when you post content.
As Matt Bertram said in our personal branding episode of our podcast, Through The Funnel, “Content is King, but distribution is queen. Creating content is good, but if you’re not putting that content out and promoting it, it won’t reach as far. You can learn more about his personal branding journey and his digital marketing agency.
As organic reach continues to fall, putting money behind a post will help it reach a further audience. If you are interested in learning more about personal branding check out our podcast episode here.
So what kind of content can you create? There are many different platforms and preferable content for each platform. To build credibility in your field, you need to start putting yourself out there. Here are some examples of content that help build your personal brand;
- Pictures
- Videos
- Posts
- Podcasts
- Blogs
- Books
- Updates
- Stories
- Courses
Figuring out who your target audience is a good way to figure out what kind of content to create. If you’re trying to build authority in your profession, start with writing blogs, and creating content on all applicable social media platforms. Then you can move to creating a podcast, writing a book and eventually becoming a speaker.
How to Build and Nurture Relationships to promote your personal brand.
When you start building your brand, you will start to see a slow increase in followers. These “fans” could have come from your Facebook page, Youtube channel, or Blog Post, but they came because they liked what you were putting out. When you start seeing that increase, it’s time for you to start nurturing these fans, because these are the people who will become your ambassadors.
When you start getting follows and shares, you will notice it tends to be the same people at first. Then as more people see your content, the snowball effect takes place. At that point, your followers start doing the promotion for you. Word of mouth increases. User-generated content immerges. The more you interact with these people, the more brand loyal they become.
After you get one follower, it’s important to lead them to your content on other platforms. When looking at the customer journey, you can have multiple touchpoints with a potential client before they decide on buying. In today’s day and age, people don’t want to be sold to. They like feeling like a purchase decision was their idea. Typically It takes 5 to 7 customer touchpoints to close a sale. It’s important to get your message in front of your target audience as many times as you can.
Chase Reiner, a very popular SEO figure, is a great example of nurturing his followers. A lot of his audience are people who are trying to learn SEO. He has capitalized on this by creating a course and trying to nurture his contacts through the customer journey. Check out his video here, where he speaks upon the topic of personal branding for the SEO community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUJqxEJ9Jjc&feature=youtu.be&mcp_token=eyJwaWQiOjk3MTE0Mjg1NjM0MDQ0OSwic2lkIjoyNTM4NTQyMzc5NTYyNzIyLCJheCI6ImVhNzFmNzZiMzQ2NjkzNjhmZTNlMDAyNGY4NDQyYTA4IiwidHMiOjE1NzkwMjA3MzAsImV4cCI6MTU3OTI3OTkzMH0.v6RI7lvLOUVn9do3-VzlVIMJB-8E5E4f1ZIObRUGOH4
The best way to get someone in your pipeline is to create a lead magnet. What is a lead magnet? A lead magnet is something of value that you create, in which you give away (normally for free) in exchange for someone’s contact information. This is very important and is in the personal branding worksheet.
Once you get this information, you can put them in your email list, Facebook messenger list, SMS, or whatever method you want to reach these people. This gets people into the top of your funnel.
Remember to always provide value when your building and nurturing your relationships. People like Chase give a lot of valuable information away for free. This is how you get people into your pipeline.
The next step is to nurture your contacts and give them more information about what you’re doing. As Chase mentioned in the video, when you’re making content, it is a good idea to sell no more than 10% of the time. It’s good to create awareness, but people aren’t following you to get sold to, they’re following you for your valuable content.
What if I started making changes to increase my personal brand and I followed my personal branding worksheet?
So what would happen if you used these strategies to help with your personal branding? If you were to figure out your target audience, create content and nurture relationships, you would see yourself slowly starting to increase your following.
Remember that it typically doesn’t happen overnight. It is a compounding effect that happens, what I like to call the snowball effect. Basically, as you get the ball moving, you are going to see gradual increases that will increase your following as you are introduced to more people. So, is it time to start your personal branding journey yet? If you haven’t yet, download our personal branding worksheet HERE.