Everything you need to know about creating a personal brand

Today there is such a word as “brand” has already come out exclusively from the business sphere. In particular, it is widely used in relation to a specific person. As a result, such a term as a personal or personal brand, self-brand, appeared. With its help, you can achieve more impressive success in your career, earn well-deserved trust from the user audience, partners, employers, gain the necessary influence and establish professional interaction in your field. Names such as Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Artemy Lebedev, Taylor Swift, Angelina Jolie, Walt Disney — These are just a few examples of strong personal brands.

Despite their diversity, they all received a large-scale impetus for development thanks to media opportunities. And social networks played a significant role here. But to form your personal brand you don’t have to be celebrity. Absolutely anyone can create a name for themselves.

And now we will dwell on this issue in more detail. We’ll tell you what a personal brand is as such, what advantages and disadvantages exist here. Let us consider in detail all the components of this solution, which will allow you to assess the amount of work to be done. We will also describe what channels exist today for building a personal brand, so that you can choose the most attractive solution for yourself. Here are a number of additional tips that will help make the work as simple and effective as possible. By following these recommendations, you will launch your self-brand with minimal time and effort, avoid the most common mistakes and confidently move towards achieving your goal.

What is a personal brand as such

The term personal brand refers to the image of a person that has developed about him in society. That is, it is what others think about you. Something that will tell others, in particular your business partners, clients, colleagues, about your ideas, talents, knowledge, and professionalism. If we write down such a concept as a personal brand as a formula, then in the end we will get the sum of professional skills, personal views, values, and creative ideas.

By the way, absolutely each of us has a self-brand, it’s just that only a few have decided to fully form it and present it to society. Imagine a situation when you met a new person and you want to learn more interesting and useful things about him. What will you do? Most likely, the first thing you will do is study profiles on social networks. As a result, the opinion that will be formed from the information presented on the platforms will become the basis of your future relationships. That is, the more effort this person puts into creating his accounts, the more presentable he presents himself in posts and stories, the more positive effect he will have on you.

That is, if you want to create your own personal brand and bring it to the world, then first of all you need to rely on social networks. And here you need to be prepared for the fact that you will have to put a lot of effort into creating the most presentable image and show your advantages, ideas and skills in it, effectively standing out from other people.

Who should think about creating a personal brand

It is clear that every person cares about his own reputation, regardless of what market niche he works in or what people he communicates with. But still, not all of us make sense to spend a lot of time and, for the most part, even material resources to form a personal brand and further promote it. In practice, such a solution will be indispensable for people who specialize in providing certain services and supplying goods, including those of their own production. That is, if you want to sell something, if you want to significantly increase your level of income, then you should probably think about creating a personal brand on social networks.

If we categorize people from the point of view of their professional activities, who really should think about such work, then first of all it is worth highlighting:

• Internet marketers, SEO and SMM specialists;
• opinion leaders, photographers, designers;
• cosmetologists, makeup artists, stylists;
• graphic designers, psychologists;
• pastry chefs, teachers providing private lessons and many others.

That is, if you use social networks to attract clients and make a profit from your professional activities, you should definitely create a professional personal brand and promote it. This way you can tell literally the whole world information about yourself, show your professionalism, which will help increase your recognition and income level. Of course, in this case, you will have to initially complete a number of quite impressive works, as well as continue to work and subsequently maintain the achieved result.

Main advantages of launching a personal brand

If you still doubt that it is you who needs to start working on creating a personal brand, then we suggest you get acquainted with the key advantages of such a solution:

• You show others your expertise in a certain issue. On social networks you will post your own cases and demonstrate professionalism in a specific niche. All this will lead to your recognition in the market increasing, you will have a well-deserved reputation, reviews from clients, who, in turn, will also work for you, attracting new buyers and customers.
• Obtaining universal recognition. We are talking not only about your immediate user audience, readers or listeners, but also about colleagues and competitors. That is, your value as a specialist increases. You become in demand on the market.
• Increasing the level of trust. A high level of expertise combined with market recognition, increased reputational indicators — this is what will create maximum trust in you on the part of business partners and clients. The fact is that it has already happened that the consumer market is accustomed to trusting opinion leaders, that is, those who have demonstrated their expertise in a particular issue. And it doesn’t matter whether you plan to work in a local or global market, such a solution will give amazing results in practice.
• More rapid and effective career development. All these aspects that we talked about above will contribute to achieving the goals that you have set for yourself in terms of professional activity. In parallel with this, there will also be an increase in income. The relationship here is quite simple: the more recognition you gain in the market, the higher the price you can sell your services or goods.
• The ability to directly influence social processes. Having the appropriate influence on social networks, you will be able to make certain positive changes in public life.
• Networking. This is what will allow you to establish more effective interaction with your target audience, specialists working in related fields, colleagues, and partners. This is all that will ultimately contribute to the formation of a team that will be able to take on more complex tasks, thereby expanding the boundaries of professional activity.

As you can see, creating a personal brand — this is what opens up new opportunities and far-reaching prospects for your business. But all this will become a reality only if you implement everything as correctly as possible.

Are there any disadvantages to launching a personal brand?

When starting to work with a personal brand, you must understand that you are creating a digital footprint about yourself online. And it can be not only positive, but also negative. In the latter case, everything we talked about above will have the opposite result. Here are some things you should avoid when working with a selfie brand:

• Height. Once you decide to present yourself to the world community, you should always be prepared for negative feedback. Remember the phrase: “how many people have so many opinions.” And here it also works. That is, there will always be those who disagree with your ideas and are dissatisfied with your work. Possessing anonymity (albeit imaginary), people believe that they have the right to express their point of view, and in a rather aggressive form. That is, you must understand that something similar can happen to your brand and be prepared for it.
• Use of reliable information. Never take credit for other people’s merits or ideas, because there will always be someone who can catch you in deception and, as a result, all the reputation that you tried to build will come to naught. That is, when showing your professionalism in a particular industry, you should take data exclusively from reliable and verified sources, and even better, repeatedly double-check them personally before publishing them on your pages. That is, you must truly be an expert in your niche. Otherwise, you should not expect any success.
• Imprudent actions. This often occurs in practice under the influence of emotions. Imagine a situation where, in response to aggressive comments from one of your subscribers, providing false information about you, you break down and write angry responses in the comments. From a human point of view, everything is clear here, since you want to protect yourself, your reputation. But you must understand that all this will become public knowledge and believe me, even the most loyal audience will not always take your side and understand that these actions were committed emotionally. Therefore, it’s better to learn to restrain yourself when working with people.
• Violation of confidentiality limits. That is, you should discuss with your employers or clients what you can display on your pages, on social networks, and what aspects you can keep silent about. You should never put your personal priorities and desires above those of your clients. If you violate these boundaries, if you begin to show the public what your customers would like to keep silent about, you can be sure that they will stop doing business with you. And this is only in the best case scenario, since the possibility of lawsuits cannot be ruled out. This is clearly not what you expect when launching a personal brand.

Now, in general terms, you understand what prospects the launch of a personal brand offers, and what difficulties you may encounter in subsequent work. We will not say that something catastrophic could happen, since with the right approach we can minimize most of the risks and save ourselves from serious problems, including those related to reputation. If you haven’t changed your mind about creating a personal brand, then let’s move on to the second part of our review, in particular to what work you have to implement in practice and getting to know the main components of a self-brand.

Creating a personal brand correctly: basic elements

When launching a personal brand, you must understand that its basis — this is your expertise in a particular niche. That is, it is professionalism, recognition, uniqueness, consistency and reputation — these are the basics on which subsequent work will be built. So, uniqueness — this is what will form the very essence of your personal brand, but the consistency of your actions and the uniqueness of the ideas that you will provide will help it stay afloat and even develop. These works must be performed regularly. You must understand that publishing once a month will not give the result that you expect, even if you publish a very professional, informative and high-quality post. You also won’t be able to work with a damaged reputation.

But still, since we are talking directly about launching a personal brand, it is important to understand what work you have to implement at this stage and gradually, step by step, carry it out. So we moved on to one of the most important issues, namely the constituent elements of a personal brand:

1. Purpose of creation.
2. Own positioning in the market.
3. Identification of the target audience.
4. Content preparation.
5. Interaction channels.

Now let’s look at each of these points in more detail.

The key goal of launching a personal brand

Even before starting work, you must understand what exactly you want to get from the implementation of this idea, what idea you set for yourself. This is exactly what will motivate you to perform work in the future. Think about what you would like to offer to the world community and what you would ultimately like to achieve. Perhaps you are interested in finding like-minded people, or maybe you would like to increase your income by creating a channel for promoting your own products or services? Or maybe you have already reached the level where you would like to monetize your brand?

That is, by understanding the key task that you set for yourself at the stage of creating a personal brand, you will be able to subsequently develop the most effective strategies and gradually, step by step, move towards the implementation of your idea. Without defining key tasks, the effectiveness of your work will be minimized.

Defining your position in the market

At this stage, you must understand exactly what place you would like to occupy in human perception. That is, determine whether you want to become a friend, partner, leader, service provider, etc. for your audience. Outline your place in interaction with future subscribers, as well as your unique selling proposition. This is what will set you apart from your competitors and attract new audiences.

To form your position for subsequent work, answer the following questions:

• What ideas about work do you wake up with in the morning, what exactly motivates you to take certain professional actions?
• What skills do you already have and what else would you like to develop?
• Which of the skills that you have make you proud, confident in your own abilities and that you are the best in your segment?
• What exactly can you do better than the vast majority of other people?
• Are there topics that make others turn to you for advice?
• Which problem solutions give you a surge of energy, activity, that is, literally what makes your eyes light up?
• What global goals do you set for yourself? We are talking about a fairly distant future, let’s say in 10 years, maybe 15. Where do you want to see yourself after this period of time?

Answer all these questions honestly and without any “BUTs”. This is the only way you can understand what position you can take in the market and how to present yourself to the audience.

Define your target audience

At this stage, you must determine which users may benefit from the product that you plan to promote on the market. That is, in this way you can determine a group of people based on their gender, age, individual preferences, which you will focus on in the future. Initially, you need to understand what may be important to potential clients of your business. This way you can choose common topics and interests, build trusting relationships, and offer material that will truly be exciting for your readers.

We would like to warn you right away that the process of audience research takes quite a long time, that is, as you continue to work with your brand, you will learn more and more about your subscribers and their interests. Various interactives that you will launch in the future will provide you with significant assistance in this. But still, initially you need to find some common ground, otherwise you simply will not be able to interest people. Therefore, at the first stage it is worth focusing on analytics, statistical data in relation to your segment, and then as you work, arrange various surveys, analyze the answers and, based on the data received, make adjustments to the strategy.

Preparing content for future publications

This is one of the most important points you will have to implement when working with a personal brand. To prove your authority to the audience, to interest them, to satisfy their requests and wishes, it is important to prepare high-quality material. And here it is necessary to take into account more than one aspect. In particular, we are talking about:

• Filling out your profile. Content should be as unique as possible, original, containing extraordinary thoughts and benefits for readers. Since you are an expert in your niche, do not be afraid to prepare detailed publications, discuss this topic, and draw your own expert conclusions. You can also safely experiment with types of content, alternate text posts and pictures, videos. There are a lot of options here, but in any case, your task will be to prove your expertise to the audience.
• Definition of such a concept as brand voice. You must understand that it is not only what you say that matters, but also how you say it. Brand voice — this is what will set you apart from your competitors, increase your level of recognition and trust. That is, initially it is worth determining the style in which all subsequent communication will be conducted. In the future, you will use it everywhere, no matter what publication is running at any given time. That is, if you chose friendly communication on “you” with a touch of light humor, then this same style should be in each of your posts. Never copy template phrases of famous bloggers, do not try to be like someone else. You have your own opinion, your own idea and your own voice.
• Formation of a unified visual style. The situation here is quite similar to the brand voice we talked about above. That is, not only the style of communication should be individual, but also the visual design of your profile. One that would effectively stand out from competitors and clearly indicate that it belongs to you. If you do everything correctly, then one glance at the publication by a regular subscriber will be enough to understand that this is your work. That is, there will also be an increase in recognition, loyalty, and trust. In this case, you should work out the color design of your profile in detail, choose the most suitable font, etc.
• Establishing a balance between work and personal. The human essence is such that we are always interested in knowing what is happening in other people. This becomes especially relevant for public figures, and this is exactly what you become when you launch a personal brand on social networks. That is, you will not be able to completely hide your personal life from your subscribers, because otherwise you will never establish trusting and friendly relationships with them, which will bring you good reviews and new orders. But it’s also clearly not worth turning all your activities exclusively into the investigation of personal problems, and making everything that happens in your personal life public. Here too, the main thing is to get away from both extremes and find the optimal balance between professional and personal.
• Developing a content plan for the next month or two. In this case, we are talking about developing a document that will include planning for all subsequent publications. Here you write down the topics that you will cover, choosing the most correct sequence of their presentation. Thanks to the content plan, you can avoid repetition and illogical presentation. But still, periodically compare the current situation with what you planned for yourself earlier. There is a possibility that some of the topics will no longer be relevant and you will need to find a replacement, or, on the contrary, a very pressing issue will arise that you will want to immediately discuss with your audience. That is, the content plan — this is the basis for future work, but at any time you can easily make adjustments to it and adjust it to the current situation.

These are the basic questions that you will need to put into practice even before launching your personal brand. Once you start working in this direction, you will no longer have time to think. Strict and consistent actions will follow. You will not have the opportunity to experiment or change approaches, so it is important to make preliminary developments.

The last point that is also important to pay attention to when working with a personal brand is the communication channels. That is, you must decide through which platforms you will work with the audience.

Choosing channels for communication

What social networks do you want to start your work on — It's an individual matter. It is clear that the greatest effect will be provided by maximum audience coverage, which can be achieved when working through different platforms. But at the very start of working with your personal brand, you will only need to choose just one most suitable channel. At this stage, quality will be more important to you than quantity. You will start scaling your business later, after you have been able to earn a name for yourself.

Which site is most suitable? Everything is simple here — the one where the majority of your target audience is represented. So, if you plan to rely on social media, want to develop personal branding and target an audience aged 30+, then Facebook would be a good option. If in the future you have to work with the expert environment, then there are no analogues to Linkedin. If you are an expert in the field of beauty, health, fashion, then the social network Instagram, etc. suggests itself.

That is, in order to choose the most suitable platform for developing a personal brand, you should first of all proceed from the market niche in which you plan to work. It is important to consider the mission and target audience. Now let’s briefly get acquainted with the main platforms that are suitable for promoting a personal brand, so that you can navigate these features:

1. Instagram. We brought this platform to the first place, since today it has no analogues for the development of personal brands for the majority of business representatives and specialists in a particular niche. Here you can create a profile that will become your business card. Moreover, it will be your portfolio and even your website. Don't forget to fill out the bio line to indicate your own positioning there. For Instagram, you will need to prepare the most interesting and diverse content with a bright visual design. Here the emphasis is on videos and images, which are complemented by text. Full text publications should be done occasionally, since the whole essence of the site is hidden directly in visual perception.
2. Own website. This is the platform where you can present information about yourself in the most professional and detailed manner. But you must understand that in order for the audience to know about you, you will have to put a lot of effort into promotion, and along with it, money. That is, you shouldn’t bet on the site itself. But still, its creation will not be superfluous. You will be able to link to it from social networks to more clearly demonstrate your own skills and professionalism. Most likely, you will have to involve specialists in the implementation of these works, since you will need to form the structure itself, think through navigation, design, subsequent promotion strategy, etc.
3. Facebook. We already said above that today Facebook — one of the most important social media channels targeting the so-called millennials. The advantage of launching content here is that the site has an audience with a fairly good level of income. These are those who know what they need and are willing to pay reasonable money for it. Unlike Instagram, what is important here is not so much visual content as text content. Here its expertise, consistency of presentation, and value are assessed. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that it is better to choose a business account to develop your personal brand, since there are more built-in tools that will simplify your work, automate some of the actions in the future, and improve the collection of analytics.
4. Telegram. This is a messenger that has long gone beyond its original scope. Today, this platform can rightfully be called a full-fledged competitor even to Instagram, not to mention many other social networks. There are a huge number of thematic communities here where you can find subscribers and make acquaintances with them. But you must understand that the communication channel itself is closed here, so targeted and professional promotion will be required in order to reach your target audience. This can be done through advertising on social networks or in other channels, through mutual partnership.
5. Tik Tok. Despite the fact that today there are still people who consider this site exclusively for children, or at least for youth, there is already a huge number of adult paying users represented here. Moreover, using the capabilities of TikTok, you can create viral videos that will quickly spread throughout the network, including through other channels. At the same time, through organic promotion you gain access to a huge number of user audiences. This means that if you manage to interest them in your content and your professionalism, then you can easily make a fairly impressive profit.
6. Linkedin. As we said above, this platform is suitable for those who have decided to form their own brand in a professional environment, that is, where there are truly specialists who can, among other things, evaluate your knowledge and skills. Keep in mind that you work mainly with business people: educated, confident in their own strengths and capabilities, with a good level of income. Therefore, approach content preparation as comprehensively and professionally as possible. To attract users, you can use webinars and record audio clips.
7. YouTube. Despite the fact that quite a lot of video hosting sites have appeared on the market today, none of them can yet compete with this site. Here you can make your content available to millions of people from around the world. But you will have to create high-quality videos. Those that will be filled with certain meanings. It’s also worth thinking about the best headlines, wording and anything else that can attract people’s attention. Pay special attention to preparing the banner and its description, because this is what viewers pay attention to first.

That is, focus on the specifics of your activity and choose the most suitable site for it. Gradually, as you expand, you will be able to add another social network to your work, making minor adjustments to the content taking into account its specifics. But this should be done after the main audience has been formed.

To summarize

As you can see, the very idea of creating a personal brand will be useful to many business representatives and not only. But in order to get a decent result in the end, it will be necessary to do quite a lot of work. And here the following recommendations will provide you with significant help:

• before launching a personal brand, clear all dubious information that you have on social networks;
• try to establish interaction with the audience, because if you are the only one speaking, you won’t get any feedback from people;
• do not ignore both positive and negative feedback: try to smooth out the latter as loyally as possible and establish mutual understanding;
• don’t forget about social responsibility: you should not stay away from important social events;
• use only proven and approved methods of promotion: first, use free solutions for promotion;
• you should resort to paid tools if you want to reach your desired audience as quickly as possible;
• from time to time, focus on offline activities, because no one lives online: life — this is what exists around us;
• always analyze the effectiveness of your strategy and, if necessary, make adjustments to it, keeping the interest of subscribers at a high level;
• never underestimate your competitors: even though you consider yourself an absolute professional in your niche, there are other people who have also achieved good success, so study their profiles, evaluate the solutions used and, perhaps, learn from their experience.

We repeat once again that the amount of work to be implemented as part of creating a personal brand is very, very impressive. But tools that automate certain actions can provide significant help here, such as collecting information about the target audience, competitors, auto-posting, etc. But anti-fraud systems will very quickly detect such actions and block the work. You should also understand that today not all social networks are available for work from the territory of the Russian Federation. That is, you won’t be able to access Instagram or Facebook, and very soon YouTube from Russian IP-addresses.

An additional connection of mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service will help you bypass all these restrictions and ensure effective and stable work with any social networks, video hosting sites, and instant messengers. Here you will receive a solution that will ensure reliable substitution of your real IP-address and geolocation with the technical parameters of an intermediary server, which will allow you to create a completely different digital identity for the system that has nothing to do with you. That is, by doing this you will ensure your privacy, protection from unauthorized access, as well as bypassing any access restrictions, the ability to use tools to automate online actions and multi-accounting, which is also important when working with social networks.

Follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy to learn more about What are mobile proxies from MobileProxy.Space, evaluate their advantages, and find out the current tariffs. If you need additional advice, technical support specialists are available at a time convenient for you.

Share this article: