You Are Your Own Brand: 3 Tips to Keep You in Their Minds
Branding affects everything in the marketing sphere and is what consumers will associate with your business. While branding is often associated with an enterprise or corporate entity, there is also personal branding in which individuals create a trademark identity or signature design that their followers can come to know them for. When you establish a strong personal brand, you can overlap or intertwine that brand with that of your company’s.
You Are Your Own Brand: 3 Tips to Keep You in Their Minds
1. Define Your Niche
You want to associate your face and name with a niche that you are fervently passionate about and that you know you can own. Be specific and come up with a vision, a mission statement, motto or set of core values. Your niche should be well-defined. Instead of identifying as a fitness coach, for example, try positioning yourself instead as a wellness coach for postnatal women or a coach for men fifty and over. Start by winning over a smaller demographic rather than trying to win favors among a general population. In other words, be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond.
2. Express Who You Are Through Your Social Profiles
Consumers will resonate much more with a company if they can associate the brand with a human face. This shows them that there is an actual person running the business who is just like everyone else as opposed to a bunch of unfamiliar corporate conglomerates in suits.
Be active on social network sites to build the foundation of your brand. This goes beyond making an occasional post on Facebook or sending a tweet. Get personal and let people know the real you outside the company. Consider uploading a few photos of yourself with your significant other or with your dog or maybe even a goofy selfie.
As a side thought, maybe use your Twitter to send a daily inspirational quote especially if you are in the field of personal development. Use Pinterest or Tumblr to display a photo collection of yourself wearing clothing from your e-commerce retail store. If your business is on a more B2B level, then use your Linked In profile to showcase your professional credentials. If you create content, incorporate Google Profile so that your face appears next to the search results.
Express your brand through Social Profiles
3. Dare to Be Different
As personal and individualistic as you strive to be, there are going to be hundreds of others whose online profiles are strikingly similar to yours. Think about how you can make yourself different within the context of your niche. This will require some brainstorming outside the box.
What are the ways you can be different? There are infinite possibilities. Perhaps you can make a public commitment to donate a portion of your business proceeds to a charitable cause for the achievement of a specific milestone. Maybe you can promise your followers that you will do something outrageous and post it on video if you reach a certain number of subscribers.
Personal Branding for Success on a Business Level
The purpose of personal branding is to blur the distinction between your personal profile and your business. When people see that you are authentic and not someone just trying to push a product or sale, they will be more inclined to give you the time of day. Most web design firms recommend that you begin by building your personal brand before even doing anything promotional with your products or services.
Personal branding is about engagement, and if you can resonate with your consumers, they will respond favorably when it comes time to take advantage of your products or services.
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