What is a personal brand?
Personal branding online: a key tool for expert promotion
In the era of digital transformation and internet growth, creating and promoting a personal brand is becoming increasingly important for successful business and achieving professional goals. A personal brand is what you represent online: your unique digital presence that helps establish your expertise and uniqueness in the eyes of your target audience. In this article, we'll explore why a personal brand is a key tool for online promotion and how to develop it.
First and foremost, a personal brand allows you to establish your expertise in a specific field. In the sea of information we consume online every day, it's important to stand out from the competition and demonstrate your expertise in your field. With a personal brand, you can share your knowledge, experience, and ideas through blogs, articles, videos, and social media. This way, you build authority and trust with your audience, which helps increase your following and customer base.
Secondly, a personal brand allows you to create a unique image and stand out from the crowd. You can use your style, voice, and visual elements to reflect your personality and attract attention. Be original and authentic in your expression to attract an audience that shares your values and interests. Creativity and originality will help you stand out from the competition and be remembered by your audience.
The third important aspect of a personal brand is networking and establishing professional contacts. Your personal brand will help you attract the attention of other experts and influencers in your industry. Collaborating and partnering with other successful professionals will help you expand your audience and increase your online visibility. Participating in conferences, webinars, public speaking, and other events can also help strengthen your personal brand and expand your professional networks.
The fourth aspect of a personal brand is the ability to monetize your expertise. Building a strong and recognized personal brand allows you to attract paying clients and generate income from consulting, training, creating information products, or other expert activities. A personal brand is a valuable asset that can open doors to new opportunities and income streams.
Define promotion goals
In the age of digital revolution, more and more people are striving to become experts in their field and attract attention to their brand online. Whether you're a professional coach, a financial consultant, a culinary guru, or a marketing guru, there are several important factors that can help determine your online branding goals.
- Defining your audience: The first step in defining your expert brand promotion goals is understanding your target audience. Who are they? What are their needs and interests? Where are they located online? Defining your target audience will help you narrow your focus and create content that will be most useful and interesting to your audience.
- Setting specific goals: Once you've defined your audience, you need to establish specific goals for promoting your expert brand. What exactly do you want to achieve with your online presence? This could include increasing brand awareness, attracting new clients, establishing yourself as an authoritative voice in your industry, or increasing sales. Define specific success metrics to help you measure the achievement of these goals.
Let's say you've been doing photography for a while and want more people to discover your skills and book your shoots. In that case, you could create your own portfolio on Instagram.
You can choose other platforms to promote your personal brand, depending on your goals:
- Facebook;
- YouTube;
- Twitter;
- TikTok;
- Pinterest;
- VKontakte;
- Classmates, etc.
Develop a personal brand concept. Brand building principles
Here are the main points about yourself that you can use to create a unique text:
- I am a person with a wide range of interests, dedicated to continuous self-development and exploration of new areas. My interests include [list interests].
- I have several strong personal qualities that help me achieve my goals. I [list qualities] and have accumulated significant life experience in [indicate area].
- My values and philosophy form the foundation of my approach to business, relationships, and life in general. I value [list values] and believe in [list beliefs].
- I strive for socially significant goals and want to bring positive change to this world. My goal is to [list goals] and I strive to help my audience [indicate how you want to change their lives].
- My Big Idea is [list the big idea behind your work]. I believe that [explain why your idea is important and how it can impact society].
- My personal legend is the story of my successes, achievements, failures, and victories. I overcame many difficulties to achieve [list the important moments of your success story].
- My appearance, style, demeanor, and interaction with the audience are important elements of my image. I [describe my appearance, style, and interaction with the audience].
Use these key points to create unique copy that reflects your personality and the goals of promoting your expert brand online.
How do you know if you're ready for personal advancement?
The ideal expert status is a combination of two factors: your professionalism and public recognition of you as an expert.
Once the first factor has been achieved, you can begin working on the second.
It is important to have specialization in your field, extensive practical experience, and an understanding of current trends to begin advancing as an expert.
The first step is creating a personal brand. First, ask yourself a few questions to assess your readiness for promotion:
- Are you truly an expert in your field and are you ready to prove it?
- Do you have sufficient experience and proven cases that you want to share with the market?
- Who are your key competitors?
- Do you have a clear development plan for the next 5 years, at least in general terms?
- Do you have a specific promotion goal?
- Have you identified your target audience?
- Do you know what image you want to create and promote?
- Are your values and principles clearly expressed? Do you have a recognizable image and corporate style? Perhaps you need a custom logo suitable for your industry?
Answering these questions will help you define your goals and strategy for promoting your expert brand online. Remember that continuous development and improvement are an integral part of becoming and promoting an expert.
Determine your area of expertise
The next step in building your personal brand is identifying the unique qualities that set you apart from others. You need to identify the skills and knowledge that make you special and valuable.
No matter what you're going to talk about—be it parenting, copywriting, cross-stitching, or website development—it's important to showcase yourself and your values. This will allow people to remember you and perceive you in a unique way.
Highlight your interests and skills prominently on social media—in your profile description. These will become keywords that help search engines highlight your personal brand.
Come up with a strong message
When promoting yourself on social media, the key is to create original and unique content that will help attract your audience's attention and strengthen their connection with your brand. It's important to create a message or statement that clearly and concisely conveys the essence of your personal brand, highlighting your expertise and values.
A mission statement should be a one- or two-sentence phrase that clearly conveys your purpose and what you stand for. It's a kind of slogan or unique selling proposition.
Don't limit your message to just your skills and achievements. It's best if it reflects the interests of your target audience. Ask yourself, "What core message can I offer people? What reputation do I want to build?" By repeating your message and key personal brand ideas in every post, you help your audience become familiar with you, remember you better, and more quickly identify your messages among other content.
Therefore, creating a unique statement and emphasizing it in your content will help establish a strong connection with your audience, build trust, and attract more attention to your personal brand online. Be original, clearly convey your value, and stay aligned with your promotional goals.
The most powerful promotion channels
Once you've defined your personal brand's goals, concept, and packaging, it's time to choose the appropriate channels for its promotion. Experts typically choose the following promotional methods: social media, speaking at public events, association membership (to establish your status), creating a personal website, and media publications.
Personal Website. Decide whether you need your own website to promote your personal brand. It can serve as a business card, a showcase for your projects, a blog showcasing your expertise, or a channel for generating leads. Also, consider whether you need a newsletter. We previously discussed email newsletters only, but Telegram and VKontakte newsletters have recently become popular. Consider whether this is appropriate for your audience. If so, the approach will be similar to email marketing: half the content should be useful information, and the other half should be posts promoting your sales.
Media Publications. Strive for publication in reputable media outlets. This will greatly enhance your credibility, although direct sales may be a rare exception. Create a list of high-quality media outlets, research interesting topics, pitch your articles to editors, be original in your writing, and strictly adhere to deadlines. Your goal is to become an authoritative expert in your field in the eyes of the media, someone they can turn to for professional commentary. In addition to articles, you can also use comments: this will increase your mentions, but the expert weight of comments is traditionally lower than that of original articles. Where can you find requests for comments? For example, on Pressfeed.
Social media. Today, the best tool for promoting yourself as an expert in the business sector is Facebook. Some of my PR clients rely entirely on this social network and fully satisfy their needs through it. Streamline your personal profile so that everything that reflects you and your professionalism is at the forefront. Within the first three seconds of viewing your profile, it should be clear who you are and what you do.
Develop a strategy and create content
As with large companies, promoting your personal brand on social media requires a clear and consistent strategy. If your goal is to attract followers to your blog, focus on creating high-quality, unique content that people will find interesting and shareable. For example, develop a content plan for the month ahead and determine what you'll publish and when.
There are several types of content that can help promote your personal brand:
- Expert Opinion and Professional Advice: Provide valuable advice, reviews, and information that will help your followers solve their problems and achieve success in their field.
- Client Cases and Testimonials: Share successful examples from your practice, demonstrate your skills and the results of your work, and accompany them with interesting comments and reviews.
- Video Tutorials and Broadcasts: Create educational video tutorials, event streams, and interviews with interesting people that will be useful to your target audience.
- Personal Opinion and Position: Express your opinion on current topics and important events happening in your industry or society, creating discussions and attracting attention.
- Storytelling: Tell stories from your personal life, share interesting facts from the past or present, and reminisce about memories that will help you connect with your audience on a deeper level.
- Personal Moments: Post photos with family, friends, and non-work situations to show off your personality and build a more personal connection with your audience.
- Inspiration and Motivation: Share what inspires and motivates you, whether it's your favorite movies, books, places, or other sources of inspiration.
- Behind the Scenes: Showcase your work processes and behind-the-scenes content that might be of interest to your followers.
Incidentally, it's important not to limit yourself to just your blog content. To establish your expertise, regularly share information from authoritative sources in your industry. This will help strengthen your reputation and attract new followers.
Go out into the fields - be among your own
To build a loyal audience, actively monitor your followers' social media activity. This will help you better understand their interests and needs, which is especially important during the initial stages of promotion.
Additionally, keep an eye on mentions of yourself online – user opinions, competitor reviews, reposts from subscribers, mentions in the media, and other authoritative sources.
For example, positive reviews and mentions of your name can become the foundation for developing “advocates” for your personal brand, which helps strengthen your reputation and authority.
Be active and join communities
Engage actively with your audience using various methods, such as questions, discussions, comments, and replies. This approach will not only strengthen your followers' loyalty to your personal brand but also build trust in you.
Gradually, you'll build a growing audience that's ready to engage with you, ask questions, share their opinions, and seek your expertise. Don't just publish content and forget about it, but actively participate in discussions, respond to comments, and answer questions. This will make your followers feel valued and important, and they'll feel a strong connection to your brand.
Organizing polls and discussions will also help you gather feedback from your audience and better understand their needs and interests. Ask engaging questions, conduct surveys on topics that interest you, and carefully analyze your audience's responses. This will allow you to tailor your content to meet the needs and expectations of your audience.
Additionally, be attentive to the comments and feedback left by your audience. Maintain a dialogue, respond to questions and comments, and demonstrate that you value each person's opinion and contribution. This will help create an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust.
Use social media platforms, blogs, forums, and other channels to actively engage with your audience. Remember that your followers aren't just numbers, but real people you can connect with. Show them you're willing to listen, help, and share your knowledge.
Find influencers or become one
Actively engaging with influencers on social media is an essential part of promoting your personal brand. Influencers are people with large followings and an active presence on their blogs and social media.
By engaging with influencers, you promote yourself and your brand. Influencers already enjoy the trust of their audience, and therefore their recommendations are valuable. When influencers mention you as a brand in their posts or make recommendations, it helps increase your visibility, reputation, and authority, and attracts new followers.
Collaborating with influencers can take various forms, such as mentioning your product or service in their posts, doing reviews, running contests with your prizes, or inviting you to their events. It's important to find influencers who align with your target audience and share similar values and interests. This partnership will help you achieve maximum impact on your target audience.
However, it's important to remember that collaboration with influencers should be mutually beneficial and organic. Influencers also value your collaboration, so it's important to offer them something valuable and engaging. Be active in the comments and engage with their audience, share useful information, and offer unique offers. This will help you establish good relationships with influencers and maximize the benefits of your partnership.
Additionally, you can also strive to become an influencer yourself. Building your audience and creating quality content will help you establish yourself as an expert and authority in your field. Use social media, blogs, podcasts, and other platforms to distribute your content and engage your audience. Regularly engaging with your audience and providing valuable information will help you build a strong personal brand and become an influential voice online.
Overall, engaging with influencers and becoming an influencer yourself are effective strategies for promoting your personal brand on social media. This allows you to increase awareness, expand your audience, and establish yourself as an expert in your field. Keep in mind the mutual benefit and organic nature of your collaborations with influencers, and utilize the opportunities social media offers to achieve your brand promotion goals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, developing a personal brand is an integral part of promoting yourself online as an expert. It helps you establish your expertise, stand out from the competition, build connections, and monetize your work. Use personal branding strategies and gradually achieve success in your industry.
