If you're thinking of dismissing this article because 'you have no use for a personal brand', think again, it's 2024.
Learning about branding and content creation should not be for businesses alone. If you want to access better opportunities, sell your products, and offer your services to premium clients, then it's for you!
Here's why you need to care about building a brand:
- People will always assume who you are and what you stand for until you bluntly guide them and shape the perception of yourself you want in their minds.
- People don't buy or exchange money for services until you clearly communicate the value you're offering.
You first start by building a solid brand and then create the right content fit for your specific audience to push your brand and achieve your objectives.
If you're ready to build a profitable and memorable brand in 2024. Let me help you get started with 5 simple steps.
1. Branding
There's a popular definition of branding out there that goes like this:
A brand is what people say about you when you're not there
From my experience building my brand and many others, I've come to understand a brand as a journey and a promise.
- It is the promise you're committed to keeping to a specific set of people with a shared value or goal.
- It is everything you do to take this specific audience from point A (where or who they are) to point B (where or who they want to be).
There are so many layers to branding, but here are key elements to help you get started:
2. Target Audience
A brand does not exist for itself and is incapable of standing alone without a muse. Who are you building this brand for? You must know them and be very specific with your understanding and description of your audience.
Some people make the mistake of creating a brand to capture as many eyes as possible. If you do that, you end up reaching many eyeballs BUT —
- Not building a loyal community that sees your brand as a leader in the field.
- Not converting viewers to paying customers.
- Not building a memorable brand because nothing stands out about you to your viewers.
The best way to build a solid brand for an engaged audience is to be specific. Yes, you'll lose a lot of people but you'll attract the RIGHT people.
Here's an example of being specific: I don't help 'people' build a personal brand and make profits. I help:
- Creators who want to sell their digital offers.
- Specialists who want to package their skills into service & product businesses and become solopreneurs & entrepreneurs.
I am not targeting people who are applying for jobs but people who want to position for these jobs to come to them. They can join the party, but they are not my target. I want my audience to have location and time freedom. That's what it means to be specific
Discovery
Want to discover your target audience? Answer the questions below to dig deep and create a precise image of your audience:
- What specific set of people do you want to pay attention to you?
- Why should they pay attention to YOU out of everyone out there?
- What problem do you want to solve for this specific set of people?
- What goal do you want to help them accomplish?
3. Positioning
Okay, now you have an idea of who you want to pay attention to you. You also need to build and create a digital presence for your brand that resonates with them.
You need to become and look like who they are looking for — that's positioning in simple terms.
- What do you want them to see when they discover you?
- What do you want them to remember you for?
- How should they address you?
- What emotions do you want to make them feel?
- Where can they find you? What platforms?
A major goal of positioning is not just being discoverable but looking like what your audience wants and saying what they want to hear — the messaging must be clear.
Some call it a mission statement. Try this actively: In a short paragraph, describe yourself to your target audience.
Sample:
I am Destiny Felinah, a brand and content strategist focused on helping solopreneurs and creators build memorable brands, crafts winning content strategies and make money doing it.
That's clear, specific, and result-driven. Do you agree with me?
4. Design
The visual elements of a brand that make it recognizable are called the brand identity design. It's a broad topic that's crucial BUT, we're taking easy steps here so let's focus on three design elements:
- Brand image (a clear profile image, avatar or logo)
- Brand colour
- Brand fonts
If you're just getting started, having these three in place will help you create a brand face and experience.
The first one above will help with immediate recognition while the second and third will help you with brand consistency which sets apart amateur brands from intentional brands.
Don't overcomplicate it. Use these simple tools:
- If you don't have a good headshot, use AI tools like Remini to generate AI images of yourself by uploading your photos to the app.
- If you prefer to be anonymous, use Bing Image Creator from Microsoft Designer to create images from words by writing a detailed description of what you want.
- Use coolors, a super fast color palette generator that can help you formulate your brand colours.
No matter what you choose to go with, stay consistent. Now, being consistent doesn't mean you'll never change anything BUT
- You don't change your identity every day
- You hold an identity long enough to be remembered
- When you go through change (rebranding) you're accountable enough to communicate that change to your audience and help them adopt the new identity.
- Canva, Apple font, and Google font have a library of fonts you can pick from and adopt for your brand for free.
5. Strategy
Now you know your audience, you need to create the kind of content that speaks to their pain points (challenges, problems), desired results (goals), misconceptions, and limiting beliefs — this is how to form a content strategy.
- What have you seen work?
- What platforms would you focus on?
- What kind of content do you enjoy creating?
- What do they already engage with?
- How much time can you realistically set aside to create content for your brand?
- What format of content would be easier for you to post and at the same time be attractive to your audience?
- How often would you post?
- What tools can you use to make it easier?
- What metrics would you measure as success indicators?
Batch creating your content, weekly or monthly is better than always creating content the day you want to post. This will only make you overwhelmed.
I use Notion to manage everything from ideation, planning, drafting to tracking.
I hope this was helpful. I will be sharing templates to make this journey easier in my subsequent posts, follow this account to stay updated and learn more.
Summary
Let's run through this summary:
Branding — promise, and journey
Target audience — specific
Messaging — clear
Design — Recognizable
Strategy — consistent
Wanna stay connected? Follow me on LinkedIn for more updates and tips.
I'm Destiny Felinah Odum
I'm a personal branding and content strategist for LinkedIn and Instagram.
I help specialists, creators, and solopreneurs build memorable brands, design winning content strategies, and make profit from their brands.
Let's get in touch