10 Ways To Create A Perfect Personal Brand

Accoring to Oberlo, 88% of consumers say that authenticity is important, and 46% of consumers said that they’d be willing to spend more on brands they trust.

Personal branding is not simply a fad, rather it’s something that’s here to stay.  I want to highlight for you 10 ways that personal branding will help your business grow and establish yourself as a leader in your industry:

• Creates Authenticity
• Builds More Trust
• Helps You Stand Out
• Attracts The Right Clients/Customers
• Establishes Authority
• Feeds Into Storytelling
• What People Want
• Helps Build Community
• Invites Open Dialogue
• Leads To Lifetime Customers

Creates Authenticity

If your business uses social media, then you’ve no doubt heard the word “authenticity” used on more than one occasion.  You could say that it’s a buzzword that’s been trending for the past few years, but what does it REALLY mean?

Simply put, authenticity is your brand's ability to stay true to what your values, mission, purpose, and personality are.  So if you’re a brand that says they’re all about helping the environment, then it would show in things like your packaging, the charities you donate to, and the sustainability of your company overall.

When it comes to your personality, with video being so huge now across social media, it’s very easy to tell if someone is being authentic or not.  A picture can hide it, but when you’re on video, your personality is right there for everyone to see.

The main thing to remember is you don’t HAVE TO be a certain way to run a business.  If you’re an introvert, then lean into that.  If you’re funny, be funny.  Whatever your personality type is, be true to who you are because if you’re not, people will be able to tell.

Builds More Trust

Let’s face it if you poll the average person and ask them if they “trust” businesses and brands these days, a lot of them are likely to say no.  That’s because a lot of big brands over the years have been less than honest about how they do business and who they are as people.

That’s why trust, now more than ever, is so important.  And what’s the best way to build trust?  It’s giving people the opportunity to see you and the people behind the brand.  You can do this in a number of different ways.

The first and most obvious way is by you getting out from behind the logo and showcasing yourself and your team across your media channels.  There’s a term called, “The Mere Exposure Effect,” which basically means that the more people see you, hear from you, and get to know you, the more they begin to trust you.

Obviously social media marketing and specifically, video content within your social media marketing strategy is the best example of how to do this.  A picture lets people see you, but nothing will help build your personal brand more than people being able to see you, hear you, and interact with you.

Helps You Stand Out

In a world where business owners are crying for a way to stand out, having a personal brand strategy is your exact way of doing this because it cannot be copied by any other brand.  Want to know why?  Because nobody else is you, and that’s your unique selling proposition when building a personal brand.

When you step out from behind the brand and give people a chance to get to know you and the things that matter to you, like your values, mission, and purpose, you allow people to connect with you on a level that simply can’t be done with a logo.

People connect with people, and now more than ever, consumers are not just voting with their dollars based on the biggest brand or the trendiest brand, but rather they’re choosing to buy from the brands and people they feel like they vibe with and connect with.

You may sell jewelry, for example, along with thousands of other businesses, but they don’t have the same personality, mission, values, and story as you do.  That is what helps you build not just a business, but a community of lifetime supporters and fans.

Attracts The Right Clients/Customers

I know this sounds counterintuitive at first glance because you’re probably thinking: “Why wouldn’t I want as many customers as possible!?”  But the truth is, if you’re marketing your brand to everyone, then you’re marketing to no one.

A lot of the time when you see products and/or service-based business owners that get bad reviews, it’s because they weren’t marketing their products and services to the RIGHT people, and someone who wasn’t a right fit ended up purchasing.

In the previous point, we talked about standing out, but you just don’t want to stand out to everyone, you want to stand out to the right people.  That’s why things like authenticity are so important because when you showcase yourself and your personal brand, you give the right people a chance to connect with you.

As a business, we’re not meant for everyone, and that’s a good thing.  Your job as a business owner and a personal brand is to create media and content with the intention of showcasing your brand's values, mission, message, and purpose so that the people who connect with these can enter your community, and you can build a relationship with them.

Establishes Authority

You might be wondering, “How exactly does showcasing your personal brand establish you as an authority?”  If you look up the definition of “authority,” it states that someone who is an authority in their industry knows more about a topic and area than most other people.

So by leaning in with your personal brand, you’re being authentic and transparent, which means you’re not just sharing your wins, but you’re also sharing your losses.  This shows people the journey that you’ve been on to become the authority and the expert that you are today.

Too many people, especially on social media, try to make their business seem like a highlight reel like it’s all successes, and that they’ve not made any mistakes or experienced any real failures.  But let me ask you: who can relate to that?

No one can, because we all make mistakes, and by being real and authentic within your brand, you allow yourself to speak about your journey in an honest way, knowing that it will resonate with more people because they too are on that same journey.

Feeds Into Storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story?  I mean, this is why we enjoy books and movies so much.  We love hearing stories about people who started, struggled, overcame, and ultimately achieved success.  That is one of the best ways that you can connect with new audience members and bring them along on your journey.

People don’t just buy products, they buy into people, and the way that you get people to buy into you and your brand is through the stories you tell.  Whether it be about your personal life, your business journey, your mission, or everything in-between, people connect with stories and it will help you build relationships with your audience in a way that no other content can.

We always suggest writing out 5-10 stories that you would like to share with your audience, that way, you can refer back to these long-form stories and create bite-sized, social media content out of them.  Some story examples you can tell are:

• Why did you start your business?
• What was a struggle you had in your business?
• How did you overcome that struggle?
• What’s a huge win you got in your business?
• Who do you build your business for?
• When did you get your first sale / sign your first client?
• What legacy/impact would you like your business to have?
• Where were you before you started and where are you now?

These are just a few examples to get you started, but you can see how these stories will be powerful and impactful to your audience, which will help them not just connect with your brand, but with you as a human being as well.

What People Want

The people have spoken, and guess what: they’re no longer interested in brands that hide behind logos.  We talked about this a little bit earlier when we talked about brand trust, but when polled nearly half of people said that they have an overall distrust in big brands.  These numbers were even higher with millennials and gen-z.

Knowing this information can help your brand tremendously because now you can shift your focus to what audiences and consumers really want.  So what are some things they want?  They want transparency, authenticity, honesty, and values to name a few.  They want to know that you care about them and that you don’t just see them as dollar signs and people to sell your products to.

Understand that the landscape of running a business is different, and always be sure to listen to your audience, because if you listen close enough, they’ll tell you the kinds of things they want to hear and see from your brand.

Helps Build Community

If you want to build a business that lasts a lifetime (and I’m assuming that most of you reading this do), then you don’t simply want to sell to someone and move on, you want to build a community and an audience that sticks around for the long haul.

That’s what showcasing your personal brand does.  When you lead with personal branding, you’re not just selling to your audience, you’re adding value to their lives and building a relationship with them.

Some of the best personal brands are built so well that instead of them seeming like followers on social media, it’s more like a family.  How does this manifest?  It shows in things like your social media engagements, the comments you receive, and the heartfelt reviews that your customers leave for you on places like Yelp and Google.

When audiences and customers genuinely care about a brand, they not only show it with their words, but they show it with their purchases.  This isn’t something that happens overnight, though.  Building community, just like building relationships takes time and effort.  It takes you showing up for them and depositing into their lives way before they ever deposit into you and your brand.

Does it take a lot of work?  Yes.  Is it worth it?  Absolutely!

Invites Open Dialogue

What is one of the best ways for your business to build a connection with its audience?  It’s to have an open dialogue where it’s not just you talking at them, but they’re invited to talk back.

Some of the biggest and best personal brands not only communicate with their audiences on a regular basis, but they ask for their opinions on things like their products and services . . . even if they know some of the feedback they’ll get will be negative.

One of the things that we all as people long for more than anything else is to be heard.  It doesn’t matter if it’s with our family, our relationships, or when it comes to the brand we support.  We simply want our opinions and our feelings to be heard.

That is why as a personal brand having that open dialogue is so important.  Does this mean you’ll always people everyone?  No, and deep down, that’s not what they’re expecting.  All they’re expecting if for you to listen to them and try to see their point of view.

This doesn’t just help you build better relationships with your audience.  Having this open dialogue allows you to get honest feedback about your products and services, as well as any future products you might launch.  This information is extremely valuable because it can either help you hit a home run with a product or service or keep you from launching something that might end up costing you a lot of money.

Listen to your audience.

Value their opinions.

Let them feel heard.

Leads To Lifetime Customers

Did you know that according to Hubspot, a 5% increase in your customer retention can lead to an ROI of 25-95% for your business?  Did you also know that it is 6-7x harder to find new customers than it is to sell to repeat customers?

The numbers paint a simple picture: your sole focus should be turning your customers into repeat customers, and over time, into lifetime customers.  So how do you go about doing this?  You don’t do this by selling to them over and over . . . you do it by building a relationship with them.

It starts with showcasing who you are as a brand.  Then it moves into educating your audience, listening to the problems that they have, and offering solutions in the form of free value.  When it’s time to buy, you don’t simply sell to them, you create an experience for them.  An experience that shows every thought and detail of the process was created with them in mind.

Everything from the packaging to answering their questions, to the handwritten note you put inside the box when they open it.  Because you know that you aren’t simply selling to someone once and moving on . . . you’re building a relationship that lasts a lifetime.

Never underestimate the details that seem small to you, because things that seem small to someone, mean everything to someone else.  If you haven’t done this recently, I would look at your entire purchasing process from start to finish.

How easy is it for someone to buy my product/service?  If they have questions, is it easy for them to get an answer?  Do they get real-time updates on when their product arrives?  What does the packaging look like when it arrives at their doorstep?  Do I show through the whole process that I truly care about them?  Do I invite them to further connect with me, whether it’s through social media, email, or text?

All of these things seem small when you look at each of them, but add them all up, and these types of things will be the difference between someone buying from you once, or someone continuing to buy from you for life.

Conclusion

As you can see, building a personal brand is not something you do overnight . . . but neither is building a business.  If you truly want to build a successful business that stands the test of time, then you need to stop looking at your audience as people to be sold to, and start looking at them as people to build relationships with.

This has been the story of our business for the last three years.  We started our business and made a decision that we weren’t going to sell, rather, we were simply going to focus on letting people get to know us, listening to their problems, and offering them as much free value as we could.  We knew that if they needed further help, they knew how to get in touch with us because we made it easy through open dialogue.

I can safely say this was the best business decision we’ve made.  Did it take time?  Yes.  Did it take a lot of effort?  More than we could have ever imagined.  But the byproduct is a loving community that shows up for us and truly cares about us, not just as a business or a brand, but as humans . . . and that’s something we’re grateful for every day.

If you’re wondering where to start when it comes to building your personal brand, or you’re looking for some steps that you can take after reading this, we have a FREE resource about how we were able to build our own personal brand and take it viral across 5 social media platforms.  If you’d like that resource, click HERE!  Otherwise, if you have any questions, drop them below and we’d be more than happy to answer them!