There are lots of practical benefits of having strong personal branding online. We will learn all or most of those in this post. Along with the important benefits of personal branding, we will try to understand the true meaning of it and how to establish strong personal branding.
If you are running a business online, no matter if it is an e-Commerce one or just a blog, you want to become an expert within your niche. You want your audience to like you, trust you and look for your product, service or articles. You want to be easily found on the internet and across social media. You have to represent yourself as a BRAND.
Therefore, personal branding is very important, especially in today’s digitally heavy world.
Let’s explore more about this…
What is personal branding?
Personal branding is the process of creating a brand identity for a person representing a company or a business. In case you are just a blogger who doesn’t have a big team to manage a business, your name and social media presence for your audience will be enough. But in case you are part of a big team running a full-fledged business, your own name will not be enough. Your potential buyers will look for your company’s details along with the details of the product or service it is offering.
In both the cases, personal branding has a great role to play.
So, the strategy will be different for each of the cases, but what matters the most is that you have to focus a lot on personal branding. Make yourself or your company look like a brand that your target audience will like and trust more than your competitors in the same field.
Many of us think that personal branding is marketing yourself or the company you are representing. That is half true. Marketing is not the only think that you do in personal branding. Marketing is of course important, but there are other things involved in a successful personal branding campaign.
Remember, it’s a holistic campaign that takes a lot of persistent hard work. Staying loyal to the target audience and customers is important. Through personal branding, you stand for yourself and stay responsible towards your customers. You don’t just market yourself, but earn trust and respect through this campaign.
For a business to become and stay successful, it’s important to project it as a brand. These days, there are thousands and thousands of new competitors come to the scene and create more headaches for your business every day. People’s attention spans are getting shorter too, so it’s very important to create a strong impression in their minds. The first time they come to you, they must like you and remember you for long term. Therefore, creating a brand identity is essential.
Here are some of the most common advantages of having strong personal branding, explained in greater detail:
It helps in earning trust
Earning your audience’s trust is important. These days, people look for social media profiles of the company before making their purchasing decision. Why do they do that? They want to see whether the company has good reputation on social media networks or not. They want to see a well-defined presence of the brand. They want to see who you actually are (individual and business) and what you represent. They want clarity about your company in all aspects. The reputation also counts on the customers’ reviews posted on the social networks and other reviews platforms. If all looks good, that naturally earns trust for the brand.
Personal branding is the process that helps earn trust for the company from the audience and potential customers. It helps develop an identity and good presence for the brand both online as well as offline. This psychological advantage can go a long way, so personal branding is a must for all brands these days.
It helps in winning over the competitors
Competition is very high. If your target audience or potential customers don’t find the things they are looking for in you, there are tons of alternatives for them. What could be a sale or job opportunity for you can now easily be someone else’s.
Personal branding can actually help you stand out from others in your field. You need to represent yourself as an individual or a business in a way such that they see something unique and something better in you than your competitors. Through a good personal branding strategy you can achieve that. Personal branding is very useful especially when you are just a starter in your field, regardless of whether you are trying to grow your business or find a job for yourself. Your customers or employers they all will want to see something extra in you, because all are qualified these days. That extra factor will help you win over your competitors, and that is possible through personal branding.
It helps find out more business opportunities
It’s like a natural by-product of good personal branding. You do that to build a strong brand presence that looks and functions better than your competitors, and it is a continuous thing. Building a strong brand identity takes a lot of continuous effort in the right way. And along the way, you get to see the result as well.
Once you are able to build trust and have that extra factor that is missing in your competitors you are going to look better and people are going to find you more and more. That is what leads to getting more and more business opportunities over time.
The key here is that you don’t just portray yourself as a better and stronger candidate, but you also work on yourself, your skills, your company profile, your products and service(s). You don’t simply look better than others, you become better than others. You become an expert in your field. The competitive advantage helps you get more business opportunities and it is all possible through good personal branding.
So, now you have understood the need and importance of personal branding, right? Next, we will learn how to start developing a personal brand for yourself or the company you are standing for.
Here is how to get started with a good personal branding strategy.
Design a strong-looking unique logo
A logo is a must. Your logo should look unique and send a unique message. Your logo should go with your unique theme, so build a theme for yourself if you have not already. When creating a logo, you have to design it in such a way that it should look good everywhere such as your social media accounts, visiting cards, letter heads, personal website (if you have one) and even on big hoardings. You get the point, right?
Work on your social media profiles
Your social media accounts are a good place to start your personal branding campaign. The images you use and the text you write on your social profiles must be compelling enough to persuade people to take actions fast. Your social media profile text (page info and about section) and the posts you create must send out a clear positive message. The text must be highly optimized containing certain key phrases that your target audience would search for. An optimized profile comes on the top of the search listings and increases your outreach. Be sure not to post anything that would negatively impact your brand presence.
You may build your own website
Having a website of your own is not an expensive thing these days. You can create a personal website for yourself even if you don’t have any technical knowledge or expert skills. And this is possible due to some popular content management systems (CMS). When it comes to user friendliness and number of users worldwide WordPress happens to be the best and most popular CMS. You can easily create a personal website using WordPress to facilitate your personal branding campaign.
Whether you are looking for new opportunities for your business or looking to get a large audience for your blog, a website of your own is a must. And for job seekers it may be optional, but having a personal website always provides an extra edge.
Develop a content strategy
The best was saved for last. CONTENT is supremely important for your personal branding strategy to become successful. What your target audience or your employers see is your content.
You need to develop a good content strategy that primarily includes a content calendar for your social media profiles. You will decide what you are going to post on your social media profiles. There would be some images (preferably informative graphics known as infographics), some videos, some plain text with hyperlinked keywords and some other informative or educative posts that you would share on your own timeline for your audience. All that you post on your social profiles must be telling more about your product or service, so building your unique theme and voice is crucial.
Personal branding is of utmost importance for every business today. If you are an individual running a small startup or just a blog, you still need to work on personal branding. People will find you on searches, see your profiles to know about you and learn about the business you stand for. They will trust you become a customer. That is how you make a successful conversion, and personal branding will be immensely useful for your business growth.
Are you working on your personal branding already? If you are looking for a trustworthy digital agency to take care of your entire personal branding needs at a very reasonable price point, you may choose SEO Extent. We have helped over 500 different businesses succeed to date. We welcome you to be the next.