Secrets to Growing a Strong Brand
As the Internet continues to skew ever more heavily towards social networking, an increasing number of smart business owners and ambitious individuals are starting their own personal brands online.
It’s time to face facts. If you are in business and have any sort of professional profile, people are already talking about you. For instance, people are sharing things about you, your brand, your business, your content. You can either ignore them, join in the conversation, or take control of the conversation by presenting a unified brand through all your marketing efforts, from your business card to your website, videos, ebooks and more.
Unless you are tracking all of your website promotions carefully (and you should be), there is really no way of being sure exactly how many people are coming across you and your work, but thanks to the world of social media and mobile marketing, your chances of succeeding in business through branding yourself have never been better.
Most of the people visiting the Internet are trying to perform a certain task with more or less of a degree of urgency. We say visiting because browsing sounds so laid back. In many cases, people are actually in so much of a hurry that they will rarely look beyond the first link or two presented to them in the search engines.
And yet you have to be in the game to win it. In other words, you need to have enough people talking about you online for your name to appear when people run a search for keywords related to your industry.
What is your area of expertise? What do you want to be famous for and how much do you hope to get paid for your ebooks, courses, webinars and consulting services?
And what can you do to get people on the social networks so interested in what you have to say that they are willing to pass along your information to other people also interested in your niche?
You might think that you are no one special and therefore do not need a personal brand. Don’t let false modesty get in the way of your success.
Even if you are the shy and retiring type, there are a number of things you can do to build your brand effectively online.
It can require some investment in terms of time and energy, and will not bear fruit right away, but getting started today could help you start laying the foundation for a promising business in the future.
Once you lay this foundation and build on it, you will soon find that you have easier access to jobs, clients will seek you out, partners will come to you and your business life will generally flow much more easily.
Here’s how to build your personal brand online in a few easy steps (though you will have to repeat them often as long as you continue in business.
*Clarifying Your Brand
Before “publishing” your brand to the world, you first need to get clear on what exactly your brand is going to be. What makes your knowledge, point of view ands skills unique?
Ask yourself:
* What unique value/s do you bring to the table? This should be something that you alone can provide. It can be a unique twist on something already existing, or it could be something completely brand new, a merging of two unique skills sets or viewpoints, for instance.
* What problems can you solve better than anyone else? Specializing often helps. For instance, it is better to specialize in “selling to IT companies” than to specialize in “sales.”
* What are you deeply passionate about? Pick a topic that you could talk about for hours. Clients and business associates can sense knowledge and enthusiasm in your voice online and offline in an instant.
Are you an animal activist? A work at home mom-turned online tycoon? A man who has studied the markets and come up with a winning system? Decide who you are and who you want to aim your message at, and then start to craft your personal brand.
* Conveying Your Personal Brand
Once you are clear about what personal brand you want to convey established for yourself, the next step is to convey it to the world. You can’t be all things to all people, so your brand needs to ‘speak to’ the ideal customer in your niche.
Who they are depends on who you think they are. If you are a stay at home mom who could barely make ends meet until one day you started X business, chances are that your ideal customer will be other women in the same situation. (Do your niche and keyword research to see if you have come across a paying market-see Joan Mullally’s guides upon the subject before trying to launch your personal brand to be certain you have a business that can pay for itself for many years.)
You steps to success when it comes to your brand are:
1-Express your brand in a clear and concise way. What you do and who you are should all be expressed into one clear sentence (your ‘elevator’ speech). If someone asks what we do, we say, “We help small business owners make more money on the Internet,” or “We help small business owners turn around their failing websites to get results.”
This makes it easy to remember who you are and how to ‘fit you into what they and other people might be looking for. If they know someone who can use your service, it will pop into their mind immediately. People tend to do business with people they ‘know’ and like. If you make a good impression, they might not need your services personally, but they might be happy to refer someone as intelligent and presentable as you to their friends and family.
2-Present a unified brand in every piece of promotional material that you create.
Once your branding and messaging is clear, put it on all of your collateral materials, from your business cards and all stationery to brochures, flyers and more. Create branded YouTube videos, write and post articles about your niche at article directories, and participate in social networking online as well. Create a channel at YouTube with valuable content about who you are. Create a rich and robust member page at Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, the social networking platform for professionals.
The secret to growing a strong personal brand is to know what you stand for and be consistent in all your messaging. This goes beyond what people usually think of as branding-just having an attractive logo. A great logo does help, but what you really need in order to differentiate yourself in the market is a clear value proposition, also referred to as a unique selling point (USP). Hone it into an easy-to-explain ‘elevator speech’ and convey your brand to the world in a consistent manner across all your marketing channels.
Further Reading
Visit the Brand Spotlight for more information
