Whether you're a novice and want to learn what a personal brand is, or a more seasoned expert who's interested in building a personal brand though leadership, you've come to the right place. A personal brand is much more than a professional website, a resume, or a business card. It's the essence of who you are as a creative, professional, or an entrepreneur.
Brand Builders Group reports that Google search volume for the term "personal brand" has increased 4x in recent years and is now a crucial part when it comes to building a professional career or a successful business.
74% of Americans are more likely to buy from, do business with, or recommend to friends an individual who has an established personal brand. More importantly, a strong personal brand is highly profitable – 58% of Americans admit that they'd be willing to pay more to receive services from someone who has an established personal brand.
So, how do you build a strong personal brand that allows you to create a thriving career or a business? Read on to find out.
Why building a personal brand is necessary
Before we dive into the strategies on how to build a personal brand, let's talk about what is a personal brand. Your personal brand is the way you show up as a professional, creative, or entrepreneur. It encompasses your values, mission, story, beliefs, expertise, visual assets, and tone of voice. In short, a personal brand is what shows the world how unique you are and tells people why they might want to work with you or buy from you.
A strong personal brand can be a game changer to your career or business, whether you're just starting out or you've been in the game for years. It can be the gateway to connecting to your existing audience better or finding a new one. A personal brand might be the thing that can catapult your earnings to new heights and establish yourself as the thought leader in your industry.
Business people like Tony Robins and Patt Flynn, or even celebrities like Taylor Swift, all have strong personal brands that helped them build successful careers and dedicated audiences who will support them and buy from them no matter what. That's the true power of a strong personal brand – connecting with the right people and making them your super fans.
The building blocks of a strong personal brand
Every personal brand will be different. That's the whole point of a personal brand, after all. However, all personal brands have certain things in common – five fundamental pillars of a strong personal brand. Those pillars are:
- Values: What are your values as a person or a professional? What is important for you, and what do you and your brand stand for? For example: honesty, transparency, or professionalism.
- Skills: What is your expertise? What are the things at which you excel? What value can you offer to people who follow you, buy from you, or hire you?
- Personality: Your personality and character are the things that make you unique. Nobody has your personality, so how can you infuse your unique voice and thoughts into your work or product?
- Unique Selling Points: What makes your product or service or your expertise better than your competitors? In other words -- what makes you special, and why should people choose your expertise over someone else?
- Storytelling: The path to people's hearts, minds, and wallets is through compelling storytelling. So, what's your story? Why do you do what you do? How has it changed your life? Or how it can change someone else's life?
These key pillars are at the core of any personal brand and a way to make your personal brand stand out. Authenticity is key to standing out in the crowd and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. If you develop your personal brand according to these fundamental pills, it can help you craft a compelling, unique personal brand with ease.
Steps to Build Your Personal Brand
Creating a personal brand doesn't have to be hard. Below, you'll find our easy step-by-step guide to help you build a personal brand.
Define Your Niche and Audience
The first step will be to define your niche and who you are as an expert. That includes choosing an industry you want to build a personal brand in and deciding what you want to be known for. That is crucial to know so you can offer the best value to your audience.
Once you know who you are and what you offer, you'll want to figure out who your target audience is. This is extremely important because knowing who your ideal audience is will allow you to tailor your tone of voice, brand message, and offers and will even determine the platforms you'll want to promote yourself on.
So, spend time doing research on who your target audience is, what they like, what their pain points are, and where you can find them. You might also note down what type of content they prefer to consume, how much money they're willing to spend, and what kind of language they use. Knowing that will help you tailor your personal brand to speak directly to your ideal audience.
Craft Your personal brand statement
Your personal branding statement might be one of the most important assets. A personal brand statement is a concise two- to three-sentence long statement that explains what you do, who you serve, and what your unique offer is.
You want it to be simple and easy to understand. It's important that your personal brand statement is written in your brand's tone of voice and uses your brand's language. People who read your personal brand statement have to know immediately what to expect from you as the industry expert.
Establish your online presence
In 2024 (and beyond), establishing a social media presence is key to your personal brand's growth. Whether you're a professional, a creative, or an entrepreneur, an online presence is the easiest way to establish yourself as an expert and reach your ideal audience.
Online personal branding is an art form that's very possible to master if you know what to do. First and foremost, you'll need to pick an online platform (or a few):
- A website: You can create a professional website with tools like Carrd or hire a professional designer to help you design a custom WordPress website.
- Social media: Depending on where your audience spends their time online, you want to have one or more social media accounts on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, etc.
- Medium: If you want to blog but don't want to build your own website, Medium can be a great low-cost alternative for beginners to start establishing yourself as the expert.
- YouTube: If video content is your preferred form of content, then you might want to create a YouTube channel as your main platform.
- Substack: Substack is a newsletter platform that allows you to create a newsletter for free with no technical skills. Plenty of writers, journalists, and entrepreneurs choose this platform to help them build their personal brands.
- Podcasts: You might choose to create a podcast as your main platform and grow your brand with the help of audio content.
You might want to have a website, no matter what other platforms you choose. Your website can serve as the main hub for your personal brand, and other platforms can be a way to drive traffic and access new audiences.
Social media can be a great way to drive traffic to your website and reach your target audience. Social media personal branding might look complicated, but it doesn't have to be. You want to optimize your profile by using keywords to explain who you are and what you do, and always make sure to use cohesive visual assets when creating content.
Showcasing your expertise through content creation
One of the most effective personal brand building strategies is content creation. While having an online presence is a great start, you want to create content to attract people, offer value, and build trust.
To establish yourself as the thought leader and the expert in your field, you want to show people the depth of your knowledge and that you understand what your audience is seeking. Content creation is a great way to achieve that.
Choose one or more types of content to create:
- Video: Create long-form videos for YouTube or short-form videos for social media platforms like TikTok.
- Social Media Posts: Create IG stories, Facebook or Instagram posts, Threads, Twitter short-form posts or longer LinkedIn posts.
- Audio: Create long- or short-form audio content for your podcast or make guest podcasting appearances.
- Blog Posts: Write and publish blog posts on your own blog or platforms like Medium.
- Newsletters: Create and send an expert newsletter through platforms like Substack.
Most people will do a combination of a few different types of content to build credibility. However, when you're first standing out, you want to start small and then expand as you grow.
Personal brand template
Creating a personal brand can be a daunting task. That's why we put together a quick personal brand template to help you get started. A personal brand template is a resource that outlines all key components of a stellar personal brand. Use it when you want to create a personal brand strategy or brainstorm some ideas.
Once you fill out this template, you can always refer back to it in the future. It'll help you stay consistent with your message, visuals, and other aspects of your personal brand presence online.
Our personal brand template is divided into six parts that each cover the fundamental pillars of a strong personal brand:
Part 1: About you
- Your Personal Brand Name: What name do you want people to know you by?
- Your Tagline / Slogan: What is your personal brand's focus?
- Mission Statement: What drives you? What are your core values and beliefs?
- Brief Bio: What's your background, expertise, and your hook?
- Core Values: What are three to five core values you believe in and base your brand on?
- Unique Selling Point (USP): What sets you apart from others in your field?
Part 2: About your target audience
- Who You Serve: Who is your ideal target audience?
- Your Audience Needs: What is your ideal target audience struggle with? What are their pain points?
- Where Your Audience Hands Out: Where does your audience spend their time online? What platforms can you find them on?
Part 3: Your message
- Primary Message: What do you want people to associate with your brand?
- Supporting Messages: How do your core values and beliefs support your primary message?
Part 4: Your visual identity
- Logo: What is your brand logo?
- Color Palette: What are three to five colors that represent your brand?
- Fonts: What are two to three fonts you use to create visual assets?
- Image Style: What kind of imagery, videos, and illustrations reflect your brand's vision and aesthetic?
Part 5: Your brand voice & tone
- Tone: What is your brand's tone of voice? Example: friendly, professional, playful, etc.
- Key Phrases: What language does your brand use?
- Communication Style: What's your communication style? Example: informative, educational, entertaining, etc.
Part 6: Your Online Presence
- Website: What is your website domain?
- Social Media Links: What social media platforms do you use to promote yourself? What are the handles of your profiles?
- Content Types: What type of content do you create for your personal brand? Example: videos, blog posts, IG stories, etc.
Examples of successful personal brands
Many online creators, entrepreneurs, and influencers have built very successful careers thanks to a strong personal brand. A great way to get inspired and get more insights on how to build a strong personal brand is to identify those people and see what they did to get where they are now. Let's look at three strong personal branding examples.
Grace Beverly
We Are Tala, a sustainable activewear brand. Shreddy, a fitness app and supplement brand. The Productivity Method, a paper and digital planner business. Working Hard, or Hardly Working, a business and productivity podcast. Get Retrograde, a talent agency of the future. What do all of these businesses have in common? Grace Beverly.
Grace Beverly is an Instagram influencer and YouTuber turned entrepreneur who runs five different successful businesses. Her secret to such an amazing success? The answer is simple – her strong personal brand.
Beverly has a 1M+ audience that has been with her since her days at Oxford University when she used to film study and fitness vlogs and post them on her YouTube channel. Because she has built a genuine personal brand as a high-achieving, ambitious woman, she was able to build multiple businesses that all resonate with her audience.
Her audience wants to look like her, so they use her fitness app and supplements. They want to dress like her, so they buy clothes she wears from her clothing brand. They want to be as productive and successful as she, so they listen to her productivity podcast, read her book on productivity, and buy the planners she uses from her brand. That is the true power of a personal brand.
Jenna Kutcher
Jenna Kutcher is a marketing expert, author, podcaster, and online course creator with a strong personal brand. She started her entrepreneurship journey as a freelance wedding photographer and then built her marketing course and podcast business, teaching people how to market themselves into the multimillion-dollar empire her personal brand is today.
Kutcher's personal brand is recognizable on different mediums (like social media, podcasts, and blogs) not only through her stunning and consistent visuals but also her tone of voice and the brand message. She's warm, relatable, and transparent with her audience, which creates a strong bond between her and her audience.
Even though her services and products shifted throughout the years, the core of her personal brand remained the same, which allowed her to have a dedicated audience of millions of people supporting her various business ventures like online courses, a digital store, and her bestselling book.
Ali Abdaal
Ali Abdaal is a doctor-turned-productivity YouTuber and entrepreneur with a huge audience and multiple business ventures. His personal brand is recognizable and consistent. From his YouTube videos, personal website, book, newsletter, and social media, he has cohesive minimalistic visuals and the same tone of voice.
Abdaal has established himself as a productivity expert through his YouTube channel, where he shares tips on how to be more effective and build the life you want. His success on YouTube allowed him to launch his YouTube course, where he teaches people how to start and grow a YouTube channel. But that's not all.
Due to his strong personal brand as a productivity expert, he got a book deal and was able to further establish himself in the industry. His latest venture is The Productivity Lab, where he helps other creatives, entrepreneurs, and students stay on track with their goals and productivity.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Branding Yourself
Sometimes, people make mistakes when building their personal brands. When you're not sure where to start or what to do, or if you're learning by doing and making mistakes, it's natural for mistakes to happen. However, if you want to supercharge your way to success when branding yourself, avoid these five personal branding pitfalls:
- Inconsistency: Avoid being inconsistent with your brand visuals and tone of voice, as well as posting schedule. Consistency is key to building trust and a personal brand that's recognizable from the very first glance.
- Over-promotion: Your personal brand should be about building connections and offering value so that people want to work with you, buy from you, or hire you. Over-promoting yourself on all of your channels can repel people and be an obstacle to building genuine connections.
- Lack of Authenticity: It might be tempting to replicate other people's personal brands who are successful and working or want to show up as someone else rather than your true authentic self. However, it's not a sustainable way to build a personal brand, and the best way to succeed is to be your authentic self.
- Speaking to Everyone: When you want to reach everyone (aka a wide audience), you end up not resonating with anyone. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone with your personal brand, focus on serving your ideal target audience to reap the best results.
- Negativity: Building your brand on negativity or by bringing down your competitors is not the most ethical or sustainable way to build a personal brand. Focus on highlighting your strengths and connecting with your audience rather than critiquing others.
Final Thoughts on Building a Lasting Personal Brand
Personal branding is the key to long-term success for professionals, creatives, and entrepreneurs. Branding yourself as an expert in your field and as a thought leader can help you land higher-paying deals and clients and help you build trust and connection with your ideal audience. The best news is that it doesn't cost you any money to start building a personal brand, and you can start doing it even if you're a complete beginner.
If you're ready to start your journey of building a strong personal brand to build a long-lasting career or business, start today by downloading our personal brand template to help you create the personal brand of your dreams.
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