How To Build Your Personal Brand

Are you look­ing to evolve your per­son­al brand?

We all have the tools to build our per­son­al brands on the inter­net. This means that you can take meas­ures to devel­op and strengthen your brand — wheth­er you’re a Social Media Natural or not.

Here we go:

Step 1. Identify Your Personal Brand Assets

What do you bring to the table?

Some are smart, some are beau­ti­ful, some are well-spoken, some have spe­cial skills or tal­ents, some are cre­at­ive, some know stuff, some have excit­ing lives, some have great taste, some are inspir­ing, some are funny, some have grit, some have cour­age, some are weird, some are bru­tally hon­est, some are vul­ner­able, and some are just wicked charm­ing in front of a web camera.

You should fig­ure out what assets you have and write them down.

The more assets you have, the bet­ter. You don’t have to belong to the top 1% in the world for your chosen strengths, but you need to be able to pull it off in the eyes of your future audience.

Also, fig­ure out if you can do any­thing to devel­op and enhance these assets fur­ther or com­bine them. By ask­ing for an audi­ence, you ask for their par­tic­u­lar atten­tion. You need to do your part, which includes increas­ing your chances of being attract­ive to oth­er people who don’t know you.

Action: Write down your most sub­stan­tial or unique assets, and based on these assets — write down a state­ment clearly describ­ing how you will cre­ate value for a spe­cif­ic audience.

Step 2. Identify Your Core Message

Core mes­sage = the fun­da­ment­al idea or prom­ise that a brand con­sist­ently com­mu­nic­ates across all plat­forms, defin­ing its val­ues and what it stands for in every inter­ac­tion with its audience.

Find your core mes­sage based on your assets and the state­ment describ­ing how you’ve decided to cre­ate value for your audience.

You need to fig­ure out what you’re about — and it must only be one thing. Maybe you want your pas­sion for food to rub off on oth­er people. Or, maybe you want to be an inspir­a­tion to female entre­pren­eurs? Whatever you choose as your core mes­sage, it must be some­thing that you’re genu­inely inter­ested in.

Whenever you make some­thing pub­lic, wheth­er a pod­cast epis­ode or an inter­view with a journ­al­ist, use your core mes­sage to ensure that everything you do or say is aligned with your message.

If your mes­sage is that you want your pas­sion for food to rub off on oth­ers, you must­n’t pub­lish any­thing that isn’t pas­sion­ate through and through. If your mes­sage inspires female entre­pren­eurs, you must­n’t pub­lish any­thing inspirational.

Action: Identify and write down your core mes­sage — make it sound like your most import­ant mis­sion in life.

Step 3. Decide Your Main Output

To be per­ceived as any­thing, you need a main out­put that is also con­sist­ent. It could be vlogs, pod­casts, blog posts, social media updates, sem­inars, pub­li­city, etc. It’s okay to jump back and forth between dif­fer­ent out­put forms, but you need to pub­lish con­sist­ently on one platform.

Brand Consistency in Social Media = Followers sub­scribe now (today’s brand per­form­ance) on faith (tomorrow’s brand per­form­ance) via trust (yesterday’s brand per­form­ance).

For instance, con­sider run­ning a pod­cast if your assets include hav­ing a great voice, some storytelling skills, and an excit­ing life. The choice of the main out­put is not only to start build­ing an audi­ence and stick­ing to your Core Message, although that is part of it. Each type of out­put comes with a par­tic­u­lar format. And it would help if you prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice to find your unique tonality.

Today, most indi­vidu­als con­sidered per­son­al brands have ded­ic­ated much energy to estab­lish­ing them­selves long-term via a spe­cif­ic out­put format. Whatever main out­put you choose, I recom­mend giv­ing it at least two years.

Action: Choose one main out­put and stick to that format con­sist­ently for at least 1 – 2 years.

Step 4. Enhance Your Unique Quirks

We are all unique snow­flakes. However, most of us are still being put into bor­ing boxes with labels by oth­ers. Case in point: I’m a white male in the media industry; hav­ing a blog hardly makes me unique in most people’s eyes. If noth­ing else, aspir­ing per­son­al brands must make people remem­ber them.

There’s a fine line here between “inter­est­ing” or “insane” and between “cool” or “corny”. Bono from U2 can pull off wear­ing bright, yel­low-tin­ted shades every­where, but the chances are that you or I can­’t. Be care­ful. Other than that, hustle until you no longer have to intro­duce yourself.

Action: Identify and write down 3 – 5 unique quirks, allow­ing them to sur­face con­sist­ently in your chosen main output.

Step 5. Start Your Sensory Expansion

It would be best if you built a rap­port with an audi­ence. Once you start get­ting a few fol­low­ers who seem to appre­ci­ate the kind of brand you’re try­ing to estab­lish, focus on allow­ing them to get to know the real you.

How will you let your fans see your phys­ic­al appear­ance in vari­ous situ­ations? How will you let them hear your voice in a dif­fer­ent set­ting? How are you going to let them exper­i­ence your thoughts? How are you going to make them feel what you feel?

Video is a tre­mend­ously strong format for allow­ing an audi­ence to con­nect with you simply because it’s the closest thing to meet­ing someone. If you hap­pen to be a social media nat­ur­al for Youtube, con­grat­u­la­tions; your chances of suc­ceed­ing will increase.

Action: Let your fans know how you look, sound, feel, think, and react.

Step 6. Recruit a Social Media Crew

In the age of social media, social con­nec­tions have an amp­li­fy­ing effect. If you have a friend with sim­il­ar interests who is also try­ing to estab­lish their per­son­al brand, you could “share” your audi­ences with each oth­er. This could allow you to double the pro­gress of your efforts.

The more, the mer­ri­er, but adding people to your circle of influ­ence can be more com­plex than it seems. Your friends must, too, be sol­id and per­sist­ent brand build­ers. And, they must, just like you, from time to time sac­ri­fice their ego own ego on the altar of reci­pro­city—some­thing very few people can muster.

Action: Find 1 – 5 oth­er aspir­ing per­son­al brands with sim­il­ar interests and boost each oth­er continuously.

Step 7. Accept Your Brand Challenges

An “elec­tric­al charge” to your per­son­al brand can be com­pel­ling. For instance, you could give your­self dif­fer­ent chal­lenges and allow your audi­ence to fol­low you on your jour­ney to meet those chal­lenges. People love stor­ies, and stor­ies need enemies and obstacles.

From a brand-build­ing per­spect­ive, the great thing about chal­lenges is that they seem highly enga­ging before, dur­ing, and after. Before tak­ing on a chal­lenge, you invoke sup­port, sym­pathy, and respect afterwards.

Take action — it speaks louder than words.

Action: Identify and accept at least one pub­lic chal­lenge and allow your audi­ence to exper­i­ence it through you.

PR Resource: Formula for Personal Branding

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Doctor Spin’s Formula for Personal Branding

Here’s my action­able for­mula for per­son­al branding:

Stupid Majority + Smart Minority = PR Success

What do these con­cepts mean?

Stupid Majority = a major­ity of today that will stead­ily decline into a minor­ity of tomorrow.

Smart Minority = a minor­ity of today that will grow into a new major­ity of tomorrow.

So, what do you have to do exactly?

Identify your Stupid Majority. For example, in my niche, the pub­lic rela­tions industry, there are plenty:

• “PR is all about pub­li­city and media relations.”
• “Digital com­mu­nic­a­tion is too tech­nic­al for PR professionals.”
• “PR pro­fes­sion­als must talk using cor­por­ate platitudes.”
• “PR pro­fes­sion­als must send out shitty press releases.”
• “Working with influ­en­cers is mar­ket­ing, not PR.”
• “PR will be okay once we fig­ure out how to cal­cu­late ROI.”
• “The PR func­tion should be rep­res­en­ted at the C‑level no mat­ter what.”
• “Corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion and CSR must be ‘boomer bor­ing,’ cringe, and woke.”
• “PR pro­fes­sion­als don’t have to know any­thing about web design, art dir­ec­tion, or UIX.”
• “To work with PR, you don’t have to know any­thing about PR his­tory, aca­dem­ic research, or theories.”
• “A PR strategy is the same as a PR plan.”

And so on. 

There are plenty of Stupid Majorities (and cor­res­pond­ing Smart Minorities) every­where — as long as you’re will­ing to scratch the sur­face. You must brain­storm and pro­duce a list for your niche or industry to get started.

Once you start gain­ing trac­tion, remem­ber that not every­one will love you. There’s the para­dox of prom­in­ence and the Norman axiom.

Learn more: The Formula for Personal Branding

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.

PR Resource: Languages of Fascination

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

The Languages of Fascination

Author Sally Hogshead cre­ated the concept and the visu­al rep­res­ent­a­tion of the lan­guages of fas­cin­a­tion. Discover more at how​to​fas​cin​ate​.com.

“80% of people behave dif­fer­ently when they’re fas­cin­ated by a brand. They do research, talk to friends. In fact, con­sumers report spe­cif­ic phys­ic­al responses to fas­cin­at­ing products: a faster heart rate and ‘thrill’ of excite­ment.“
Source: Sally Hogshead ¹Hogshead, S. (2024, October 10). How to Fascinate. https://​www​.how​to​fas​cin​ate​.com/

Hogshead’s mod­el is a help­ful primer for copy­writ­ing for per­son­al brands in all types of industries.

The 7 Languages of Fascination

• Innovation is the lan­guage of creativity.
• Passion is the lan­guage of relationships.
• Power is the lan­guage of confidence.
• Prestige is the lan­guage of excellence.
• Trust is the lan­guage of stability.
• Mystique is the lan­guage of listening.
• Alert is the lan­guage of details.

Hogshead’s 49 Personality Archetypes

Learn more: Take Hogshead’s “Fascinate Assessment”

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.

PR Resource: The Rebel Yell Statement

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Storytelling Technique: The Rebel Yell Statement

Copywriter Kevin Rogers pub­lished this simple yet effect­ive script to improve your storytelling, the Rebel Yell Statement, named after the legendary rock anthem by Billy Idol.

Here’s the Rebel Yell Statement script for you to try: 

My name is _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​, I love _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ but was fed up with _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​. So I cre­ated _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ that _________.

Here’s an example by Rogers on Steve Jobs:

My name is Steve, I love com­puters but was fed up with the snail’s pace of com­mer­cial tech­no­logy. So I cre­ated a user-friendly com­puter that pro­cesses inform­a­tion faster than any­thing else out there today.

Here’s the Rebel Yell Statement I wrote for this blog, Doctor Spin:

My name is Jerry, I love PR, but was fed up with “social media experts” giv­ing cli­ents bull­shit advice. So I cre­ated Doctor Spin to share action­able insights based on aca­dem­ic research, hands-on exper­i­ence, and passion.

Learn more: The Rebel Yell Statement

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.

PR Resource: The Follower Contract

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

The Follower Contract

How can brands bet­ter under­stand fol­low­er engage­ment? Think of every fol­low as an invis­ible contract.

Dear Brand,

• Yes, I’m now fol­low­ing you. Congratulations (to you).
• I fol­lowed you based on what you’ve demon­strated in the past, so don’t be sur­prised if I stop enga­ging (or unfol­low­ing) if you do oth­er stuff.
• You now have my per­mis­sion to provide me with the type of con­tent that first attrac­ted me to your brand.
• I, the fol­low­er, will determ­ine any involve­ment on a future case-by-case basis.
• My fol­low is not a ‘pay­ment’ for your past accom­plish­ments; my fol­low is an ‘advance pay­ment’ for what I expect from you in the future.
• It would be best if you always pre­sup­posed that I’m inter­ested in myself and my friends first and then, maybe, in your brand.
• Until we part ways, I expect you to be clear about my poten­tial involve­ment in your cause.

Best regards,
Your New Follower

Think of every single fol­low­er, fan, and sub­scriber hav­ing such an agree­ment with your brand.

Learn more: The Follower Contract

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.