How To Build Your Personal Brand

Are you look­ing to evolve your per­son­al brand?

We all have the tools to build our per­son­al brands with the inter­net. This means that you can take meas­ures to devel­op and strengthen your brand, wheth­er you’re a social media nat­ur­al or not. 

But how?

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. 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 there’s any­thing you can do to devel­op fur­ther and enhance these assets — or com­bine them. By ask­ing for an audi­ence, you ask people 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 sen­tence clearly describ­ing how you will cre­ate value for a spe­cif­ic audience.

Step 2. Identify Your Surround Message

Based on your assets and your sen­tence describ­ing how you’ve decided to cre­ate value for your audi­ence — find your cent­ral message.

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 sur­round mes­sage, it must be some­thing that you’re genu­inely inter­ested in.

Whenever you make some­thing pub­lic, wheth­er it’s a pod­cast epis­ode or an inter­view with a journ­al­ist, use your sur­round 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 sur­round 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 to one plat­form consistently.

For instance, con­sider run­ning a pod­cast if your assets include hav­ing a great voice, some storytelling skills, and excit­ing life. The choice of the main out­put is not only to start build­ing an audi­ence and stick­ing to your sur­round 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 no less than 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 and allow 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: Make sure your fans know how you look and sound. Let them know what you feel, how you 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. You could, for instance, 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: The Rebel Yell Statement

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: 3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling (in 15 Minutes)

PR Resource: The Follower Contract