If I were to ask you what you're known for or what you'd like to be known for,
could you give me a one or two word?
if you can go ahead and leave it down in the comments.
If you're watching on YouTube and if not keep on watching or listening, because
today we're gonna be talking about how to build a personal brand, which aims
to do exactly that in short, a personal brand should let people know what you're
all about in just a couple of words.
Maybe think of it as your kind of personal keyword or your personal search term.
If you will.
So the first thing that you need to do, if you want to build a
personal brand is develop a us P or unique selling proposition.
Basically what a USP does is explain exactly what you do, who you help or
who you do it for and what methods or you know, exact ways that you
actually accomplished that job.
So I'll give you an example.
Maybe if I was a wedding photo, I could say I help non-traditional
couples capture their special day by high quality photography in
videography or something like that.
Who is that key audience that target customer, explain who that is.
And then you explain what you help them do, what you help
them achieve or accomplish.
Maybe you help them make more money.
Get more sales, get more leads, capture their memories.
Themselves better.
I don't know.
And then your method or your, the way that you're actually delivering
this, do you produce online courses that help people DIY their photos or
do you actually go on site and are a dedicated onsite day of photographer?
And as I mentioned, you know, a big part of that unique selling
proposition is that audience.
So you really do want to hone in on who am I trying to talk to?
What do I want to say to them?
Before moving on to really any other step, you have to have a key audience in mind.
It doesn't have to be completely, you know, niche down to the point of exact,
you know, demographics, you know, exact ages, gender, all of that, but having
an idea, being able to like picture that person in your head is gonna.
The rest of this process so much easier.
Give them a name.
If you want to.
For me, I just kind of picture some of my favorite customers when I'm
developing my content and thinking about my offers and things like that.
I just think of people who've taken my courses, who I've worked with in the past
or who I'm currently working with, who I love and would love to work with forever.
And I picture them when I put this stuff together.
So have a real person or an imaginary person that you can do the same with.
Now something else I want you to consider is your end goal.
I know when you're just in the beginning stages of building a personal brand,
it might seem a little bit premature.
You're like, I don't really know what my end goal is quite yet, but think
long game, you know, where do you wanna be in five years, 10 years.
Where would you like to be when you retire?
What type of business do you wanna have at that point or not have, you know,
do you want to just sell your business eventually and be done with it and retire?
Do you want to build something that is multi-generational that
you can pass down to your family or your spouse or your nephews or
whoever when it's your time to go?
I think it's also important to note that like social media.
it's here to stay.
I think we can go ahead and say that, but is this exact format forever here to stay?
I don't know.
I don't know if people are gonna be listening to podcasts in 10
years or YouTube in 10 years.
So I like to think of the ways that I would like to build
my business offline as well.
That may have a little bit more staying power that may have a little bit more
credibility if you will, behind them.
For example, people have like always bought books, books have been a thing.
You know, forever more or less.
So I feel like that is a pretty tried and true method of knowledge sharing.
So that's something that I'm working on, hopefully in the next year or
two, uh, something else that has been going on for a long time is speaking.
So that could be a way that you pivot your business or take your business offline.
So think about that.
Do you wanna build an agency?
Do you wanna do speaking, do you wanna write a book?
Do you wanna.
Be in traditional media, like TV, figure out what that end goal is
because it's gonna help you decide on the platforms that you choose
to showcase your personal brand.
For example, if you want to be a speaker, you wanna be a keynote speaker for events,
you should probably start a podcast.
It's a pretty natural fit.
Either a podcast or a YouTube channel somewhere where you can speak long
form, you can teach, you know, you can demonstrate your expertise.
Meanwhile, if you want to start an agency, you might be more
inclined to get on the hottest.
To social media networks to make sure that you are really covering
all your bases so that you can build out that full service agency.
So let's dive a bit deeper into that.
The next thing you wanna do is choose your platforms, choose the social
platforms that you would like to be on.
I mean, I should say before this, you should have a website.
If building a personal brand is really important to you, whether you're an
author, whether you are a business owner, whether you are a content creator, I
think having a website, having a home base as I call it is super important.
Just a place.
You know, to explain what you do to showcase your portfolio, to
let people get in touch with you.
It doesn't need to be anything too, too fancy, but yes, build a website and
then decide on these social platforms that you're gonna use to drive traffic
to your website, or, you know, to spread the word about your brand.
My recommendation is to choose one long form platform and one short
form platform to start with and to.
Focus on.
I still believe that the best path to personal branding success is developing
high quality authoritative content.
Authoritative content is typically long form.
Although I'm not saying that a talker could not also create authoritative
content, but typically it's long form, maybe a blog post, maybe a
YouTube video, maybe a podcast.
That really solidifies your place in that industry helps you become
a thought leader by teaching your audience about your industry.
By speaking about your expertise in a, you know, humble non braggy way.
Of course, that really just like shows what you know, that when people listen to
your podcast or read that blog, they're like that person is the go-to source for
content about, um, I don't know, wedding photography or social media marketing.
Or websites or whatever that thing might be.
So, like I said, YouTube blogs.
Podcasts are a great way to do that, but you can definitely create this type of
content on short form platforms as well.
The thing with long form is that the SEO value is a little bit higher.
It comes up a little bit easier in search, and it also helps with trust
in thought leadership, you know, for somebody who is gonna take the time
to put together a 1200 word blog post on wedding photography, like I'm
gonna look at those people as experts.
I'm gonna look at those people as like, Care what they're doing.
They want me to feel empowered and knowledgeable, and then you're
gonna use that short form platform to help distribute the content.
So if I create a YouTube video about one of those topics, then I might cut that
YouTube video up for Instagram reels or for TikTok, or I might just record
something separate for those platforms.
To help engage a new audience, drive them back to that.
YouTube gather feedback from them, get ideas from my future
YouTube videos, et cetera.
So I really recommend focusing on two to start with it is so hard to get
good at every single platform at once.
Truth be told it's hard to get good at two at once, but I do think in today's
world and just how quickly it moves and how many platforms are out there.
It's kind of hard to just stay focused on one.
Just keeping it real, but yeah, it's really hard to, to do everything
amazingly when you have a million things going on and are running a business.
So focus on two to start with.
You can always repurpose, you can always grow.
You can always hire a team or social media manager to help you out with some
of the other things, but to start with.
Stay focused.
Now, once you choose your platforms, you're gonna want
to develop a brand identity.
A lot of people jump to this one first.
They're like, I'm gonna get a logo.
I'm gonna get my fonts.
I'm gonna get, you know, my website, all pic and span and all of that.
They do that first before they've kind of done some of this other work
and sometimes you need to go back and revise it after you realize.
Oh, I'm actually trying to speak to an audience of women in their thirties.
I thought I was trying to speak to men in their twenties.
You know, you might decide on different brand colors, different, um, brand
elements and things like that.
After doing a little bit of that work, developing your unique selling
proposition and all of the other things that we just talked about.
But yeah, I I'll also say like a logo was not the most important part
of a personal brand, but you should have some consistency to your brand.
You know, pull out some magazines and put together a mood board.
Like how do you want people to feel when they go to your Instagram feed
or when they watch your YouTube videos or when they listen to your
podcast or they watch your talks, how do you want people to feel?
Do you want them to feel calm?
Do you want them to feel excited?
Those are too, you know, I just pictured in my head, right?
Two different color palettes and styles of content.
When I said those things, the calm might be blues and greens, you know, natural.
Earthy tones, whereas excited might be yellow and pink and like
bright and vibrant and loud and engaging, you know, and in your face.
So figure out what you want people to walk away with.
And again, that's a lot of, that's gonna come down to audience.
If you want to appear very academic, very knowledgeable, that
is gonna look a different way.
That if you want to look very youthful and bright and you
know, hip and stylish, right.
So figure that stuff out and create a brand kit.
It doesn't have to be anything too fancy, but just write down in a
document somewhere, which fonts you're gonna use, which colors you're gonna
use, you know, some inspiration, like I said, maybe that mood board,
so you know what you're going for.
And that way, if you ever do delegate anything, you know,
maybe you hire a website designer.
Maybe you hire a graphic designer for some Instagram content.
Thumbnail designer for YouTube.
You can just hand them that brand kit and they have kind of everything that
they need to know about your brand.
You don't need to reiterate everything to them a million times.
And here is the hard one, the one that nobody likes to hear, but if you are
looking to build a personal brand, I'm gonna ask you to commit to consistency.
Commit to consistency.
This is the way things get built.
I had to commit to waiting for this house to get built brick by
brick for months close to a year.
It doesn't happen overnight.
And the same thing is true for a personal brand and my personal brands.
Certainly did not get built overnight.
It has been years I've been on YouTube for almost 10 years.
I haven't been doing this exact style of content.
Uh, so it didn't, didn't take that long to build up my
personal brand from that aspect.
But even still, even those early years where I was just kind
of fooling around, having fun.
They brought me here.
They helped me understand the workflow of YouTube, how to get clicks on your
YouTube videos, things like that.
So it all, it does all kind of still factor in.
If you could just start a YouTube channel, start a blog, start an Instagram and be
the number one, you know, personal brand.
Then any of those platforms overnight, we all would be doing it.
You know, if there was a secret for it, we would all pay
whatever we had to pay to get it.
And we would do it, but it is really true behind every.
Most every, I mean, of course they're your rare, overnight successes, but
behind most successful personal brands, there have been years and years of
behind the scenes work that brought them to the place that they are now.
So just keep that in mind that if you're looking to build something, play the
long game, don't make those bets on overnight success instead say, Hey, I'm
gonna try this YouTube thing for a year.
I'm gonna post two.
Or maybe one, whatever, you can swing YouTube videos
every single week for a year.
And if after a year I'm not seeing movement in my business.
Well then maybe I'll quit or I'll try something newer I'll pivot to
a different, different platform.
No, that doesn't mean that you're not gonna try to improve.
Month over month, week over week.
Absolutely not.
You should be looking at your analytics on any of your social
platforms and your websites and seeing where you can optimize as you go.
But I see so many people quit who are creating amazing things and they
just need a little bit more time.
They just need a few more videos to just kind of catch on or blog poster, you know,
Instagrams or talks or whatever it is.
So don't bet on quick wins play the long game.
Commit to consistency.
That's how you build a personal brand really, and truly
that's my, my best secret.
So again, let me know in the comments, if you're on YouTube, what you
want your personal brand to evoke.
Do you have any brand colors you wanna share with me?
What, what do you want people to walk away?
If.
Feeling when they listen or watch your content, let me know.
And if you're on the podcasting platforms like apple or Spotify, I'd greatly
appreciate the rating and review.
That's all I got for today.
I'll catch you in the next one.
Have a great rest of your day.