Chances are if you are trying to build your personal brand of business, maybe you're studying
marketing to try and help someone else grow theirs.
You've probably heard of brand personality, but do you know what it really is and how
to actually use it so that you can create better content?
If not, then definitely watch your rights at the end of this cause.
I'm going to give you the complete lowdown.
Welcome back to the channel.
I'm so glad you're here.
Brand personality has the potential to really help you stand out when you're creating content,
whether it's for your personal brand or for a business, or if you're a freelancer who's
trying to help somebody else.
But I think some people get a little bit confused about what it is and how to make it work for
them.
So first one of the things I wanted to do is clarify that there are two concepts that
you've actually probably heard a lot about and they often get confused.
So you've got brand personality and you've got brand values.
They are not the same thing, but they definitely compliment each other.
So your brand values are actually what you represent.
So it's like the things that you stand for and often they're things like honesty and
quality communication, the stuff that's kind of on the inside.
But the personality is more about how you communicate those things to the outside world.
So think about brand personality, no different to your own personality and without brands.
Sometimes you are your brand, like if you're a personal brand, it's all you.
So there's a ton of overlap, almost a hundred percent overlap.
Whereas if you are building a brand or a business that's separate from you, there may be some
overlap with your own personality.
If you're a key player in that whole sort of machine or if your marketing for somebody
else completely, you're just helping them with that.
Then obviously the brand personality could be completely different from yours, which
is why it's important to even understand what it is and how to use it.
So just like with our own personalities which basically affect the way we show up in the
world, like it affects the way we talk, the way we walk, the way we communicate with other
people, the things that we dress in, like even the music that we listen to.
Those are kind of all elements of our personality.
It's exactly the same with brand personality, so your brand personality is going to affect
the words that you use, the way you communicate with people, like the different formats of
communication it's going to affect maybe if you're a personal brand it will affect the
way you dress for any brand.
It's going to be the colors that you use, the fonts that you use, the shapes, the white
space of the websites, the imagery, all of those different things that are a form of
communication needs.
You have an injection of your brand personality in them to be brought to life and one of the
obvious, hopefully one of the key factors that you would know is a part of it is that
you need that consistency.
If your website kind of says one thing about the brand and then you showing up in person
says something else and then the Instagram feed is something else again, well then there's
going to be a disconnect.
So it's really important to actually be intentional and strategic about your brand personality
and locking what that is now.
So that everything that you put out into the world, whether it's you as a person or it's
the digital assets or the printed things, all of that is going to be nice and consistent.
So people really start to understand who you are and what you're about and kind of can
decide whether they like you or not.
Because that's the other thing, like a lot of the time when we don't try and be intentional
with our brand personality, we try and be a little bit neutral.
It's because maybe we're trying to appeal to everyone and we're kind of scared to offend
anyone.
But the fact is you are not for everyone.
I don't care whether you're a personal brand or a business.
Not everyone is going to want to work with you.
And that is okay.
We don't want everybody to work with us.
So the stronger you can be in your brand personality, the more that you can just like stand in your
truth and and kind of let your freak flag fly in a way the better because then you're
actually not just going to attract the right people.
Like they're going to be like, Whoa, this, this is like, this is so me.
I have to work with this person or this business.
But also the people who are not a good fit for you, they're going to go away.
They're not going to bother you.
And trust me when I say that's a really good thing, because in the early days of my freelancing
career, I would work with just about everybody.
Like I would just say yes to any job because that's what you do when you're starting out.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But the thing is there a plenty of personality mismatches where like I would have chosen
if I'd known, I probably wouldn't have wanted to work with that person at the time, but
I kind of came across neutral.
So I just said I'd work with everybody and that was not good for me and it wasn't necessarily
good for them.
So own your brand personality and you'll attract the right people and scare off hopefully the
wrong people.
Okay, so now let's just get really super, super practical.
I'm going to give you three steps that you need to follow to kind of come up with your
brand personality and make sure it actually helps you in some way.
So the first question you need to ask yourself is what are your brand personality traits?
And this is a kind of a two part exercise because I think it's important for you to
first think about what you think you are and how you want to come across.
But then you're also sort of want to survey some people around you, friends, family, acquaintances,
clients, a mix of people is good.
Ask them how they think you're coming across.
See if there is disconnect and see if you can find the things that they have in common
and go, cool, well that's, that is something that I like.
It's also something that they're getting from me.
And they like, let's make this one of my, you know, personality traits.
And when I say personality traits, I mean the way he would describe someone, like that
person's super confident or authority of bubbly, quirky, fun, inspiring, like all of those
different things.
Like it's usually good to maybe pick two or three because when we're not one thing, let's
be honest.
So write down yours, ask someone else to write down what they think and then well ask maybe
five people and then come together and see if you can pick out the ones that just seem
to be standing out and are the most kind of the most common amongst everybody's answers.
And look those in as your core personality traits.
Now, now I need to think about how these personality traits actually translate into everything
that you're doing.
So are you actually dressing the way that you're, you know, your personality is supposed
to be coming across or are you like, let's say you're super outgoing and quirky, are
you actually wearing like bright, outgoing, quirky clothes?
Or are you dressing in, you know, gray flat shoes, like trying to blend in to the wall,
um, with your website?
Like, uh, do you have the, have you actually got a color palette that really reflects your
personality?
I mean, if you think that you're wanting to be very authority of and taken really seriously,
but you're using a really sort of like quirky, funny, maybe tacky font, then that's going
to be sending mixed signals as well.
So you need to do a complete, um, kind of audit of everything you're putting out there
into the world or the content that you create, everything you wear, just every, every kind
of touch point that people have for you and kind of see if it's consistent and if it's
actually in line with what you're doing.
And if it's not, that is where you need to actually make some tweaks.
And then, finally, the way for this to really work is about consistency.
Like with anything I know, yawn, but you can make these tweaks and you can raise your awareness
around this, but unless you actually start doing the things, so like you've got your
strategy, you've committed to how you're going to put your brand personality out there, you
then need to keep showing up every day and training people to expect that from you.
They need to see that every single time that they have contact with you, they get the same
experience because that's when you become super familiar with someone.
And familiarity breeds trust and trust often ends up leading to sales or referrals or bookings
or whatever it is that you're hoping to get.
So I really hope that made some sense that shed some light on brand personality and you
can see that it's not just something for like advertising agencies or you know, like giant
companies.
Uh, and one thing I did want to tell you about is that speaking of brand personality, I'm
actually running a free challenge soon, which is called The Social Storytelling Challenge.
And it's going to be partially... partially - I can't speak - partially including what
I just talked about, but really teaching you how to take your social storytelling.
So I'm talking about the words that you write in your, you know, social media captions,
but also in your emails on your website, even in text messages, like how do you story to
really build an engaged audience, increase your organic reach, and really sets it, sort
of build an audience of super fans.
So if you're interested in signing up, it kicks off on February 2nd, all the details
of below, and you can sign up.
As I said, it's totally free.
I would love to see you that share it with your friends.
The more the merrier.
It's going to be really fun and thanks as always for watching.
And I'll be seeing you very soon.
Hopefully in challenge.
Bye!