July 10, 2022 – Your brand is both a visual and interactive representation of who you are, what you do and what your business is all about. It’s a chance to show your target audience how authentic, relatable, transparent, and valuable you can be in their lives. Consistent, visible and clear personal branding makes it much easier for others to recognize and connect with you online—and IRL.
The more consumers see and interact with your brand across digital channels, the more primed they’ll be to feel an emotional connection. Over time, this creates a strong connection of trust. Are you ready to take your personal brand to the next level? Here are a few personal brand management tips to help you reach your goals before the end of the year:
Know the “Why” Behind Your Message
As a recent survey from Google Cloud points out, 82 percent of consumers prefer to follow brands or people whose core values align with their own. In this post-COVID era, transparency around ethical practices and social consciousness is so important, and the message you share must authentically reflect your vision and mission.
Take time to evaluate the overarching “why” behind your vision—or the reason your goals exist—and integrate it into each facet of your personal brand management plan. What you discover can ultimately influence everything from the copy and visuals in your social media content to the tone of voice in your outbound communications, the material on your own website, or the design and text of your logo. These elements should tell the story of which values you hold, what purpose you’re here to achieve, and why your audience can trust your message.
Infuse Authentic Personality into the Brand
There’s a reason personal branding visuals (i.e., color, font, graphics, etc.) are known as the brand identity—these components evoke a clear sense of who you are. Infuse your genuine, unique personality into your outward-facing brand’s content and message. Consumers are sure to connect with brands that follow some of the following strategies:
- Choose five adjectives to describe how you want the audience to see you. These can range from reliable to entertaining to luxurious, trendy, helpful or anything in between—whatever speaks to you.
- Create a vision board full of images that visually represent those adjectives. This process makes it easier to narrow down and visually represent what you want to be and how you’re going to achieve it.
- Keep authenticity in mind as you incorporate these elements into the message. Remember, for personal branding to be successful, it must express who you are as a business and a human. Ensure all visual, text, and stylistic elements communicate this information authentically to the consumers.
Be Consistent (But Still Ready to Adapt)
Consistency makes you more recognizable and memorable to the people you want to attract. Once you hone in on what you want your personal brand to feel like, look like and represent… stick to it! Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t change your approach from time to time—change can be a good thing. But remember that the more cohesive and consistent you are in your approach, the more likely you are to build something that’s recognizable!
Optimize for SEO
Whether your personal brand is going to help elevate an upcoming business endeavor or find a new job, you should not rule out SEO as a tool that can help. SEO can help you determine which keywords, phrases, and queries your target audience looks for online, so you can optimize your content to rank high in the search results. For example, if you have a personal blog, you can specifically design them to target the people you want to hear your message. Consider the following elements as you create an SEO strategy:
- Content: Optimize the text and images of all personal brand materials featured on your website, social media, blog, or other online channels.
- Keywords: Optimize all copy to include the main keywords or phrases that your target audience searches for most frequently.
- Metadata: Optimize all unseen meta descriptions, titles, and tags of the visual and textual brand content, so Google can easily rank it.
- User Experience: Optimize the design and layout of all content—and how it appears on your website or other marketing platforms—to nurture seamless interactions.
Follow this Personal Brand Management Plan in 2022
A solid personal brand is one of the most important marketing assets you can cultivate as a business owner. So if you have not already taken steps to create it, don’t sleep on this anymore—now is the time to start. Make 2022 the year to establish a cohesive online and offline presence, reach more people, elevate your goals, and scale your business to the next level of long-term success.
