Personal branding is simply the process of building your identity to showcase your personality and the skills you can offer, especially over the internet. In this day and age, it is very common for young enthusiasts to start a business initiative and market it through personal branding. This means they first get people to follow them by putting out content about their area of expertise, and then influence them to buy the products or services they offer due to their followers’ likeness towards their personality.
This is similar to influencer marketing, but the difference is that in personal branding, the person promoting himself or herself always promotes and sells his or her own products and brand. People who put in effort in personal branding give preference to selling their own services first, and then they might promote other brands too to add to their streams of passive income.
Personal branding has become very common in 2021, especially because of the pandemic and lockdown policies of different countries, whereby it is difficult for people to come out of their houses to move freely and promote any product through the traditional means of marketing. Most of the marketing these days is done through the internet. In other words, people now have more access to digital marketing media than to any other means of marketing. This is a benefit for those who want to work on their personal branding, as personal branding is mostly done online anyway.
If you want to do personal branding online to start an initiative of your own, the first thing you need to do is learn how to brand yourself online. Look into yourself and see what you are passionate about. Build a personal branding strategy and get started.
Today, we will discuss seven different tactics that you can use and apply for personal branding online. As long as you have the passion and an area that you master, you can create a crowd by applying these personal branding tips, and start influencing others to buy your services.
7 Ways to Work on Your Personal Branding
Here are 7 killer tactics to build your personal branding strategy for 2021. Learn these to become famous and start making money during this pandemic.
1. Create a YouTube Channel
In the earlier days, it was not so common for simply anyone to start a YouTube channel. But with time, many people started getting passionate about it, especially when they see they make passive income through ad revenue by publishing quality content and getting people to subscribe to their channel.
Even though YouTube has tightened its ad revenue policies, people are still growing crazy over starting a Youtube channel and working towards making it grow. YouTube has a very vast audience for nearly every kind of niche. That’s why if someone can build a good level of subscribership, their channel becomes a free-of-cost platform for them to market anything they like.
Creating and working on the growth of your YouTube channel is a killer personal branding strategy. The YouTube algorithm works in favor of those who sincerely upload quality content videos about the field of their interest and expertise, by recommending their videos who have a history of browsing similar content.
When you start a YouTube channel, you might not get enough traction in the beginning. But with patience and practice, you will notice that people are beginning to like your videos and follow your channel. It requires persistence, but it gets easier with time. For the sake of personal branding, you can build up a certain level of patience and persistence.
2. Start a Blog of Your Own
Are you interested in blogging and have been making guest posts on other people’s blogs? Well, if you are up for personal branding, now is the time for you to start your own blog. Post articles with complete freedom to promote yourself for personal branding online.
Are you worried that you will have to spend tons of money to hire a web developer to create a blog for you? Your problem can be solved if you use a website builder instead. With a website-building platform like Strikingly, you can build a complete blog website without having to write a single line of code.
Image taken from Strikingly
We have so many blog templates available for you that you can simply install within seconds, and your website design will be good to go. Now you only need to work on your articles, your content, and your personal branding through your blog articles.
Image taken from Strikingly
3. Build a Personal Website
The most important thing you need to do as part of your personal branding strategy is to build a personal website for yourself. This website will serve as the main platform for you to showcase yourself, your expertise, and your services. This website will be integrated with all the other marketing media that you use but will act as the center point for your followers to get in touch with you.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
You can go through the following steps to create a personal branding website on Strikingly.
- Sign up for a free Strikingly account. You can upgrade to our Pro Plan if you need to use more features for carrying out the rest of the steps described below.
- Select a suitable website template from the options given.
- Start filling up your website content using our drag-and-drop feature.
- Add a blog section to the website which can be done by clicking on Strikingly editor’s ‘Add New Section’ button on the left panel.
- Add images, embed videos from Youtube (if you have any) to fill up your web pages.
- Add your contact information, or perhaps insert a contact form, so that your followers and visitors can get in touch with you.
- Promote your website on social media and through personal networking to enhance your personal branding.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
4. Create Social Media Pages
If you haven’t already, you’ll need to create social media pages to amplify your personal branding. Select the social media platforms wisely. If you are more into pictures, you can go with Instagram. Opt for Facebook if you like to make quick text posts, sometimes illustrated in pictures. Create a YouTube channel if you like to record lengthy videos. If you are more into the human resources sector, consider using LinkedIn as your main social media site for personal branding.
Don’t forget to post regularly on any or all of the social media sites you create pages or channels on. In the end, insert icons of all the social media you are using into the footer of your personal website. This will link and connect all your marketing platforms with each other. This helps in driving traffic back and forth from one platform to another.
5. Participate in Online Communities
Many brands build an online community to encourage the engagement of their users, members, customers, and others in their target audience. Once your personal branding is established enough, you can build your own brand community. But at the initial stage, you can begin by participating in other online communities.
This will help you build a repo in your niche and make it easier for you to attract more crowds as you work on your personal branding strategy.
Here at Strikingly, we have an Idea Forum that functions as our brand community. We welcome anyone who’s interested to share their ideas about website development in the community and also give opinions and feedback on our services.
Image taken from Strikingly
6. Record Podcasts
If you are a talkative person by nature, you should definitely make use of this aspect of your personality by recording some of your personal branding content in the form of podcasts. If you are wondering where to host your podcasts, you can either upload your podcasts on third-party podcast hosting sites, or simply turn them into video format by adding a still image and publish them on your YouTube channel.
The podcast industry has drastically shown growth since 2019, particularly during the global lockdown period in most parts of the world. Podcasting is a good way of growing your followers, which is very good for your personal branding journey.
7. Become a Guest on Other Blogs and Channels
One way to grow your blog and your Youtube channel fast is to appear on other people’s blogs and Youtube channels as a guest. This will introduce you to the massive audiences of the platforms or channels you speak or write on as a guest.
When you do guest posting, you can insert backlinks to your own blog in your articles, of course, with the permission of the blog owner. This drives traffic from their blog to your blog every time someone clicks on those web links. The same happens when you appear on someone else’s Youtube channel. All of their subscribers notice you and might consider following your Youtube channel as well if they like the content you deliver as a guest. This is very good for your personal branding experience.
Now that you know how to work on your personal branding, start the process faster before the competition gets too high. Since it is easy for anyone to follow these personal branding tips, anyone can build all these marketing platforms for developing a personal brand in just a few days. Who knows, your personal branding efforts become so fruitful that they convert you into a successful entrepreneur one day?