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Personal branding has finally become something that most business owners have accepted as a must-do. Thanks to Elon Musk, Gary Vaynerchuk and other public founders, more entrepreneurs are jumping on the personal branding train and doing their best to give their business a face.
The problem is that most entrepreneurs throw spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. If you want to build a personal brand that benefits your company’s bottom line, you need to be intentional with how you present yourself.
And no, that doesn’t mean you have to choose the perfect filter for your Instagram grid or pay thousands of fake followers to look important.
After helping entrepreneurs across all industries step into the limelight and grow a personal brand that people will buy from, here are three non-negotiable questions to ask yourself before getting started. (If you’ve been trying to grow your personal brand for a while, don’t worry. Take a moment now, ask yourself these questions and notice the gaps in your strategy that could be slowing your growth).
Related: Building a Personal Brand in 5 Steps
Contents
1. What impression do you want to leave?
Modern personal branding is like going to an event, meeting someone for the first time, and talking about them a month later because something about them is so deeply ingrained in your brain.
When you leave the room at a party (i.e. when you finish interacting with an ideal client):
- What do you want them to bring?
- What do you hope they remember?
- What do you want your target audience to associate you with?
- How do you want to be remembered?
These questions all fall under the same roof: Define what kind of impression you want to create on your target audience. By answering these questions, you create (or recreate) the foundation of your personal brand. The house cannot be built without the proper foundation.
Related: 6 Strategies for Making a Great First Impression at Business Meetings
2. How do you want people to feel?
We move on to question one and go one step further. While most social media entrepreneurs spend their time making sure their personal brand looks a certain way, they forget that in the end, this isn’t what drives someone to buy.
People buy from you because of the way you make them to feel.
All people make their buying decisions based on emotion. We buy with emotion and justify with logic. To grow your personal brand, you need to make it clear how you want people to feel at their core. Think about your target audience and how you want them to feel after interacting with your personal brand.
Do you want them to feel:
- Empowered?
- brave?
- Confident?
- Relaxed?
- Estimulated?
- Calm?
After answering this question, you will have the creative clarity to develop a content strategy that has one common goal: to create people to feel a certain way.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a shining example of this. The main purpose of his personal brand is to help people feel empowered and in control. Every piece of content he puts out aims to help his audience feel empowered to create a life they truly love.
Related: 11 Ways Successful People Deal With People They Don’t Like
3. Am I willing to let my audience in?
Here’s the hard truth: the biggest, most well-known personal brands today are the ones that take their audience behind the scenes. In other words, if you are serious about growing a personal brand that people not only love but also buy from – you must be willing to consistently connect with your audience on a human level.
This can be done in several ways, but the easiest way is to tell your story. Instead of the company’s story — tell your story. Show your audience who you were before you were a leader. Show your audience what you’ve overcome to build your business and make your vision a reality. Show your audience that you are so much more than your title, and show them that you are human, just like them.
This doesn’t mean you have to tell all your deepest, darkest secrets. It means you have to decide what things you would like to share with your audience from your personal life.
For example, some CEOs share everything from their quirky hobbies outside of work to their families, their children, and a host of other hats they wear. Others, on the other hand, prefer to share just one or two different components of what makes them.
The important thing to remember is that what works for someone else doesn’t have to be the way you do it. You can make your audience feel in the way that is most authentic and aligned to you.
As long as you’re not hiding behind your title, achievements, and computer, you’re one step closer to building a personal brand that increases the impact of your business and income.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.