Personal Brand Dos and Don’ts

Creating a personal brand is very important these days, it means much more than you think. Every successful service provider has an established personal brand. Some do it professionally and nire a branding specialist to help them with their branding, and others do it intuitively. It is totally up to you if you want to use a specialist to help with branding, or you do it yourself. 

In this post, I wanted to share with you the common mistakes people make regarding their personal brand, and I’ll also share some professional tips on what to do to improve your professional brand. Please check these tips carefully and check if you make any of these mistakes.

Let’s dive into it:

DON’T: Not getting personal

DO: You need to show your personality. 

Just remember, people buy from people. You might think, why should I involve my personal life with my strictly serious business? If you want to be more successful, you need to show what is behind the scenes and who stands behind that strict professional profile. As a result, you will build a loyal and closer community for your brand, and you will attract your target audience to become your clients who will be able to understand all the benefits of your products or services, and help you promote your products or services, even without you asking them to. When you are happy with a product or service, you will more likely recommend it to others, and you are more likely to write a good review about it. The same rule works the other way around and applies to your customers. If they are happy with your product or service, they will probably recommend it to their friends. In other words, it will help you create more fans around your product or service.

DON’T: Not building a community

DO: Make competitors, friends and clients.

It is crucial to work with people if you want your brand to stand out. You NEED to have competitors. Many people are scared of competitors and they treat them as enemies for their businesses. Instead, treat your competitors as your motivation, inspiration, and as a free tool to push you to become better, improve your product or service and be ready to adapt for changes and implement something new. If you think that you don’t have any competitors for your business, there can only be two reasons: a) you have competitors, but you don’t know about them because you haven’t done your market research properly; or b) your business is not as promising as you think, so nobody else wants to dive into something similar. Nowadays, in a market driven economy, if there is any opportunity to make money in some field, you will have many businessmen pivoting toward that direction and creating competition. In an open competitive market, you can prosper only if you offer better services than your competitors, or if you have some unique factors that make you better than them (location, staff, experience, and so on).

The best scenario is when a competitor becomes your partner, and you collaborate with each other to reach a bigger audience. For example, you both operate in the same city, but in different districts, or you offer some slightly different services, so you can refer clients to each other for some commision or any other kind of benefits in return.

Your goal is to build a strong and loyal community around your brand. Try to do your best, not only to sell to your clients once, but to make them your fan. If they become your fan, they will buy again and again, and this will bring you much more sales and new clients than running your expensive ads.

DON’T: Playing the short term game

DO: Long term branding.

Many new business owners have only one goal: to sell. They kind of understand the benefits of having loyal customers for their business, but they still only aim to reach their sales target for the month. But in order to have those loyal customers, you need to have an established brand, and people should trust you and the quality of your products and services. The best and easiest way is through your personal brand. Invest your time and effort in creating your personal brand, and you will have much better results than without it.

DON’T: No strategy
DO: Identify your goals and create a strategy.

Some people start building their personal brand without any strategy. They just post on their social media channels, they do it chaotically, without any visual identity. Create your strategy and set clear goals. In every social media post, make sure whatever you write and whichever step you take would bring you closer to your goals using your strategy. 

DON’T: No defined audience

DO: Identify your target audience.

You MUST know who your target audience is. Ideally, you need to have an Avatar or two for your products and services. An Avatar is a fiction that helps you understand who your ideal client is, and who buys your products. For example, if you sell curtains, your avatar will be a person who moved to a new house or apartment, a person who is renovating their house, or maybe a student who just moved to a new dormitory room… You should clearly know who your target audience is. This is very important when you create your brand. You need to know in which language, style and way to write your messages to your audience. If your clients are elderly people, it would definitely be better for your photos and text to be more formal and more conservative, but if your target audience is teenagers, it would be better if you talk to them using the terms they use in their daily life, so you will be more understandable to them.

These are the most common mistakes new or even established business owners make. Try to identify if you make any of these mistakes, and implement these tips in your business.

Read also: List of best tools for mind mapping

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