How to DIY Your Personal Brand

What makes a product or service outstanding is its uniqueness when compared to others. In order to DIY your own personal brand, you need to get creative.

The modern world always loves to experience something new; be it fashion, gadgets, technology, cars, new ideas are all fast evolving. Nowadays, most innovations are improvements from previous ones; the only difference being that they are created with a different taste or concept. At the same time, when it comes to designing your own personal brand, you need that touch of uniqueness added. The following steps should assist you.

Identify Your Skills

Before presenting your brand to the global view, you first need to identify your skills or craft. Creating a personal brand starts with identifying your talent or interests and how you can make them unique. Differentiating it from others and coming out with a unique product, style or services is what gains you the required recognition.

To assist with identifying your skills, it helps to ask yourself specific questions like; What are my passions?. Start by noting down what you are passionate about and the most important talents, skills, and knowledge you have about those passions. Research each point and acquire more knowledge to broaden your horizon.

Perfect Your Skills

After identifying the unique and peculiar qualities in what you have to offer, the next step is to perfect them. To do this thoroughly, you will now need to ask yourself; are you a good writer, website designer, or motivational speaker? If required seek more knowledge to answer this question accurately. Once you find the answer, be inspired and be zealous. If you already have a career, practice on it. Constant practice makes perfect.

Have A Dream

Now that you have identified your skills set, the next step is to create a dream or a vision of your brand. The concept behind your brand should be purpose driven. You need to know what you are good at doing. A brand without a proper concept is just like an innovation without a purpose.

What purpose drives you? Highlight them by resonating with your skills and passions to see if it can satisfy or solve problems for your target audience. Ask yourself; why are you doing what you are doing? Does it motivate interested people or aspire them to learn more from you? What do you think you possess that others don’t have? Think of what you can do so that people give you praises.

List your Aims and Objectives

After identifying the purpose of your brand, you will then need to list out your aims and objectives. What are your motives for choosing that particular product or rendering a specific service to your audience? Is your work aimed at impacting a message to the world? If it is, that what is your objective? Is your service or product projected toward satisfying your target audience? If yes, does it yield satisfaction? Your objectives should not just be profit-making but targeted towards your audience satisfaction.

Design Your Structure

A structure is how you build your brand and render your services. Your framework should take its grass root from the origin of your branding process. It should also be geared towards it emerging as a unique and finished product. Your structure should include the following:

A Name: A name means identity. People don’t want to associate with a faceless or anonymous brand. A name creates a picture in the mind of whoever hears it. It should be unique and well distinguished from other brands.

Logo: Your logo should not only be straightforward but also able to pass quick information about your product. A logo should make viewers keen to know more about your product or the concept behind its design. Most importantly, a logo should also be attractive.

Create Awareness

Awareness of your brand is created with the help of both a website and a social media channel. Choose social media platforms that are best for the initial introduced of your brand to your audience. The type of product or service you want to sell will determine the best social media platforms to use. If you are a motivational speaker, then Youtube is the right platform. Are you good at writing instead? Then blogging should be considered. Create illustrative content about your brands on your social media platforms and Build your ‘follower community’. Create a niche and share knowledge with other innovative creators in your field.

Work In Collaboration

Collaboration means working jointly on an activity or project. It will build your ability to learn more in a field with individuals and businesses that share the same niche. If your brand is science oriented, collaborate with international scientists on research studies to share ideas and findings. A doctor will do a better job if he associates with his patients, in the same way, it’s a good idea to look for and associate with online users with better content for a better comparison of your brand.

You can also build collaborations with other niches through social media platforms such like Twitter. Use 'hashtags' and '@' tags on your posts and attach them to influencers’ walls. Like their comments and encourage them to like yours. The exchanging of ideas brings room for improvement and also gives you the edge to come out with a refined product.

Register Your Domain

Now that you have attracted the attention of your audience through social media, it is time to build an online presence. This will first require a domain to host your site. A lot of people think that getting their own domain is costly or that it requires a professional web designer. However, you can register for a domain name at an affordable price in just a few minutes. There are various free domain hosting sites where you can also create a customised email that will give your brand a professional look.

One good way to set up your customised email without professional help is by using GoogleAppsforwork; bear in mind that it requires a subscription of a few dollars per month. However, this subscription also gives you access to handy tools such as DOCs, Sheets, Business tools and Cloud space for your data storage.

Create A Website

Once you have registered your chosen domain name, the next step is to create a website. Remember, a good brand requires a professional look and it needs to look marketable, attractive, with colours that are in line with the chosen niche. ‘WordPress’ offers great website builders, making it an ideal platform for beginners. It is easy and less technical to create a website on WordPress and there are various professionally built themes you can start with.

Create A Blog

Blogging is the process of publishing articles on a regular basis and can be in the form of typing text, posting pictures (photo blogging), sharing video clips (vlogging) or audio messages (podcasting). When choosing your desired format, keep in mind that an interactive site that is designed to allow readers to leave comments will be much more popular than a read-only blog site. As a starter in the DIY branding, microblogging is a great way to start. This style of blogging involves publishing short and sweet posts on a regular basis.

Keeping Your Website Updated

Regularly updated information about your products, interests, innovations, research findings, and reviews using social media will help attract many users to your brand. Share photos (daily if possible) on Instagram, which is a significantly useful imaging platform. It is also the most popular social network where you can post pictures and videos. Share your stories and don't forget to actively follow other people and your favourite brands. Comment and like their photos for the attention needed to develop a mutual and beneficial relationship. Hashtag your essential content on Twitter for them to be discoverable.

Create a Business Facebook

When creating a business Facebook page for your brand, it should be different from your personal Facebook. Facebook gives you the access to inexpensive adverts and the opportunity to sell your brands.

Conclusion

These steps above will guide you in the process of DIY’ing your personal brand. It will also help to give you the advantage in actualising your goals and targets in the competitive digital economy.