Personal Brand Awareness: Engagement and Collaboration

Continuing from last week's article about giving a voice to others and having a voice, I thought it would be interesting to next look at building brand awareness for individuals and how you can align your voice with your brand to connect with the right people.

Making a Career Change

Making a career change from employment to freelancing can seem like a scary step, and it's one of the first hurdles many clients face when making the transition. How do you successfully move from the security of a job and establish yourself as a freelancer in a highly competitive marketplace??

One way to support this transition is to start the groundwork long before you make the move. As with any new venture, be it starting a business or becoming a freelancer, it's important to have those foundational structures in place. A solid foundation will help you be adaptable and pivot as needed. It will also help you create the support systems you need to increase your chances of success. So, it's?important?to have a plan of action and the right strategies?in place to make the best of?the opportunities available.?

At the end of the day, no one will know about your services unless you connect with people and tell them.

Personal Branding

In the context of?personal?branding, brand awareness is about creating a distinct and lasting impression in the minds of your target audience. It's about using different channels to communicate your voice and your message and ensure people remember you and what you stand for; simply put, it is what you are known for.

It's about communicating your message using different channels, like B2B groups, business breakfasts, and social media. A high level of positive brand awareness means you'll be first in mind when your target audience wants a product or service you sell, and people will recommend and refer you to friends and networks.?

Free Ways to Build Brand Awareness

Building awareness can include writing guest blog posts, building relationships with journalists and providing comments or quotes for press and media, using collaborative article contributions on LinkedIn, joining Facebook groups, and providing helpful insights on posts asking for advice, being a podcast guest or starting a podcast, or even offering free workshops. Liking articles and?commenting?on posts is also a form of building brand awareness, and the best thing is that?all of these are free!

Creating and distributing content is one of the easiest ways to connect with your audience authentically, and doing the latter will help?position?you as an expert.?

Paid options include sponsoring charitable events, fundraisers, fairs, and exhibitions in exchange for promoting your company. Other options include YouTube video ads or infographics.?

So, remember:

• A brand isn't just about logos and colours; it's how people feel and talk about you to their friends.?
• Focus on solving your audience's problems.
• Define your purpose and understand your skills and strengths clearly so you can focus on correctly marketing yourself and finding the right clients.
• Be consistent with your message across all marketing channels.
• Be proactive in seeking work. Actively look for opportunities and reach out to potential clients, which may involve sending cold emails.
• Lastly, success as a freelancer takes time and effort. Don't get discouraged if you don't find immediate success; keep working hard and learning from your experiences.

Guest Contributor

This week's guest contributor is Doug Weissman ? Storyteller Lead Travel Writer and Content Marketer at Zicasso, with over ten years of experience in the leisure, travel, and tourism industry, creating engaging and informative content that connects travellers with authentic and personalized experiences.

1. As a professional writer, what advice do you have for those looking to follow in your footsteps and who are considering writing a novel?

Read deeply and widely. Reading is the fastest and easiest way to see what craft techniques resonate. I never would have known I loved the way a sentence flows if I didn't read poetry. I never would have known I love the slightly weird and grotesque if I hadn't found Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. It's also a place to find new things—awkward things—and areas to practice or explore. Writers who don't read are like chefs who don't eat or directors who don't see movies. What's the point of participating in the craft if you don't like the craft?

2. What do you love about your job?

I love the creativity, but?beyond the creativity, I love creating worlds. Even if the story takes place in the world we know, I'm still inventing where the person lives, the path they take to work, and the way they eat a peach. It's about absorbing the world in which I live and reflecting it back to the reader in a demonstration of how that experience shapes me and, in turn, how that experience shapes the character/story. It's fun, it's exciting, and it's always new.?

3. How do you maintain your daily motivation and creativity? What tips can you share?

It's less about motivation and more about structure. There are certain things I am very rigid about—my work structure is one of those things because it helps me maintain consistency. I've worked remotely since 2013, which gave me plenty of time to explore what things worked best for me and how I could get things done better. That included having structure set into my day, so rather than waiting for inspiration to strike and scrambling to get the story down, inspiration knew exactly where to find me. If inspiration came knocking at any other time of day, I'd write it down in my notebook and spend time on the thought when I was back at my desk.?

When first starting out, writing creatively could look like 2-5 hours at a cafe, jumping between caffeine to sugar to the words on the page. Now that I don't have that kind of time, I give myself 10 minutes five days a week. 10 minutes of no interruptions. I have energy for 10 minutes. I can focus for 10 minutes. I can enjoy a writing exercise, prompt, or challenge in 10 minutes.?

4. What is the most challenging aspect of working as a creative person, and how do you handle this challenge?

In my opinion, the most challenging aspect of creative work is getting the work seen. I have published nine novels. I love each of my books differently for what I have accomplished and for what they taught me but as a creative, I want to write the stories and continue creating. It's much more difficult to manoeuvre into a space that finds out how to get the creative work in front of people. And now that we are in the attention economy...?

5. Can you share a piece of wisdom you've received that's been helpful in your career?

Today is not tomorrow. This is really helped put things into perspective when I felt my creative journey wasn't going in the direction I had hoped. It was more about the journey not going as fast as I had hoped. But someone told me, "today is not tomorrow," and it reminded me that there is so much more to do, more avenues to explore, more exciting things to come, even if today was hard.?

6. What advice would you give to yourself right now?

I would say to myself, "Be a good person and keep doing your best." I will never be perfect, but I will always strive for perfection in everything I do. Whether in work or personal life, we can always improve, and we can always be kinder and more understanding of those around us. It will only make us better in the long run.

Want to Communicate, Connect or Collaborate?

• I'm always looking for collaborative opportunities and people to network with. Make sure to reach out, subscribe, and say hi.????
• Book a discovery call with me to discuss your needs and goals and explore how I can help you achieve them. ??
• Check out my podcast. New episodes are released fortnightly, with the next episode out on May 2nd, 2024. ???
• Email me directly at: [email protected] ??
• Contribute to this article and share any tips you have for building your personal brand in the comments section below. ??