Personal Branding: Beyond the Logo

Introduction: Many people think branding is just the visual design you present to your audience to express your brand. In Egypt, we often simplify it and say, “the logo,” but branding is much more than that.

The Power of Branding: Branding can achieve unexpected results if done correctly. Can branding drive sales? Absolutely, although its primary goal isn’t sales, it can certainly achieve that. How? Let me explain.

Example: Personal Branding for a Barista

Create Social Media Accounts:

• Instagram
• TikTok

Daily Content:

• Post videos of your work daily, like drawing a swan on a cappuccino.

Share Valuable Tips:

• How to buy coffee
• How to draw a swan
• The best coffee machines for home use
• How to tell if coffee beans are pure or mixed with other substances

Workshops:

• Offer workshops on making the best cappuccino (B2C)
• Provide training sessions for baristas (B2B) with café owners and entrepreneurs

Write a Book:

• If you’re outside Egypt, write a book about the art of being a barista and share daily quotes and photos in your stories to attract interested buyers.

Networking:

• Build relationships to become a guest speaker at major coffee-related events.

Building Your Brand: In all these stages, you’re building your brand, making people recognize and see you. You’re also earning money through branding. You’ve done positioning, identified your audience, created a content plan based on images and videos, built relationships, worked with potential clients, and collaborated with business owners and traders. You’ve built a brand and a mental image in the audience’s mind, making you the first person they think of when they need a barista for training or coffee advice.

Follow for More: Want to know more about branding and marketing? Follow me, Noura Aref, and I’ve built dozens of brands for startups recently.

Visual Elements:

• Color Scheme: Use warm, inviting colors like coffee browns, creamy whites, and soft golds.
• Typography: Choose a clean, modern font for headings and a more casual, handwritten style for tips and personal notes.
• Images: Include high-quality images of coffee art, barista workshops, and social media screenshots.
• Icons: Use icons to represent each step, like a coffee cup for workshops, a book for writing, and a microphone for speaking engagements.