The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Your Personal Brand

Unleash Your Potential and Stand Out from the Crowd - Craft a Strong Personal Brand to Drive Business Success in Today's Competitive Landscape.

You know what a brand is. McDonald's, Apple, Lexus, and Rolex are all brands.

But do you know what a personal brand is? And, even more importantly, do you know how to build one?

If you answered, “No,” to either of those questions, then this post is for you.

Now, more than ever, you need a personal brand. If you want to stand out from the competition, attract new clients, and build a thriving business, it’s important to create a powerful and compelling personal brand.

If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s critical to devote at least some time each week to developing and strengthening your brand. As you’ll understand later, your personal brand is one of your biggest assets.

Your personal brand can take your business to places you never thought possible.

But you have to know how to build one.

Unfortunately, most business owners don’t know how to build a personal brand. They feel fuzzy on exactly what steps to take and what’s involved in creating a brand around themselves.

That’s what this post is all about.

I’m going to give you a roadmap that will:

-Explain what a personal brand is

-Shine light on why you need a personal brand

-Give you a step-by-step guide to building your own personal brand.

Ready?

Let’s dive in.

What Is a Personal Brand?

First things first. Let’s ensure we’re all on the same page in terms of what a personal brand actually is.

A personal brand is much more than a flashy logo or a color palette. A personal brand goes far beyond having a nice-looking business card. A personal brand is not just about having a website with your name on it, although that’s certainly part of it.

A personal brand is much bigger and all-encompassing.

It’s about who you are and what you do.

Your personal brand is how you present yourself, both online and offline, to your ideal audience.

Your personal brand is the image and impression you put forth. It’s what you stand for. Your values. What you’re all about. The core of who you are as a person. Your personal brand is your secret sauce – the thing that sets you apart from everyone else. It’s what makes you unique.

Your personal brand includes your:

-Values

-Unique skills

-Experiences

-Stories

-Personality

-Image

And each of these must be presented in an authentic, honest way to your audience.

Your personal brand centers around you as an individual. It’s about what you bring to the table, the value that you offer. It involves the specific ways that you solve people’s deepest pain points and biggest frustrations.

You may be tempted to think that only big companies are brands, but that’s not true.

Thanks to the internet, the power of social media, web2 and web3, every person can be their own brand.

Everyone can constantly put themselves out in front of their audience.

Everyone can add value to their audience.

Everyone can communicate their message loud and clear.

We all have the tools to build powerful personal brands.

In fact, you might say that every person is now a brand. The question is whether you are actively taking control of your brand.

As I once said during a keynote:

"Personal branding is a choice. You can either drift aimlessly, allowing it to unfold haphazardly, or actively shape it to reflect the person you are or aspire to be."

In other words, you’re going to have a personal brand, whether you want to or not. Everything you share online, every email you send to your audience, every blog post you write, every live event you host - they all are part of your brand.

They all shape the way people think about you and the image you put forth.

The question is whether you want your brand to develop on its own, with no guidance from you, or whether you want to be actively in control of the process.

To state the obvious, it’s always better when you’re in control of the process.

Why You Need to Build a Personal Brand

At this point, you might be thinking, Why do I need to build a personal brand? I’m not a big company. I’m not a Hollywood celebrity. Why do I need a brand?

Here’s the reality: every entrepreneur, coach, consultant, business owner and professional should be building their own brand.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a big name or a Fortune 500 company.

If you are trying to build a business of any sort, it’s important to build your own personal brand. You don’t need to be a large company or a Hollywood celebrity in order to benefit from building a personal brand.

Let’s talk about some of the benefits of building a personal brand.

Personal Branding Allows You to Stand Out from the Competition

First and foremost, building a personal brand enables you to uniquely stand out from the competition.

Your brand, values, expertise, and story all set you apart from your competitors.

Your competitors can’t bring what you bring to the table.

They simply don’t have what you have to offer. You’re unique. Only you are you.

You have unique:

-Experiences

-Strengths

-Beliefs

-Perspectives

-Skills

-Insights

These unique characteristics set you apart from everyone else. These are incredibly valuable and distinguish you from your competitors.

You offer unique value that no other person can offer. No one else can bring to the table what you can. No one else has your unique combination of skills, insights, and experiences.

Building your personal brand allows you to highlight your uniqueness.

It allows you to capitalize on your strengths. It allows you to highlight the best parts of you.

And as you work to highlight your strengths, it distinguishes you from all your competitors. It gives you a distinct competitive advantage.

Think about Rolex and how they’ve set themselves apart from the competition. Because they’ve focused on being exclusively a luxury watch brand, they have set themselves apart from other watch companies, like Timex.

Rolex is the brand for those who want a luxury watch, while Timex is the brand for those who want a sturdy, relatively inexpensive watch.

By working relentlessly to build their brand, Rolex has distinguished themselves from every other watch company.

The more you work to build your personal brand, the greater edge you’ll have over your competition. You’ll stand out amidst the crowd.

Personal Branding Allows You to Charge a Premium Price

As noted, personal branding highlights just how unique you are and the incredible value that you offer.

Because you bring unique value to the table - value that no one else offers - you can charge a premium price for your services.

After all, you’re offering something that can’t be found anywhere else. Your services are only offered by you.

When you craft a strong personal brand, you can charge a higher price for your products and services because they’re exclusive to you. They can’t be purchased at another store or from another person.

The stronger your brand, the more people want your services. The more people want your services, the higher the price you can charge.

This is exactly why Nike is able to charge so much for their shoes. They’ve spent years building their brand into a powerhouse. Nike shoes have become a status symbol, and wearing Nikes says something about who you are.

This allows Nike to charge exorbitant amounts of money for their shoes. The Nike brand automatically equals higher prices for shoes.

You can take a page from Nike’s book. By working hard to build your personal brand and showing how much value you bring to the table, you too can charge a premium price.

Personal Branding Highlights Your Expertise

Remember, your personal brand is how you present yourself to the world.

This means that a significant amount of personal branding involves the content that you share with the world.

The more valuable the content you share, the more you demonstrate that you’re an expert who should be trusted.

With every piece of content that you share...

-Social media posts

-Blog posts

-Emails

-Videos

-Audios

-Inspirational graphics

-Meditations

-Affirmations

-Books

-Audiobooks

-Podcasts

you establish yourself as an expert in your field. As someone who really knows what they’re talking about. As a thought leader in your arena.

You are demonstrating your knowledge and insight to the watching world. You’re proving just how much value you offer and that you’re the go-to person in your industry.

The more you demonstrate your expertise, the more your audience will trust you and come to you to solve their problems.

The more value you share, the more it shows people that you know exactly what you’re talking about and should be looked at as an expert.

Personal Branding Allows You to Attract Your Ideal Audience

Being known as an expert in your field brings unique benefits with it.

When you’re known as the expert in your industry:

-It attracts your ideal audience - the people who need your help the most.

-You get more referrals from others in your industry and related industries.

-You can charge a premium price - the kind of price that only an expert can charge.

Tony Robbins is a prime example of this. For years, he has been sharing the same message of self-empowerment.

Everything he says, every video he puts out, every book he writes has the same brand message: you can develop into a powerful individual and I can help you to do that.

Over time, he has established himself as one of, if not the, go-to person in the self- development arena.

The results?

He attracts huge audiences of people who want to fulfill their potential.

Millions of people read his books and follow him on social media.

He can charge a premium price for his services.

By consistently building his personal brand over many years, Tony Robbins now has people flocking to him for advice.

Do you want to experience the Tony Robbins effect?

If you want to be known as the go-to person in your industry, then it’s absolutely essential that you begin building your personal brand as soon as possible.

Personal Branding Puts You in Charge of the Narrative

As we noted earlier, your personal brand will evolve, whether you want it to or not. If you:

-Use social media

-Involved in web3, AI, and the metaverse

-Have an email list

-Have a blog

-Speak to groups

-Record and share videos

then you’re already building your personal brand. Everything you put out into the world is part of your personal brand.

The question is whether you’re intentionally shaping the narrative of your brand.

In other words, are you carefully determining exactly what your brand is all about, or are you letting it happen in an ad-hoc manner?

Are you thoughtfully curating your brand or are you letting your brand “evolve” on its own? Are you the one crafting people’s opinions about you or are you sort of just letting things happen?

The beauty of personal branding is that it ensures that you’re actively shaping your own narrative.

You’re determining what others think about you, rather than simply letting them form their own opinions.

With every social media post you share, every blog post you put up, every email you send, you’re shaping the narrative of who you are.

You’re in control of the story.

Personal Branding Increases Your Visibility

The more you build your personal brand, the more visible you’ll become.

You’ll attract more fans on social media.

Those fans will share your content with their tribes.

The more your content gets shared, the more fans you’ll attract.

And repeat. It’s a powerful cycle.

As your fan base grows, you can expect to be featured in the media.

Media outlets are always looking for experts to comment on particular subjects, and when you become known as the expert in your field, you’ll start generating media requests. The more you’re featured in media outlets, the more opportunities you’ll have to speak in front of crowds. Conference organizers are always looking for well-known media personalities to speak.

The truth is, building your personal brand and building your platform go hand-in-hand.

As your personal brand grows stronger, your platform will get bigger, which will then make your brand stronger.

Building your brand is a virtuous cycle that brings greater and greater results the more you do it.

Personal Branding Shapes What Content You Share

If you don’t have a strong personal brand, then you don’t have any guidelines as to what content you should share with your audience.

And so you end up sharing either nothing at all or whatever catches your fancy at any given moment. Neither of these strategies contributes to your personal brand.

When you have a strong personal brand, it guides you toward exactly what kinds of content you should share.

Simply put, a majority of what you share should align with and promote the values of your personal brand.

Some take the position that if it doesn’t directly add to your personal brand, you shouldn’t share it.?

I disagree.?

We can add an additional valuable layer to our personal brand in a subtle indirect fashion.

Complimenting the above, I believe it’s also important that we connect as human beings by sharing our hobbies, passions and interests. Combining our digital post and communications specifically focused on our brand, with other content sharing your human side of who you are and what you enjoy doing when you’re not in the office, along with other interests and passions, is the best and most powerful brand you can build.

Personal Branding Connects You More with Individuals

The simple truth is, people connect better with people than they do with companies. It’s why people like Richard Branson have more individual followers on social media than the companies they founded.

The more you work to build your personal brand, the more individuals will want to connect with you, both in-person and online. People will be attracted to your values, personality, convictions, and the insights you have to offer.

The more connected you are, the more business opportunities will present themselves to you. More speaking requests. More media opportunities. The opportunity to partner with other like-minded people.

Building your personal brand connects you personally with potential customers and clients, which then builds your business.

I once mentioned to a young trial lawyer trying to figure all of this out:

"Personal brands carry a level of authenticity and connection that big law firms and corporations can only dream of. People relate to other people, not logos or businesses. Embrace your personal brand, for it holds the power to truly make an impact."

Personal Branding Allows You to Become an Influencer

The more you develop your personal brand, the more you become known as an “influencer”. An influencer is someone who significantly shapes the opinions of their followers and has a big influence on how they behave.

There are some significant benefits to being an influencer:

Big brands want to work with influencers that have a large audience, which can result in more revenue for you.

You often receive free things from companies who are interested in partnering with you.

You receive media requests to speak at, or even just attend events.

If you want to get in on these perks, start working to develop your personal brand.

So how do you actively build a personal brand? How do you get in control of the process? How do you ensure that your brand is helping to build your business?

That’s what the rest of this post is about.

How to Build a Personal Brand

Now that you know why you should build a personal brand, let’s talk about how to actually do it. Let’s break down the individual strategies you can use to build your own incredibly powerful personal brand.

Step #1:

Determine Who You Really Are

The first step in creating a powerful personal brand is to determine who you are. Remember, building your personal brand is about sharing your authentic self with the world.

I once put it like this when speaking to a MBA marketing class at Chapman University:

"Authenticity is key in personal branding. Don't be tempted to fabricate a false persona, for branding is not about being someone you're not. Instead, it's about shining a light on the real you - your skills, passions, values, and beliefs. Your personal brand must be a genuine representation of who you are."

To put it another way, your personal brand is built upon your skills, passions, values, and beliefs. You must know yourself if you want to build a strong personal brand.

Ask yourself:

What unique skills do I have?

What are my core values?

What am I most passionate about?

What unique experiences have shaped who I am?

How can I most effectively serve my core audience?

What do I have to offer that no one else does?

The answers to these questions should shape your personal brand. They should help you get to the core of what matters most to you and how you can add value to your audience.

Step #2:

Determine What You Want to Accomplish

Once you’ve identified the core of who you are, it’s time to think about what you want to accomplish with your personal brand.

Answer these questions:

What would I like to accomplish, both personally and professionally?

What do I want to be known for?

If I could be the world’s foremost expert on a topic, what would it be?

What key message do I want to communicate?

If I could only give one piece of advice, what would it be?

The answers to these questions should further solidify in your mind what your personal brand will look like.

Step #3:

Identify Your Target Audience

The simple reality is that you can’t effectively serve everyone. Rather, there is a core demographic of people who will resonate deeply with you, your brand, and what you offer.

This core demographic is your target audience. It’s these people whom you will serve most effectively and who will be your ideal client.

To identify your core audience, ask yourself these questions:

Who can I most effectively help?

Who will benefit most from my skill set and knowledge?

Who am I most passionate about serving?

Who will resonate most with me and my brand?

When determining your core audience, it can be helpful to create a persona. This persona represents your ideal client. Include the following information in the persona:

Demographics: How old are they? Male? Female? Single? Married? What is their level of education? What career are they in? How much do they make?

Hopes and dreams: What do they want their future to look like? What are their goals?

Challenges: What obstacles do they face? Why haven’t they been able to reach their goals?

Step #4:

Determine Your Unique Value Proposition

Now it’s time to identify your Unique Service Proposition (USP).

Your USP is simply your brand summed up into a single, powerful, compelling statement that describes exactly what you do for your audience.

It’s where you take all the answers from the previous three points and put them together into one brand statement that sums up who you are personally and how you serve your core audience.

A USP typically looks something like this:

I help (target person) to (achieve X) so that they can (outcome)

For example, your USP may be something like, “I help working moms stay on top of everything and live a fulfilled life.”

Or, “I help entrepreneurs scale their businesses over six-figures per year so they can live a life of freedom.”

Or, “I help busy executives be incredibly productive so that they have more time to spend with their friends and families.”

Your USP doesn’t have to say everything about your brand, but it should get right to the heart of who you are and how you help your audience.

It may help to give your USP a unique name that will stick in people’s mind. For example, if you teach people how to be more productive, you could call your USP the “Power Productivity Formula”.

Or if you help entrepreneurs scale their businesses, you could call your USP something like, “Scale Without Fail.”

You get the point. It simply needs to be short, memorable, and aptly describe what you do.

Avoid skimping on this step. Creating your USP gives you a high degree of clarity about what your brand is all about.

Take the necessary time to craft a USP that adequately captures what your brand is about.

Step #5:

Start Treating Yourself as a Brand

Once you’ve identified the core of your brand, as well as your target audience, it’s time to start treating yourself as a brand.

What does this look like practically?

In every communication with your audience, whether a blog post, email, podcast, social media post, etc., you stay true to your brand message.

You constantly speak about the problems you solve, constantly encourage your audience, constantly voice the message of your brand.

Just like Nike wouldn’t suddenly start talking about cooking, so you must not go off brand with your communications. You constantly reinforce your Unique Service Proposition in everything you do.

It also means creating a strong, compelling website to serve as your home base for all your online activities (more on this in a minute).

It means creating a media page or media kit on your site for media inquiries.

It could mean not answering emails yourself, but having an assistant answer them (or answering them under a pseudonym).

Your goal is to portray yourself as a strong, compelling brand, not just a normal person. You have to treat yourself like you truly are: a powerful brand that has a powerful message.

Step #6:

Optimize Your Website or Landing Site Like Linktr.ee

Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of optimizing your online presence so that it matches your brand. You’re going to start with your website, since this functions as your “home base” of sorts. In other words, your website is one of the primary places people get to know who you are and what you do.

Your website also functions as one of the primary ways you turn visitors into paying clients, and it must be optimized for that.

First impressions are really important when it comes to your website. Visitors should be able to immediately determine how you can help solve their problems. If they can’t, there’s a good chance they’ll leave.

So how do you optimize your site to reflect your brand?

Have a professional logo designed. Having a professional logo shows people that you’re serious about what you do and really do treat yourself as a brand. If you wish to hire someone to design a logo for you, Fiverr and Upwork are great places to start.

Show off your Unique Service Proposition. From the moment they arrive on your website, visitors should see your USP. It’s what will draw them into your site and make them want to investigate more.

Ideally, your USP will be front and center at the top of your website so that it’s likely to be the first thing that people see. It should be impossible to miss. It should function like the main headline in a newspaper. The eye should be drawn to it immediately.

Use professional photographs. Have a professional photographer take high- quality photos of you. Low-quality photos will ultimately reflect poorly on your brand.

Use testimonials. Testimonials are proof that you really can solve people’s problems. They help overcome your prospects ’hesitance and objections. Also, if you’ve been featured in any media outlets, show off those credentials too.

Present a clear call-to-action. Ultimately, you want people to take action when they’re on your website. You want them to join your email list, watch your webinar, or sign up for a free consultation. Give visitors a clear call-to- action.

Create a compelling “About” page. On your about page, tell your story. How did you get to where you currently are? What motivates you to serve your audience? Why do you do what you do?

Create a services page. If you want clients to hire you, it’s important to have a clear services page in which you explain what you offer, what’s included, and more.

Give away free resources. One of the best ways to build your brand is to give away free content on your website. This could be anything from blog posts to videos to an eBook.

Giving away content in exchange for a visitor’s email address is also a fantastic way to grow your email list.

Create a contact page. Obviously, you want a way for people to be in touch with you. This will happen primarily through your contact page on your website.

For examples, see MitchJackson.com ManeuVR.io and Linktr.ee/mitchjackson

Step #7:

Develop Your Content Strategy

The primary way to build your brand is by creating strategic content. By content, we mean blog posts, videos, social media posts, emails, affirmations, podcasts, and more.

Every piece of content you share with your audience should serve to build your brand. As we mentioned before, once you’ve determined your brand, it’s important to start treating yourself as a brand.

Developing a strategic content strategy is one of the most effective ways to ensure that you’re constantly staying on brand.

When it comes to your content strategy, try the “Pillar Method” (a term coined by Gary Vaynerchuk).

The Pillar Method works as follows:

At set intervals (every day, every week, etc.) create a longer piece of “pillar” content. This could be a blog post, video, eBook, etc. The point is that it needs to be on the longer side so that it can be repurposed in numerous ways.

This pillar content should always reinforce some part of your brand. Maybe one day you speak to a particular pain point. Another day you encourage your audience to strive for their goals. Whatever the case, it’s essential that your pillar content always be tied back to your brand.

Publish your pillar content on your primary platform, whether that’s your blog, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.

Take your pillar content and cut it up into smaller, shareable pieces of content. In other words, if you have a 10-minute video, find three parts of that video that could be shared on their own and extract those clips.

If you have a 1,000-word blog post, extract five 100-word excerpts that can stand on their own.

Share the smaller pieces of content across all your channels. Once you’ve created your smaller pieces of content, you’re going to post those across all your channels, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, etc.

I shared a few tips on how to do this here. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/14-ways-professionals-can-market-practice-social-media-mitch-jackson/

If the thought of posting to so many social media channels intimidates you, consider giving Agorapulse.com and Lately.AI a try. These tools allow you to create, manage and schedule sharing to social media at one time. I use and recommend both platforms.

Repeat the process again and again. Consistency is the key. By consistently sharing your brand message, you’ll steadily build your audience.

By using the “Pillar Method” for your content strategy, you ensure that every piece of content you post is always on brand. Your Facebook posts, Instagram videos, blog posts, YouTube videos, and emails always are speaking your brand message to your audience.

In addition to using the “Pillar Method”, you can also simply repurpose content into different formats. For example, you can turn an eBook into a SlideShare presentation or a series of blog posts into an eBook. Or you could turn a blog post into an email you send out to your list. See the video series I shared on my YouTube channel with content repurposing expert, Amy Woods. https://youtu.be/Rr0JCa5nOG0

The main point is that everything you send out should be brand related. You want to constantly reinforce your brand to your audience.

Step #8:

Constantly Add Value to Your Audience

When it comes to building your brand, it’s essential that you constantly give value to your audience without asking for anything in return. Yes, there will be times when you invite people to buy from you or become a client, but you don’t want that to be the main theme of your brand.

The main thing people should take away when interacting with your brand is how much value you provide.

The main way you provide value is through your content strategy. This is why it’s so critical to constantly put out new content.

If you’re not putting out new content, you’re not giving away value.

At a Tony Robbins Business Mastery event I shared from the stage:

"By neglecting to create and make available helpful content, you are missing the opportunity to create real worth for your audience. Share your knowledge and expertise to establish yourself as a valuable source of information and to build a meaningful connection with those you are serving or would like to serve. Don’t allow yourself to be the best kept secret in town."

Step #9:

Build a Community

One of the best ways to build your brand is to build a community where you and the members can all help each other. The value in building a community around your brand is that it gets others involved in helping to promote your brand.

You create a tribe of passionate people who care about the same things you do.

So how can you build a community?

Some simple ways to build a community include:

Start a private Facebook or Discord group. In this group, people can interact with each other, share ideas, interact with you, raise questions, etc.

Host live events. Live events allow you to meet members of your tribe in person. Coffee meetups, retreats, workshops, masterminds, and private dinners are all great ways to deepen your relationships with them.

Host virtual events. Like like events, create the same conversations and community in public and private Zooms, on Discord or even in the metaverse (set up a free meeting space using one of the many templates at Spatial.io

Create a membership site. For a small monthly fee, you can give people exclusive access to you and the content you provide. You can also give them access to things like group calls every month, ongoing webinars, and a forum where they can interact with you and other members.

Now Is the Time to Build Your Brand

The simple truth is, you have a personal brand, whether you want to or not. Every single thing you share with your audience either adds to or takes away from your personal brand. You absolutely must be intentional about building your brand.

Thankfully, it’s not particularly difficult to build a personal brand. But it does take constant and focused action.

Here’s a quick summary of what we covered:

-Identify what matters to you.

-Define your core audience.

-Determine your Unique Service Proposition.

-Treat yourself like a brand.

-Create your compelling website or landing page

-Create your content strategy.

-Constantly bring your best self to your audience.

-Build your community.

The more you do those things, the more you’ll build your brand and the more you’ll attract an audience of raving fans.

Avoid waiting any longer to build your personal brand. Get started on it today! Your audience needs you. Get out there and start serving them. You’ll be glad you did!

Please stay in touch and make today your masterpiece!

Mitch Jackson, Esq.

2013 California Litigation Lawyer of the Year

2009 Orange County Trial Lawyer of the Year

https://mitchjackson.com

PS- Consider using tools like ChatGPT, Canva, and Midjourney to help save time, create quality content, and help you accelerate you on your personal brand building journey.

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