Why Developing Your Personal Brand is Key
Today we’re launching a new service offering: Personal Brand for small businesses and freelancers.
So, we want to go into depth about why developing your personal branding is so important. You might be a writer, film director, producer, poet, journalist, a freelance designer, makeup artist or illustrator - the list is endless. If you have a small business or service you want to sell, then read this!
This blog post covers:
What is your Personal Brand?
Why is it so important?
Your value proposition, persona, story, knowledge
Where can you start?
How can nooh Studio help
What is your Personal Brand?
One of the buzz words of 2022, your Personal Brand is what you use to advertise your service or product. It’s your reputation; how your audience perceives you. It is defined as your intentional effort to communicate your value proposition to others.
Why is it so important?
Having a clear Personal Brand makes you stand out, creates legitimacy and differentiates you from the competition; helping to build trust between you and potential clients. The goal is to grow your career and find a niche for yourself. When someone can clearly see what you’re offering - whether that’s intermediate or expert knowledge - a strong Personal Brand creates a greater likelihood for people wanting to do business with you. Ultimately, in the age of being overwhelmed with choices and information, personal branding is more essential than ever to excel in today's digital world.
It is key that your Personal Brand aligns with who you are and your beliefs, whilst having integrity and consistency. Surveys have demonstrated that trust in brands and corporations has severely diminished in recent years, with 84% of millennials mistrusting traditional advertising, believing it to be manipulative and lacking integrity.
It’s now more important than ever to rely upon credible personal branding to develop those much-needed connections with audiences.
Your value proposition
Of course, personal branding cannot succeed without a clearly defined value to your audience. What problem are you solving for them? Why should they choose you over someone else? It’s imperative to be transparent with your audience about what you can offer them in return for their time and money.
Your persona
In the past, you could arrive at a job interview with just your CV, looking presentable, with some relevant buzzwords at the forefront of your mind. It would be up to you to make a great first impression, in person. There was nothing else surrounding that to influence possible employers’ impressions of you.
The same is certain for service-based companies - anyone looking to showcase a body of work, freelancers, SaaS companies, agencies, personal services… It’s no longer only about what’s nearby or most convenient. People have such easy access to gathering information about you - they google search, read reviews, look on various types of social media platforms and ask friends for recommendations. All too often, brand personas get lost in the crowd.
Your persona is what draws people to you, their first impressions of you and their impression of you over time. You want to strike the balance between being authentic while also showing the best version of yourself and what you have to offer. Who are you? What is your story?
Your story
This ties into your persona - your story is a key part of effective personal branding, so utilise your unique story. In the era of spending so much time behind screens, people are looking for evermore real connections. Storytelling is extremely effective in both traditional and modern marketing because it evokes emotions and builds a more solid human connection. Creating content around who you are personally allows your audience to develop a much deeper trust in you - they can see your authenticity for themselves.
Your knowledge
Unlike what most of us are conditioned to do, developing your Personal Brand is a chance to show off your knowledge and expertise. Share your thoughts, discoveries and opinions. Sharing your knowledge through content creation - blogs, newsletters, filmed tutorials, podcasts, articles, workshops or mentoring others is a fantastic way to build a very strong connection with people.
Naturally, there will be many varying ways to share your expertise with others. Don’t be afraid to experiment - try out different options and see what works best with the Personal Brand you’re developing and remember your brand’s tone of voice. Your knowledge and your story will make people follow along with what you’re doing and, most importantly, retain them and keep them engaged. The goal is to be impactful - it should be useful, memorable, interactive and unique - this will help your business grow. The crux of this is to meaningfully connect with your audience and maintain that connection; remaining at the forefront of people’s minds when they’re looking to solve a particular problem is the aim.
Where can you start?
The springboard for any Personal Brand’s growth is visibility. You can start with any of these:
Website
Social Media Platforms: Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook
Digital advertising (Pay-Per-Click social media or Google adverts)
Business cards
Printed merchandise
Printed advertising (like a car sticker or a local magazine or paper)
Our main suggestion is to start by creating a small website, followed by a social media presence and a local advert, to get yourself out there! A website could be in the form of a personal portfolio, a service such as a private practice, a therapist, a trade, even a blog. Social media is a powerful tool to back up the credibility of your platform, using your specific tone of voice - storytelling in your own way.
Try to actively promote yourself. It might seem daunting, but the key is to be proactive, be consistent and you will see your platform’s visibility grow. My business was created by a strong network and word of mouth. I started as Helena Design’s and shared a Facebook post which got my business of the ground during Covid-19 and won me my first set of clients.
Questions you can answer to start developing your Personal Brand:
Who are you?
What do you do?
Why do you do it?
How do you do it?
What problem are you trying to solve?
Who is your dream client?
What ties this all together?
You could probably see this coming (we’re a brand and design studio after all!), but a logo and brand identity is needed to tell your Personal Brand story from the ground upwards.
To help small businesses, we have launched a Personal Brand service offering.
Custom packages start from £800 + VAT. Here’s a flavour of what we can offer:
A small brand package (a logo, colours, fonts and some graphic glue)
A portfolio website to get you started online
Brand Activation: Email Signature and Letter Headers, Social Media Banners, Powerpoint/Google Slides template, Social Media graphic templates and Newsletter templates
Take a look at our client examples:
Lucy Moore: Author of nine historical and mostly biographical books.
Henrietta Bredin: Writer and editor, specialising in performaing arts.
John Dower: Documentary filmmaker and BAFTA nominee.
Nicky Affleck: Grassroots sport consultant.
Thank you for reading! Do get in touch and book in a free 30 minute introduction meeting with me, Helena, to discuss how we can help you develop your personal brand to grow your business or idea.
