Have you emerged as a new personal brand? Personal branding, in general, is nothing new but a new turn of personal branding has been a hot topic over the last five to six years online. You can see people focusing more and more on building their brands and wanting to be known as leaders in your industry.
What I thought I would do after years of building my brand online is lay down my top tips for building an online brand for you and your business. I believe every business owner, every startup entrepreneur, every CEO, should have their brand set up and running either side-by-side or completely separate from their main business structure. I mean look at Richard Branson and Virgin, obviously, a perfect example!
Why is an online brand so important today? Well, it took me a while to realize this, but building my online presence has quite frankly turned out to be the absolute best business move I've made in my entire career, and I don't say that lightly. In today's business world, people truly do want to do business with other people both online and offline.
Why is building a #personalbrand so important? Because, in today's business world, people want to do business with other people both online and offline. #Youpreneur Click To TweetDeveloping your personal brand creates awareness of what we as entrepreneurs stand for and helps position you as a thought leader. It gives us instant opportunities to create likability and to foster the growth of a fan base or our target audience no matter what industry you're in. It also enables you to elevate your credibility because when you start building your brand, you’re embracing being out there for the whole world to find and discover. Lastly, it allows us to gain trust. Trust is, without a doubt, the single most important part of the entire sales process. That then leads to more prospects, more customers, more profits, more long-term business and so on.
The time has come, I believe, for every entrepreneur to get serious about building an online brand. So without further ado, here are my top 10 tips to focusing in and building a solid online brand for yourself.
1. Have a Unique Blog Design
For me, the key to becoming memorable is making a good first impression. I always say, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” Having a good quality, unique blog design can do that for you. There's nothing wrong with using an out-of-the-box theme, but spend a little money tweaking it with a designer and a developer and customizing it.
2. Get Your Logo Designed
Please, for the love of all things that are holy, get a proper logo designed. I often joke and talk about entrepreneurs becoming graphic designers because they're too tight to invest in paying a proper graphic designer to design logos for them. Unless you are a graphic designer, you should not be spending any time in Photoshop. Stop tinkering around with it and get designers to work on your design work for you. It doesn't have to be overly fancy – you just need something that symbolizes your brand's image because it'll help in building brand awareness.
3. Think About a Tagline
Consider creating a tagline for your website. This will work best when the tagline states a real benefit to your audience. In my case for ChrisDucker.com, I say that I'm going to help you become productive and profitable as an entrepreneur.
4. Create an Audience-Focused About Page
Create a great quality ‘About Me’ or ‘Start Here’ page on your website. In fact, you can have both. An ‘About’ page should be more along the lines of what people are going to get out of being on your website and then a little information about you. Always tell your audience what’s in it for them. Don't just start talking about how great you are. On my ‘Start’ page, I have things like links to my book, all my best content and any of my products or services that I want to bring to people's attention immediately. It's a perfect place to speak a little bit about yourself, but not go too heavily into it and focus more on the benefits for the visitors themselves.
5. Add a Facebook Plugin
Get a Facebook plugin where people can instantly like your Facebook page from your website. Giving people a way to connect with you on Facebook right out of the gate, right there on your site, is key to growing your community. It’s important to be social.
6. Link to Other Social Platforms
Keeping with the social theme, go ahead and add links to the other social media channels where you want to interact with your audience. I believe Facebook is a prerequisite. You must be on Facebook. Whether you like it or not, you've got to be there and be present. But you might not want to be present on LinkedIn. You might not want to be present on Twitter. If that's the case, don't put those links on your website. You want people to communicate with you on the platforms you’re active on.
7. Publish Audio and Video Content
It's not just about your blog. Pretend that we have two business experts. They both have blogs. They both put out really good content. Expert 1 also has a Facebook page, talks to you on Twitter, and publishes video clips and podcast episodes on a regular basis. Expert 2 does not. Which expert would you feel more comfortable calling up and hiring for a coaching session or spending money on a product or service? If you picked Expert 1, then you see where I'm going with this. The more you're out there, the more value you provide to your audience, the better it is for everyone.
8. Create Original Content
As strange as it may seem, some of the most successful blog posts I've ever written have been extremely simple to put together. In fact, easily one of my most successful and popular blog posts is a post on 101 tasks you can outsource to virtual assistants. I had my two VAs put together that list of tasks for me. I just added some intro paragraphs and made it look pretty. It took me probably 45 minutes to put that post together myself, yet it's been visited thousands and thousands and thousands of times. Create content that’s unique, super helpful and that you know your audience is craving.
9. Share a Really Good Opt-In Offer
This is a little bit of a given when it comes to building your brand online. I get that, but a lot of people have a disconnect here. You've got to make sure your opt-in offer is very much in line with what you're all about in your niche. Make sure your opt-in offer is unique. Don't copy anything and get it as in line with your overall brand and message as you possibly can.
10. Just Be You
Lastly, the biggest tip when it comes to building your personal brand is to be you, plain and simple. Be you all the time.
Chris founded Youpreneur® in 2015. He is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker and author of the bestselling books “Virtual Freedom” and “Rise of the Youpreneur”. He hosts our podcast, live events and coaches our clients inside the Youpreneur Incubator. Chris is based in Cambridge, UK.
