Personal Branding You Create: How to Build a Personal Brand

Last updated: January 23, 2024

In a world of billions of people, branding yourself is not only a possibility but a necessity. With more people turning to AI and automation, job losses are becoming a reality in the not-so-distant future. Building a personal brand helps you achieve tremendous success financially, socially, and emotionally. Turning yourself into a household name takes years, but the payoff and reward will benefit you throughout your life. When you give more than you receive, you’ll attract all sorts of opportunities, form new friendships, and build a legacy that extends beyond your lifetime.

In this article, we’ll share what personal branding is, the benefits of building a personal brand, and how to build a personal brand.

What is personal branding?

Personal branding is the concept of treating yourself as a household name. The way corporations will create a brand that people can relate to and buy from, people can also turn to the idea of personal branding. Not every brand needs to be a software, physical product, or service. People can become brands, too. And everywhere you go, you can share a piece of yourself with others that they can learn from, connect with, and ultimately purchase from.

Benefits of building a personal brand yourself

There are numerous benefits to building a personal brand. You get to access a larger network of people you can support and receive support from. Money will flow easier for people who’ve built personal brands around themselves through these connections they’ve built. It allows you to meet like-minded people much easier, especially if you maintain a consistent brand image. You’ll have access to more opportunities that wouldn’t be available if you hadn’t put yourself out there. Right now, many layoffs are happening. Building a personal brand can ensure that you’ll have job opportunities or other financial perks that people who hide themselves away from the online world don’t get. Those who build a personal brand can also benefit from building a legacy from years of helping people in need. Plus, those with personal brands will get a boost of confidence because they’re living life on their own terms, doing things most people are afraid of, and working towards achieving those big goals most people spend a lifetime daydreaming about.

10 Ways to Build a Personal Brand

1. Find and nail down a niche
2. Build out your social media accounts
3. Construct a new website
4. Come up with a digital marketing plan for yourself
5. Show off your quirkiness
6. Network with others
7. Create your growth story
8. Step into failure confidently
9. Your brand is your legacy
10. Know the purpose behind your branding

Personal Branding 101: How to Build a Personal Brand

1. Find and nail down a niche

Building a personal brand is all about being known in an industry. When you think about celebrities with massive personal branding strategies, they’re usually A-players in their industry. Taylor Swift is a famous singer and performer who’s built up a fan base of loyal followers with her personal brand of going through the same problems in life as everyone else, such as not fitting in, going through breakups, having hardships, and overcoming them. You don’t need to be an elite to become well-known in your space. There are so many niches online that you can build your personal brand around, from fashion to cybersecurity. Whatever it is you’re passionate about and find yourself naturally talking about with your friends; you should consider building a personal brand around it. Choosing your niche is something you need to stick to for years to come so that you can become a household name. Anyone can do it, but it takes consistency over the span of years in the same space.

2. Build out your social media accounts

When figuring out how to build a personal brand, it’s not just about getting followers. It’s also about engagement on social media. You want to create content that resonates with people, makes them feel heard, valued, and understood, and improves their trajectory as well. How you build your personal brand will depend on who you are as a person. Do you aspire to mentor people with what you’ve learned? Do you hope to make people laugh hysterically and create entertaining content? Is your social media content meant to uplift people? You can read all the books about personal branding or how to build an audience on social media, but your social media accounts should really be a reflection of you that resonates with people. Your target audience needs to identify with the type of content you create. Picking the right social media platform matters, too. If your personal branding strategy is profession-based, you might choose LinkedIn. If you’re sharing news content, you might choose a video-based platform like TikTok or YouTube.

3. Construct a new website

The brand you create for yourself can’t exist without your very own website. Building a website for your personal brand is relatively easy if you use a platform like Payhip.

Payhip is a digital products website builder that’s great for entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, course creators, or any expert looking to build a personal brand and sell products like courses, books, digital downloads, or other tools to make money off the personal brand you create for yourself. You don’t need to worry about how to create courses when you have a beautiful course player available using Payhip. All you need to do is create content for your videos and upload them to Payhip. People can then purchase your course directly from your website. The best part of this platform is that there are no monthly subscriptions on their Free Forever plan. You only pay a 5% transaction fee when you make a sale. You can use a tool like Website Grader by Hubspot to ensure your new website is optimized and designed well for your new potential clients.

4. Come up with a digital marketing plan for yourself

Treating yourself like a product is crucial when building a personal brand. After all, you’re selling yourself, your knowledge and experience, and more off your likeness. So, coming up with a digital marketing strategy is crucial. In your personal marketing lab, you need to figure out where to make yourself more visible online. You might write blog posts where you share your knowledge to attract new customers with a min read time of eight minutes or so to ensure your content is packed with value. You might tell stories about yourself or your experiences at conferences. You might update your profile on social media to ensure you attract the right type of people. Your digital marketing plan should help you build trust with people and enable you to create an image of yourself that resonates with people and other related concepts. From pitching media outlets with stories about yourself to coming up with a campaign that positions you as a thought leader, there’s always a way to promote yourself to the world.

5. Show off your quirkiness

Your branding story is all about who you are deep down. The quirks and so-called flaws you possess are your biggest strengths when developing your personal brand. To make your brand personal, you need to embrace those quirky, totally you traits that make you a one-of-a-kind original in a sea of sameness. A good brand is all about picking topics personal to you. What are the things you dork out about? What drives you to get out of bed in the morning? What do you find interesting to talk about in social settings? How do you center yourself on your values or goals? Your personal brand isn’t all business strategy; it’s also just a reflection of who you are as a person. You won’t make any sales if you don’t embrace the inner weirdo within you. That quirkiness you hide might be what people will love about you. Give people a chance to see the real you instead of being ashamed of who you really are. People can spot a phony from a mile away. Your genuine self will always shine.

6. Network with others

Your professional network will be crucial to your success with your personal brand. Not only will people help you on your upward climb, but you need to help people, too. Networks are two-way streets. A “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” so to speak. Being someone who over-delivers value will allow people to want to help you back. Not everyone you interact with will be at your level when you first cross paths, but that doesn’t mean that networking with them isn’t helpful. You never know how the stars will align, so give as much of yourself and knowledge to others as possible. People learning how helpful and supportive you’ve always been is a positive personal brand to build and a legacy you’ll be proud of in years to come.

7. Create your growth story

Taking the time to grow and evolve is crucial to the personal brand story you tell others. If your goal is to position yourself as an expert, you’ll need to have achieved some level of success to share what you’ve learned. Often, people rush their learning journey so quickly to become a guru or a coach that they don’t end up achieving as much success as they hoped. The journey of building a personal brand should involve your journey of growing as a professional or as a person. People love rags-to-riches stories or hardship-to-hero stories because it gives them hope that they can achieve things too, even if they’re at rock bottom or the bottom of the totem pole. You can’t help someone up if you’ve never climbed the ladder. So, enjoy the process of learning, challenging yourself, experimenting with different tactics, and evolving into the person you’ve always looked up to.

8. Step into failure confidently

One of the scariest things about building a personal brand is the fear of failure. We often worry about what could go wrong rather than what could go right. And this mindset prevents most of us from actually taking the plunge and putting ourselves out there. While it’s true that being public means that your mistakes will be public too, learning how to swim in choppy waters makes you a better person. How you learn from failure and pivot from mistakes is ultimately what will set you up with success or true failure. Understand that failure doesn’t mean that you’re terrible; it just means that you’re human. When things in your personal brand go awry, focus on becoming a better version of yourself so that your misstep makes you a better climber on your way up. No one’s perfect, and there’s always someone who will point fingers at you instead of reflecting on their own faults. Be the person who looks inward when you make bad calls or mistakes and try to build yourself back up for the better.

9. Your brand is your legacy

Corporate brands often monitor sentiment when reading media articles. Is what people are saying about you positive or negative? Do you need to change a strategy or keep on track with what you’re doing? Entrepreneur media is similar when building a personal brand. You need to consider what you can do to build a positive legacy. In today’s culture, the most controversial, polarizing people elevate to the top, but you don’t have to do that. Narrowing in on a positive legacy is possible. Consider thinking about what sort of philanthropic activities you can do, such as volunteering, charity work, or donations you can do to support others. Think about what underprivileged people in your niche you can offer free mentoring or support to. Marketing yourself is great when you’re a huge talent, but giving back to others or giving people a great offer they can’t refuse can be a positive way to build a legacy online.

10. Know the purpose behind your branding

Your personal purpose can make a difference in how you position yourself when putting yourself out there. It’s not just about what the media and their headlines say about you, but whether or not you’re actually living the life you say you are. Take some time to think about what your personal proposition is. If you had to come up with one sentence that describes your personal purpose, what would it be? Make sure to build your personal brand around that thing. Embody it in every video. You might make it your email sign-off or tell your new clients what you represent in a slide deck. It should be clear to people watching your videos, courses, or other content that this is what you stand for, even if you never directly say it. Your focus should be clear. So, having a purpose that aligns with your values is essential when building a personal brand.

Conclusion

Your personal strategy to build a personal brand will look different when compared to others. How you stand out online and in the world will be up to you. When designing a brand around yourself, the goal should be to help others while embracing your uniqueness. Whether you grow your followers on social media or build a website with a popular blog to promote your author website or coaching service is up to you. Treating yourself as a product and providing a consistent image will be crucial to your long-term success. If you’re looking to build your personal brand with a new website, you can sign up for Payhip today.