What if you had an online presence so strong and clearly defined that every single day it attracted to you ideal clients, great opportunities, and people who ask to do business with you instead of you going after them?
There is a lot of talk around personal branding today. To a certain extent, it’s because Google, Apple, Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, and all the other big social media and online distribution platforms dominate our lives and our businesses and even determine what kind of success we will have in attracting great clients and opportunities.
By realizing that all these platforms are ruling the market today and learning how to manage your social media presence to build a powerful personal brand, you automatically get a substantial advantage over everyone else who are posting information on the Internet and their personal profiles without a clearly defined purpose or strategy.
Personal branding is about creating a strong and clear presence, image, and message that you want to give to the world about yourself and communicating this message online in such a powerful and engaging way that people want to connect with you and do business with you instead of everyone else in your market niche because you clearly stand out as an authority.
So here are the 5 key steps to build your personal brand online:
1. DETERMINE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND IDENTITY
Your Personal Brand Identity is not about creating a logo and design. Logos and brand design are great, but branding goes much deeper than that.
Your Personal Brand Identity is about what unique value and message you as a personal brand bring to the world.
Ask yourself,
What is the No1 value that you can give to the world, with all your knowledge, background, and experience?
and create a brand message around that.
For example, my brand message and vision are ‘helping people overcome their limitations and unlock their true potential’ so that they can build successful businesses around their passion, purpose, and unique skills, achieve their goals and dreams and create the lifestyle that they desire.
Your brand message and identity are firstly about your values, your purpose, your unique skills and the vision of what you want to create in the world as your legacy. Once you determine what your brand message is about, then you can start communicating it to the world through social media, a personal website, content, and design.
Which takes us to…
2. KNOW YOUR IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE AND TARGET AUDIENCE
In order to be able to deliver your brand message to the world in a clear and effective way, you need to know who you are communicating to, who your target audience is and the profile of your ideal client.
Building a personal brand is not about trying to sell to everyone. It’s about connecting and building relationships with the right people.
Who is the person you want to work with? What are their needs, their personality traits, and their values? What challenges do they have and what solutions are they looking for in their life or business that you can provide? What is their income level, age group, where do they live? How do they spend their time? How do they interact with your brand?
Write down a clear Ideal Client Profile so that you can communicate to them according to their specific needs and also target them on the online platforms where they are engaging.
Which takes us to:
3. CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
Once you know who your ideal client is and determine where they are engaging most online, you can decide on your social media strategy. You can reach your customers through Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Live Video, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, iTunes depending on who you are looking to target. You need to adjust your message to your client and also adjust the message for each platform.
And you can do this through:
4. PUT A LOT OF VALUABLE CONTENT WITH CONSISTENCY
Great content today can be in the form of articles, video, live video, podcasts, interviews with other experts, and blogging.
The key here is to provide high-quality content in the form of advice, knowledge, and information that your target audience needs around your specific area of expertise and do it consistently and with a purpose. While doing this, focus on building relationships and giving value first and not on selling. Sell through giving value and building relationships.
Once you build these relationships through content and social media, you need to have a strategy for converting these contacts into clients.
Which takes us to:
5. BUILD A MARKETING FUNNEL TO CONVERT PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS
Your marketing funnel is a process by which you attract the right people to your websites and mailing list through social media and online marketing activities, build relationships with them by providing value and engaging in conversations and then make an offer to them for something that they are looking for so that they convert into clients.
If your marketing funnel is created in the right way, you will get loyal customers who want to buy from you without you pushing for the sale because you have taken the time to build the relationship first, before making an offer.
How to do you use social media and other digital platforms to build your personal brand? Share your experience in the comments below.
Originally published at www.pavlinapapalouka.com.