What Are Some Ways You Can Improve Your Personal Brand?

Even a few years ago, personal branding was not even a thing! 

We all know that the term ‘brand’ refers to the name of a business or company trying to expand its market reach locally or globally. 

Specifically, it could be a name, icon, or feature that differentiates a business from competing players in the industry. 

Brand development is significant for a business to gain the trust and loyalty of customers while outperforming others and thriving in the market.  

While that has been a common notion about brands, the term is further classified, in this contemporary era, into personal and corporate/professional brands.

While the latter implies a business or organization thriving in its industry for commercial gains, a personal brand is a fresh concept! 

Are you unsure about how do you create your own brand?  We are going to focus on that in this comprehensive guide. 

We’ll discuss what a personal brand is and what some ways you can improve your brand are. 

While anyone interested in social media and digital platforms can have a personal brand, this blog offers a complete guide to creating and improving your brand. 

We assure you that by the end of this blog, you will know how to build your foundation of success with a distinguished personal brand.

What is a Personal Brand? 

Just like a corporate brand, a personal brand defines the values, beliefs, or story of an individual. The personal brand represents his, or her identity i.e., image, repute, and position in the society or particular community. 

If you are thinking how to brand yourself , firstly know that a personal brand is the combination of an individual’s skills, talent, appearance, knowledge, and characteristics, which one expresses through digital or social media platforms. 

While many people focus on personal branding for securing a job or position in the professional field, it goes beyond that for others. They build a personal brand to earn fame and recognition for their specific talent or individuality. 

Actors, public figures, industry leaders, dancers, sportsmen, chefs, spiritual leaders, technology leaders, motivational speakers – all are examples of personal brands! 

While these individualities are already a brand, ordinary people can build their personal brands from scratch. The reason many people are emerging as brands is to have a strong perception of them in society. 

Everyone is exceptional in their way! 

To be a strong performer in your field or distinguish your value, you need to create a personal brand. 

Putting it another way, you can determine what people know and perceive about you with your brand. 

For instance, you are a hairstylist with outstanding expertise but are less appreciated than your peers, who are engineers, entrepreneurs, etc., and doing great in their professional spheres. 

By creating your personal brand, you can cultivate your image as a professional hairstylist. 

You can share your styling experiences, stories, tips, and hacks with customers through social media platforms. 

Developing a personal brand is directly related to creating content that resonates with your audience. 

It will not just make people recognize your forte but also increase your chance of getting more customers. Your followers or fans will recommend you to others, allowing you to grow.

Why You Need To Do Personal Branding?

Leveraging a personal branding strategy is a straightforward way for aspiring individuals to gain popularity and seize growth opportunities. 

Whether you are a professional baker at a confectionary shop or craft beautiful cakes at your home as your hobby, you must know how to create a brand identity, as personal branding will make your baking skills noticeable to a large group of people online. 

That will eventually result in more orders of cakes and hence monetary gains for you. And, in case, baking is a hobby, personal branding will turn into a profit-making activity for you. 

In other words, knowing how to establish your brand for your professional or recreation activities will get you recognition as an influencer or specialist. It gives you brilliant prospects for revenue flow and a reason for people to remember you. 

Content creators in any arena or professional field must build their brand to make progress and bear the fruits of their efforts. Content can be related to anything – food, travel, recipes, arts and crafts, fitness, makeup tutorials, fun and entertainment, and a lot more. 

Personal branding for content creators is imperative to gain visibility online and hit big with the number of followers climbing up. 

Adding up everything, personal branding is vital for you for many reasons. 

Differentiates your content and sets you apart from others in the field by showcasing your skills and abilities.

Creates an everlasting impression on anyone who comes across your branding profile and increases your follower base. 

Connects to your target audience and helps them with insightful content or whatever you bring to the table. 

Enhances your credibility and reputation as a person by demonstrating your specific skills and talent.  

How to Build Your Personal Brand?

Before you learn, what are some ways you can improve your personal brand, you must create your brand. 

Knowing how to build a personal brand is neither overwhelming nor challenging when you have a definite niche to focus on and the skill/expertise to showcase. 

However, here are some thoughtful ways to develop a positive personal brand online and offline. 

Set goals

The first step to creating your brand is deciding how you want to establish yourself among the audience or what skills you want to be famous. 

Needless to say, you need to be clear about your niche and target audience for this.  

Personal brand management is all about how you present yourself and your target to everyone.

Setting goals is important because it gives you a purpose out of your personal brand. Without a purpose, it’s like shooting a gun in the air. 

You will keep creating content aimlessly that will not reach the right audience. Your followers will not grow, no matter how much effort you put into creating your content. 

Audit your self-brand

Everyone has a brand, even if they don’t create it. It is only a summation of your physical appearance, offline and online behavior, exceptional skills, and forte in a field. 

To audit your present brand means enquiring among your family, social groups, and acquaintances to find out what they think about you already.

They can appreciate you as an individual and praise what you are doing, which will encourage you to grow a personal brand. The other way around, they will highlight the shortcomings in your behavior, personality, and skills so that you can work to improve them. 

In short, auditing your self-brand will make you aware of your strengths and weaknesses. It will guide you on how to improve your personal brand. 

Have a consistent strategy

Decide the ways, you want to demonstrate your special skills or flair in a field for your personal branding. It could be any type of content, such as blogging, vlogging (video blogging), interviews, or social media activities.

If you are seeking how to build a brand strategy, know how to determine the strategy, then decide the social media platforms you want to use for posting your content regularly. 

No matter what personal branding strategy you choose, make sure to stick with it and keep posting your content following a specific schedule.  

Produce and post quality content

For creating a brand and enhancing a personal online presence, create only and only quality content. With millions of users on every social and digital platform, only quality content sells and entices the users to hit the ‘Follow’ or “Subscribe’ button. 

Moreover, competition among content creators is getting intense day by day, with many people coming on the scene with whatsoever talent or abilities they have. To stand out among the crowd and establish a genuine authority of your brand in your field, produce superior-quality content. 

Seek knowledge from experts in your field, hone your skills, and observe what successful personal brands are doing.  

All the attractive opportunities and proper brand management is the ticket to elevating your personal brand.

15 Effective & Brilliant Ways You Can Improve Your Personal Branding

Establishing your personal brand is an investment, given the efforts and time you devote to it.

It is especially true when you are a novice in the field! You have no great experience and invest more time to master your skills and simultaneously establish your personal brand. 

While you may feel stuck and don’t know what are some ways you can improve your personal brand, we will help! 

Take a read at these 15 effective personal branding tips to grow your brand consistently and establish a strong identity. 

1. Validate who you are as an individual

To build a personal brand through which everyone will identify you, figure out who you are.

Are you good enough to represent as a brand? If not, what can you do to make yourself a brand?  Or want to know how to start your own brand?

You need to self-analyze to determine what qualities and strengths you have that you can use for your branding. Similarly, be a little introspective and define your weaknesses or negative behavioral traits that can go against your personal branding. 

Answer these while trying to figure out yourself as a brand.

• What is your forte or area of work to excel?
• What are your traits that people appreciate or value in you?
• What are your interest areas?
• How do you motivate yourself?
• Which activities drain your energy or you never find interest in?
• Which activities never bore or tire you?

Once you figure out these, you can determine what to focus on in your branding by focusing on the positives. 

If you can’t find answers, ask your friends, family, co-workers, and close ones who can explain your nature, qualities, and skills. 

2. Determine the niche where you want to be recognized

This is a predominant step to building a personal brand that grows consistently! 

You can make a mark as a brand only by excelling at one aspect or field. It should be your interest area and must reflect on who you are!  

To determine the arena where you want to become popular, we suggest first assessing your professional skills or special talent. Once you realize what distinguishes you from others, it becomes easy to determine the arena to fixate on for personal branding. 

To figure out a potential field to introduce yourself as a brand, you also need to assess your biggest strengths and proficiency. Accordingly, you will know whether you should improve your skills to earn enough expertise and prosper as a brand. Develop your skills in building a professional personal brand while you keep thriving in the market.

Putting it simply, identifying one’s interest area is vital for personal branding because it helps to identify the particular field to focus on. As you specialize in that over time and consistently upgrade your skills, it pushes the growth of your brand.

3. Ensure the audience understands you and what you do

Whichever social media or digital platforms you use for personal branding, make sure your target audience knows you and understands your content. Everyone must know what are you good at and why to follow your brand. 

To ensure that, we suggest preparing a short description (within 100 words) telling what you do, what are you great at, and why you do it. In short, prepare an impressive pitch for your personal brand through which people will easily decipher who you are and what you excel at. 

A brilliant pitch helps in building a strong personal brand image that differentiates you from competing content creators in the same field. If you want to know how to build brand image, you must know that it requires a

multidisciplinary approach. It combines owned, earned, integrated marketing, and paid media in a coordinated strategy. This as a whole is a highly effective way to build the brand image.

Amidst hundreds of creators and influencers, online users get confused about whom to follow for personal goals, professional learning, and entertainment. 

Your description must serve as a reason for them to follow you for a purpose. Emphasize why you are the best and convince them how they can benefit by following your content. 

4. Find ways to gain specialization in your field

After creating your personal brand, think of growing it uniquely so there’s no looking back! 

Specialization is the key. You can’t be serving people with all types of content. Focus or specialize in one area and a particular type of content so that everyone can easily differentiate you. 

To specialize in your area, the first prerequisite is skill enhancement. You can get industry-oriented training or engage in self-learning and research. The better understanding you have of your field, the more you can specialize. 

You will know well what works in your niche, what attracts the audience, and the current trends. You will become aware of what other content creators are doing to endorse their specialty online. 

Eventually, you can decide on new ways to specialize in your field to get identified as a distinct brand. 

Another prerequisite for specialization in your niche is a thoughtfully curated content strategy. Decide what type of content you will be posting regularly to showcase your skills or profession. You can even hire a personal brand strategist, who will use various resources and advanced methods to help you reach your personal branding goals.

Videos, photos, creative user-engagement posts, reels, or animation - choose one or a few forms of content that suit to display your forte in the field. 

5. Strive to become an eminent leader in your field

This one is a quite significant tip if you want to how you can improve your personal brand. Get yourself acknowledged as a thoughtful leader in your field! 

Publish content and present yourself in a way so that people start acknowledging you as a knowledgeable, talented, and highly respected personality in your arena. 

This goes without saying that you need to build leadership qualities to propel your image as a forerunner in your respective field. 

For instance, you have created your personal brand as a traveler, who loves discovering new places. So, you must be able to plan the entire trip alone, go alone (or as a main tour guide to your group), and negotiate with hotels and tourism services like a pro. 

Last but not least, give practical ideas to others on how to plan those trips in the best way, optimizing their costs and experiences. 

By that means, you consider which field is convenient and most suitable to cultivate your leadership skills.  

6. Figure out who your audience is

While you are trying to create your personal brand, a key thing to determine is your target audience i.e., whom you want to show your skills. 

Is it young learners or professionals? Individuals or organizations? Men or women? Teenagers or adults? 

Defining your target audience is a vital criterion because it helps in determining the ways to boost your personal brand. Study the mindset of your audience, like what they like, what might interest them more, what they look for in social media, or how they engage with brands. 

Once you are clear about your target audience, you will know the type of content or stories you need to show them, where, and how. In other words, you can craft your self-branding ideas story and build engaging content, which appeals to your audience.  

Take this example. You created a lifestyle brand and regularly publish content on home improvement, personal care, family bonding, holidaying tips, festive shopping, etc. 

So, you can easily guess who would be your target audience. It would be the middle-aged men and women, especially the ones who have started a family or have a family.

Likewise, a motivational speaker offering philosophies and lessons of life will have mostly the young population as the target audience, aged between 20 and 30 years. They are looking forward to building a great life, personally and professionally, but often are set back by the vices and mayhems of the real world. 

Your thoughtful posts will inspire and motivate them to get going amidst their struggles. 

7. Make sure to create goodwill

If you are perceived as a purposeful brand representing great ideals and value-driven content, more are your chances to get recognized as an influencer. 

Analyze it in this way. What words people will use to describe your brand to someone shortly? Make sure you create a great impression of your brand to ensure that people specify you as a benevolent and thoughtful person. 

For this reason, it is crucial to build great attributes and spread compassion through your content so that people remember you. 

8. Work on strengthening your social media presence

This goes without saying that social media platforms are a great tool for building your personal brand and growing it exponentially. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter – these are some of the widely popular platforms pushing personal branding to new heights. 

While you can use one or more than one platform to build your brand, make sure that your content is consistent across every profile and is also relevant to your brand.

Also, choose the platforms according to your field or niche. For instance, if your brand has a professional inclination i.e., you promote content on business success, career buildup, or entrepreneurship, LinkedIn is your ideal profile. 

Instagram and Facebook are the best platforms for branding if you are a fashion model, food enthusiast, culinary expert, or travel blogger. 

On the other hand, artists, visionary leaders, politicians, actors, sportsmen, etc., use Twitter along with Facebook and Instagram to express their valuable opinions to the public.

No matter what platform you choose for enhancing your personal online presence, make sure to create and share content that imparts knowledge, useful insights, or mind relaxation to the people. Your content can make or break your social presence. Therefore, create content regularly to keep the audience hooked to your page or profile. 

Also, publish content that encourages user engagement i.e., tempts your followers to like, comment, share, or repost. The more active you are on social media, the more visible you become, which gradually gets your traffic and followers. 

9. Act as broadcasters and conduct interviews

To represent the authenticity of your personal brand or show that you are interested in driving personal growth in your field, work with industry leaders or visionaries. Reach out to great personalities in your field and ask for interviews of 15-20 minutes. 

Managing short informational interviews with eminent persons from your field is a new way to multiply your knowledge and awareness. You gain expert insights and opinions relevant to your niche or special talent. It adds layers to your branding and makes you shine among others. 

To conduct professional interviews with noted personalities, keep in mind to ask these questions:

• How did you enter or get introduced to the field?
• What suggestions do you have for the freshers or individuals who want to grow in the field?
• Where do you see your industry in the next 5 or 10 years?
• How do you keep yourself updated with the industry trends?
• What do you suggest to me for optimizing personal brand recognition in the industry? 

While it might be a challenge for you to reach famous personalities and ask them for interviews, there are added benefits to this strategy! You can share insightful information about the industry and guide others to thrive. 

Of course, that’s a learning experience and leads to your brand building. Your association with big personalities makes you a prominent brand in the industry and might increase your follower base. 

10. Create an outstanding pitch for your brand

If you are still wondering what are some ways you can improve your personal brand while differentiating yourself from other brands, this is the answer - define your personal brand well! 

As you begin to attend public events or branding events for yourself after becoming a brand, create an elevator pitch for yourself that represents you in a great light. You need the pitch to introduce yourself to others. 

Think of a nice way to represent your story/journey in the field and conceptualize your brand to craft an alluring pitch.

According to branding experts, the pitch must be short and expressed in 30-60 seconds. Therefore, you must use nice words to tell your story and attributes concisely. Apart from that, try to focus on speaking out about your aspirations or dreams in the field. 

11. Build a network 

Networking is vital if you want to see substantial growth in your personal brand. Take out time to interact with people, online as well as offline. 

Take part in live sessions, online discussions, and various forums. It introduces you to many prospering brands and individuals in your field. For growing offline networks, attend professional events, corporate summits, fests, and networking events.

Attending such events will help you meet new people, grow connections, and learn from them.

Gaining connections with networking will strengthen your personal brand, especially, when you associate with many other established brands. As your connections grow, you are likely to add value to your branding through interactions with them. 

Bigger networking is a kind of blessing if you are a core professional looking to advance your career in a field. Attending networking events and forums will bring you in contact with business visionaries and entrepreneurs.

So, they might refer you for a job if you have impressed them enough with your conversation skills. 

12. Seek recommendations

If you have just started and want to know what are some ways you can improve your personal brand without putting much effort, consider this. Ask your friends, family members, former colleagues, and even school or college mates to endorse your brand. 

This is perhaps the easiest thing to do! The trick is to make your personal brand stand out of the crowd in this highly competitive market scenario. Talk to people who know you and tell them briefly about your brand and what you do. Then, ask and request them to recommend your personal brand to their social and professional groups. 

Putting this one simply, you are allowing others to promote your brand and communicate your vision and values to you. This is quite similar to the concept of businesses publishing their customer reviews and testimonials to escalate their sales. You are also getting your reviews from others just in the form of personal recommendations. 

If you are a corporate professional and have your personal brand on LinkedIn, it becomes easier to get into the notice of owners and hiring managers through endorsements.

There’s a specific feature of endorsement on the platform with which an ex-colleague or friend can write a recommendation note that gets published on your profile. 

If you are on any other platform like Instagram or Facebook, ask your friends or acquaintances to recommend your brand. They can share thoughts about you, buy from you and post them, or simply just share your profile link while writing endorsing your brand.

13. Boost your online presence

Are you wondering how to how to improve your personal social media presence? Social media profiles or pages are imperatives for creating your online presence. However, having a social media presence isn’t enough to grow your personal brand. Leverage them fully to boost personal brand visibility and keep growing your follower base. 

With so many social media platforms available, first decide which platform or platforms will best help your personal brand. Decide that depending on your target audience i.e., on which platform they are likely to turn up. 

If you are on more than one platform, make sure to share consistently across each platform at the same time. Stories or posts on every platform should match with each other. This will prove that you are the same person posting simultaneously on different platforms to reach to wider audience. 

Additionally, to spur your online presence, we recommend you engage as much as possible with the users. Interact with your followers through polls, question/answer, or live sessions. It makes your audience feel valued or appreciated and encourages them to stay connected with you.

14. Connect to your audience

No matter how vast or small your audience base is, building a strong connection to them is the key to successful personal branding. 

Even though you have built your brand, you never go alone to make it successful. You need people with similar interests who will support and inspire you. When you regularly engage with your audience and garner their opinions and values, you can give a new perspective to your brand. 

Therefore, building your audience and connecting with them to get fresh ideas and perspectives will refine your brand. 

Also, user-generated content delivers benefits like increased audience engagement. Let’s take this as an example of how connecting to your audience will help improve your personal brand. You took the initiative to share interesting videos or stories of your followers with similar professional goals, interests, or talents. 

So, you directly challenged your audience to share their skill or story through a reel, post, or message and pledged to repost that on your page. When you share their activities on your profile, they feel appreciated and consider themselves as a part of your brand.   

Also, never refrain from sharing screenshots of great comments in your stories or pinning/liking/replying to the comments from genuine followers. That shows you sincerely follow their actions on your page and make efforts to acknowledge them. 

15. Always adapt to change

Finally, yet importantly, make sure your personal brand is relevant today and tomorrow! Be persistent with your content but, keep adapting to the trends in your field or profession.  

Staying updated with the trends and latest happenings in the industry is significant for a personal brand just like a corporate brand. Improving personal branding strategies while aligning with the trends will help you. 

However, this simply means, you need to keenly follow how your field is evolving with time, how challenges and opportunities are uncovered with time, and how other brands are coping up. 

Take cues from your competitors or seek guidance from industry leaders and specialists to adapt to the changes. Staying relevant in the industry is the key to making sure your personal brand never dwindles or disappears from your niche segment, especially when new brands are emerging every day. 

These tips and elements make your personal brand effective for your entrepreneurial journey.

Are You a Content Creator? Boost Your Personal Brand With Privy Reviews!

Do not let your certain talent or skillset stay secret to the world when you have the opportunity to build a personal brand and showcase it. Growing your career or turning your hobby into a profitable business is not difficult in today’s digital landscape. 

Create your personal brand, improve your branding with networking and other ways, and grow exponentially. 

Building your brand is just the start of your journey! You need to know how do you improve your personal brand so that your audience increases and gives you monetary gains. We discussed the ways, including specializing in an area, building a social media presence, delivering a unique pitch, and connecting to the audience. 

But, before all personal branding tips, remember one thing – everything you do will count. It can either make or destroy your brand. So, strive to show brilliance through your work and benevolence through your stories to make the most impact on your brand. 

If you are an enthused content creator in this digital age, never shy away from creating your personal brand to set yourself apart and shine through. 

You can use Privy Reviews to augment your journey of personal branding. We are an all-in-one review platform for all types of digital creators. Ask your valuable subscribers to review your brand on our platform to strengthen your personal reputation and have a growing number of followers. Sign up today to get started!