The formula for personal brand success online - how to grow an audience that loves you!

We chat a lot about building your brand or business online, but what about a personal brand? What if you are trying to build a brand that is centered around you? Here is a quote by the ever so popular Gary Vaynerchuk, “Documenting your journey versus creating an image of yourself is the difference between saying “You should…” versus “my intuition says…”. Get it? It changes everything. I believe that the people who are willing to discuss their journeys instead of trying to front themselves as the “next big thing” are going to win.” 

Gary is actually the perfect example of a personal brand - most of us know of him for his advice about social media and entrepreneurism, but did you know he was first known as a wine critic who expanded his family's wine business? But he is now more known for his work in digital marketing and social media.

If you want the formula for personal brand success, stick around and grab your pen and paper - because I’m going to tell you exactly how to do it!

Before diving into the steps of building a personal brand, let’s first figure out what is a personal brand?

A personal brand is when you, as a person, take center stage of the brand. You are the main circle in the web diagram. Your logo would most likely be your face - and everything that is discussed or presented on your online platforms has a direct connection to you - your interests, your skills, and your opinions. 

Whereas a business brand or professional brand might solely focus on their business - their logo would be an actual graphic design that symbolizes their business and the topics discussed on their online platforms would be a direct connection to their business, not themselves. 

But what are the benefits and challenges of building a personal brand? 

In my opinion, the biggest benefit of having a personal brand is the flexibility of the content you can create. This is about YOU and YOUR interests, after all. If you are in a season of your life that you are traveling a lot, you might talk about that topic within your personal brand - but maybe things slow down, possibly due to a pandemic - and you’re no longer traveling … so you picked up a new crafting hobby at home that you decide to share with your audience. You can do that - because the center of that web diagram is you. 

The one challenge you might run into is actually something I can personally relate to right now. Let’s use my personal brand as an example - the topic that really started to take off on my YouTube channel was content surrounding Instagram - since then, I have started my own Social Media Management business called Creatorly Media - with this shift, I started a new YouTube channel and Instagram that is a business-focused brand, where I still talk about those topics under the business name, Creatorly Media. I then refocused my personal brand on YouTube and Instagram to talk about other topics I am interested in - like productivity, routines, 30-day challenges, and more - but here is the challenging part. The audience I have built over the years has gotten very used to one type of content, Instagram growth, hacks, etc. But now that I have made this huge shift, not all of my current audience is on board with these new topics - even though this brand is centered around me. This is just something you should be aware of when starting a personal brand, sometimes it can be a roller coaster if you decide to add or remove topics from your brand. You just have to be patient and consistent as you rebuild your new ideal audience.

Now, let’s talk about the formula to building a successful personal brand online.

Build your foundation

The first step in building your personal brand is by building the foundation. I was using a web diagram as an example earlier, but this would actually be a great exercise for you to begin building your foundation. Take a piece of paper or if you are a digital person, like me, you can use an online diagramming application called Lucidchart - and starting with you in the center, start brainstorming the various topics that makeup you as a person. You can then go even further, breaking those topics down into subtopics and so on.

Do the research

Once you have your web diagram of ideas, it’s time to start doing some research. Even though having a personal brand does provide you the flexibility to focus on multiple different topics that surround you as a person - if you want to be successful and grow your brand, you have to be strategic about the topics as well. At this point, you will have a list of various topics you could possibly talk about - so it’s time to figure out which of these topics will provide you the most success and growth online. 

If you are planning on having a YouTube channel, Youtube would be a great place to start - just start searching your various topics and see what other videos are being posted on these topics. How are they performing? You could also use an application like Tubebuddy to get some details on video topics as well. Now, if you’re more focused on starting your brand on Instagram - I suggest finding some other personal brands that have similar interests to you and see what they are doing that’s working for them. You could also do some research on the hashtags surrounding your topics and see how they are performing. The goal here is to find a balance between what you are passionate about and what your ideal audience would enjoy. At the end of the day, the best way to see how a topic will perform online is to test them out on your various platforms.

Determine your target audience

So now that we have built our foundation - we need to determine our target audience. Who are you creating all of this content for? Let’s just keep using web diagrams - draw a stick figure in the center of your paper (or if you’re super artistic, draw the person you envision when thinking about your ideal audience). Who is this person? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies? Where do they like to eat and shop? Do they prefer coffee, matcha, soda, or water with cucumbers? Are they active or couch potatoes? Are they productive or procrastinators? What is their age? Dig deep and figure out the ideal person who would follow your online platforms. You can even take this one step further and give your “ideal audience” a name - let’s say you named your “ideal audience” Beatrice - in the future when you’re brainstorming content ideas, you will ask yourself. Hmm.. would Beatrice enjoy this piece of content? Pin this web diagram in your office or take a photo to keep on your phone or laptop - that way you can always be reminded of who you are creating this content for in the first place. 

Develop your content strategy

Okay, so we have built our foundation, did the research to find what topics we should focus on first, and determined who we are targeting. Now what? It’s time to put all of this hard work into action by developing a content strategy. With a personal brand, you will be putting a lot of YOU into your content - so planning is key. You might need to plan a brand photoshoot or even stop midway through an afternoon walk to snap some photos or film a reel. Once you plan your content for the month, I would make a list of what visuals you need and how you are going to gather all of the material you need to create that content. 

Back in September, we did a live content planning workshop, where we walk you through our signature content strategy planning process and help you create your content plan - the replay of the full workshop, which is over an hour-long, and the Q&A can be purchase on our website at www.creatorlymedia.com/workshop. If you haven’t already, I suggest grabbing this replay, as it’s a super detailed workshop that can help you develop a content strategy for your brand - but here are my tips for you today:

Be vulnerable. By being open on social media, we can build real relationships with our community online.

Share YOUR journey. Make sure to share your journey, just like Gary Vaynerchuk said, “people who are willing to discuss their journeys instead of trying to front themselves as the “next big thing” are going to win.” 

Don’t over plan. Graphics and brand photos are amazing and a great way to batch content - but, make sure there is realness in what you’re creating online. Give your community a taste of the real you, not just the pre-created, edited version of yourself.

Be present. Here is a big one. Be present to your community. The best way to do this online nowadays is by being present in your Instagram stories. It’s where you can be raw, honest, 1,000% yourself. It’s only there for 24 hours and it gives each person in your community the chance to be a part of your day and your life. 

This brings us to our next piece of the puzzle, which is building our community.

Make connections and build community

If you want to build a community that truly loves you, it takes more than just being vulnerable and present online, it’s about building real, direct connections with your audience. They are showing up for you by watching your videos, reading your captions, interacting with your stories - but how are you showing up for them? Do you respond to all of their comments? Do you message your new followers, welcoming them to your community? Do you go to your followers' Instagram pages and show them some love? If you ask a question or do a poll on your stories, do you interact back with them? This is what is going to turn your “followers” into your community. Have any of you heard of the “1000 true fans” theory? Back in 2008,  Wired editor Kevin Kelly wrote an essay called “1,000 True Fans '' stating that all an artist needs is 1,000 true fans to maintain a fruitful, online career. The theory is that if you have 1000 true fans, your ride or die, and you decide to sell a shirt for $20 - you would have the potential to make $20,000. It’s hard not to focus on that follower or subscriber count, but it’s truly more about building the relationships with the folks who have already taken the time to be a part of your community. 

Now, it’s just time to do the work.

Do the work

You have a plan in place, now it’s time to implement it! I know some folks out there might hear the word “influencer” and imagine we are just sitting on our couch watching Netflix all day - but that’s not the case. I spend the majority of my time staring at this computer screen; typing, planning, recording, editing, doing video meetings, and so on. It’s work and a lot of it. I suggest coming up with a schedule that works with your current lifestyle. Do you still have a full-time job? Are you a stay-at-home parent? Find the blocks of time throughout the day that you normally spend watching TV or scrolling through TikTok and dedicate a portion of that time to work on your brand. I would also make a list of things you need to accomplish daily, like Instagram engagement or responding to YouTube comments - this might help make your phone time a little more intentional. The more you do the tasks needed to develop content, post stories, engage, etc. - the easier and more natural it will all be. Just be patient and take it one step at a time.

If you need help with doing the work and would like to chat with us about our various social media services, let us know! You can review our services and fill out our application at www.creatorlymedia.com/services.

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For now - if you follow these steps, stay consistent, and be patient - your personal brand will not only grow, but your community will love you!

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