Your personal brand is more than just a resume. It’s more than an elevator pitch or a social media bio. It’s your essence, packaged as a formal expression of your external professional self. It’s a symbol you live by in every way you interact and behave in the world.
What is a personal brand?
A personal brand is simply your story. It includes who you are, what you stand for, your strengths, and how you use that strength to add value to your community. It can be told in multiple formats and extends to all the ways you present yourself online, including the color palette of your personal website, the intro music for your podcast, and the tone of your LinkedIn bio.
Why does an effective personal brand matter?
Creating an effective personal brand that resonates with your target audience relies on a mix of authenticity and storytelling. A strong personal brand tells people what you do, your core values, and your connection to a specific niche. The voice of the personal brand weaves seamlessly through a blog post, LinkedIn profile, personal website, and social media content.
How to build a personal brand in 8 steps
You likely already have a personal brand. Perhaps you just haven’t put it on paper. All the small choices you make when interacting online (and even in real life) accumulate to form an image or brand that the audience forms an opinion about you.
It’s important to be more intentional in your personal branding strategy in order to present yourself the way you want others to see you. Whether you’re looking for a job, an entrepreneur raising funds, a budding creator, or even just someone navigating life and business online, a thoughtful approach to personal branding will help you open the right doors.
1. Get to know yourself
There are many questions you may not have directly asked yourself throughout your life experience. But some of these answers hold the keys to understanding your personal brand. This is a crucial step in building your personal brand statement and telling your story.
Meet yourself in the setting where you feel most comfortable expressing your thoughts, or ask a friend to pretend to be an interviewer. Ask yourself:
- What is everything about you? Gather your hobbies and interests, the industry or job you aspire to. What excites you?
- What is not you? What are the traits that do not describe you at all? What would you like to avoid having people think about you?
- What are the traits that define you? Ask your friends and family to describe you and compare their answers with your own.
- What are your values? What social issues or causes do you find important? Do any of these issues form the essence of your personal brand or goals?
- What sets you apart? This will help you identify the value you provide later. What are your short-term and long-term goals?
- What are your strengths? Is there one thing you do exceptionally well?
- What impact do you want to achieve – on your audience, your business, or the world?
- Do your personal brand and your business brand overlap?
2. Define your target audience and focus
After getting to know yourself, answer your “why” question. Why are you building a personal brand? Do you want to enter the creator economy? Are you building a personal brand as a first step towards a business or product? Are you establishing a professional public persona to help secure funding or other business partnerships?
Answering the “why” question will help you define your target audience. Are they customers? Investors? Employers? Another group? What does this team need? What unique value do you provide that creates value for this audience?
3.
Writing an Elevator Pitch
Here you can put everything together to create a personal brand statement that summarizes the value you bring, reflects your personality, and speaks the language of your target audience. Think of it as part slogan, part elevator pitch – for you. A single sentence to three sentences can usually encapsulate the key points (and you’ll earn extra points if it easily fits in a social resume).
If you’re stuck, the following template can help you draft your personal brand statement:
I am [introduce yourself: name, specific details, credentials, what you care about]. I provide [product/service] for [target market] for [value proposition].
This is the structure of a personal brand statement that captures the important facts, but you should edit it for the right style and personality.
Leading the Megababe brand, Katie Sturino tells her personal brand story with the following statement:
“Katie Sturino is an entrepreneur, social media activist, and advocate for body acceptance and animal rights. Through her personal platform, @katiesturino, she lends her voice and personal style to raise awareness about size inclusivity, empowering women of all sizes to find their confidence and celebrate their beauty.”
4. Tell a Story
A personal brand statement is the starting point for telling the rest of your brand story. You’ll need short and long versions of your story in your toolkit for various purposes, such as social media bios, press kits, your personal website, or investor pitches.
You are the best person to tell your story – even if you’re not a strong writer. Tell your story in your voice first before working with a writer or editor to help you refine your draft. Remember this isn’t a formal cover letter – the style should reflect your personality. Visit the “Get to Know Yourself” exercise to remind you. Was “quirky” one of your traits? Make sure your story leaves the reader with that feeling about you.
The principles of brand storytelling can also apply to personal branding. You may start with a written draft of your story but can present it to the world in a format that reflects you best or that fits the platform you hope to spend most of your time on. This could be a short or long video, podcast/audio, a pinned tweet thread, or all of the above.
5. Choose the Right Imagery
An image is worth a thousand words, as they say. Choosing and creating images to represent your personal brand is just as crucial as the written narrative.
What colors or moods best represent your personality? What tone should your personal image have: casual? Fun? Professionally artistic? Will you use photography or illustrations? Will your videos be raw and hand-shot or polished and produced?
Work with photographers and designers whose portfolios align with the vibe you’re aiming for, and communicate your expectations clearly (another great use of the completed brand story!).
6. Draw Lines in the Sand
The “real you,” your public personal brand, and your company’s personal brand may be closely linked. But there are likely to be some differences. There may be aspects of your personal life that you choose to keep private and separate from your public personal brand. Or, in the case of some online creators producing open and unrefined content, these two identities may be one and the same.
There may be other reasons why your personal brand differs from your true self. Privacy and security are concerns for online personalities who face bullying, trolling, and harassment driven by their work. Decide how much you are willing to reveal about yourself.
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If you have built a business from your personal brand, linking your story to it will help you sell to an audience that has already bought into you as a person.
Your personal brand and your company brand are likely to parallel and overlap. If you have built a business from your personal brand, linking your story to it will help you sell to an audience that has already bought into you as a person. Your company brand should also try to focus on the customer story, where products speak to common pain points.
7. Building and Finding Community
Instead of trying to attract a wide audience, look for people who share your opinions and values. This is a specific category or community that shares your core values and interests.
Building a community from scratch starts with a strong personal brand. We have moved beyond years of hacks and quick growth tricks on social media, where the audience craves authenticity and meaningful online connections.
There is no greater indicator of this than TikTok’s success during the pandemic, when unpolished, personal content brought audiences to creators’ original releases that they loved. TikTok has made it possible for anyone with a phone and internet connection to create content and join a shared experience – a need for connection in times of isolation. As a result, online personas have come to resemble the people behind them more closely.
But building a community is different from simply increasing your follower count. It’s a two-way street. Your community is only nurtured if the relationship is collaborative – each of you, the brand, and the audience benefit in some way. Engage with your audience by including their stories in your content, asking for feedback, and participating in discussions on topics and comments.
Where do you decide to establish your business base?
- What medium of expression do you feel most comfortable with? Short writing? Live video streaming? Pre-recorded short videos?
- Where have you already built a presence? On which platform do you already have a small following?
- Where does your desired target audience reside? Research your demographic to understand which channels they are using most effectively.
As a personal brand, focusing on one platform may be the most sustainable at first, but eventually, you will need to expand into other spaces to grow your audience. Hugo Amsellem from Jellysmack says audience overlap across platforms for some top creators ranges around 10% to 20%.
8. Leverage Social Media (and Be Consistent)
Remember that when you share and engage across platforms and audiences, your message can’t simply be “copy and paste.” Understand the linguistic nuances and formatting expectations from audiences on each platform, and adjust your content accordingly – while staying true to your personal brand (style, language, values, etc.).
Katie Sturino’s personal brand shines across platforms:
Across platforms, Katie Sturino’s personal brand shines: authentic, unapologetic, and filled with empowerment.
Creating Content and Value
A strong content marketing strategy can help you grow your personal brand and increase traffic to your website. However, a long-term content strategy should continue to build value for your community to maintain loyalty and build long-lasting relationships.
Before launching SOKO GLAM, founder Charlotte Cho built her personal brand. During that time, she wrote content that assisted her readers in their personal skincare journeys, while helping them discover products as well.
When Charlotte launched SOKO GLAM, she had established herself as a trusted source for skincare content and easily translated fans of her personal brand into customers for her business.
On the SOKO GLAM website, Charlotte’s original story permeates the brand statement, intertwining with her personal narrative.
Tips
Effective Personal Branding Strategy
To ensure you build a strong personal brand that reaches your target audience, make sure your core message is consistent and that your brand’s voice and aesthetics are seamless across content marketing efforts on multiple platforms.
An effective personal branding strategy achieves the following goals:
- Build credibility and trust. This can be beneficial in forging relationships with your audience or securing business opportunities.
- Stand out as a specialized or prominent figure. A successful personal brand establishes you as someone of significance and interest in your field or community.
- Reflect an authentic and sustainable version of yourself. Unless you are playing a character in your work, your personal brand should be a version of you that you can consistently commit to. It may differ slightly from your true self, but it should still be you.
- Provide an empathetic face and personal story. This can be essential to your business or product, as it builds trust with customers who see the real person behind the brand.
- Be transferable and seamless across multiple platforms and media coverage. A personal branding strategy that includes guidelines, keywords, and visual assets can help maintain continuity in your story, even when you are not in control of it.
- Achieve a clear goal. This could be a goal like acquiring more customers, increasing awareness of your own company, or promoting yourself for participation in public speaking events.
Examples of Personal Branding
In the novel and film Big Fish, the dying hero Edward Bloom recounts his life story to his adult son. The son, who considers the story a fairy tale, seeks to understand the real father before it’s too late. What he discovers is that the stories were not lies but colorful real details filling the gaps in memory. But the story also reflects the self that Edward wants his son—and the world—to remember.
The novelistic character used storytelling to create a persona that is larger than life yet still grounded in reality. In some ways, this is the definition of personal branding: authentic and selected elements of the person’s story, traits, and communal values combined to put your best self forward and achieve specific personal and professional goals.
Chrissy’s strong personal brand helped her translate her influence and popularity into her own business. Cravings by Chrissy Teigen
In the real world, there are some examples of strong personal brands. Celebrities like Sia, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Elton John often come to mind, as their personas are larger-than-life versions of themselves.
Social media influencers are also experts at creating remarkable personal brands. Figures like Ryan Trahan, Mr. Beast, Wil Yeung, Chrissy Teigen, and Sonja Detrinidad are excellent examples of effective personal branding.
Turning Personal Branding into Profit
The creator economy has been built on personal brands. With the lines between creator and company blurring, these transformative creators find ways to build independence by monetizing their audiences in their own unique ways.
If your goal is to build your personal brand into a business, there are many ways to profit from it, even if your influence and audience are still in the growth phase. While the traditional ways people often think of are ad revenue and brand sponsorships, top personal brands can thrive solely on these. Get paid by brands you love with Shopify Collabs
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Monetizing your personal brand on the platform through ads, brand partnerships, tips, and shoutouts is effective, but moving your audience from social media to your own channels is more sustainable.
Here are some business ideas to help you with that:
- Launch a website where you attract a social audience and collect email addresses. Building an email list helps you own your audience and bring them with you across platforms. Offer incentives for signing up by providing free access to exclusive content.
- Use a subscription model. Sell subscriptions or access to a fan club to give subscribing users access to additional content. Many apps, like Patreon, can help you achieve this, or you could set up user accounts on your website.
- Sell products through an online store. If you set up a store on a platform like Shopify, you can extend the personal brand you’ve built into physical goods. A print-on-demand app that connects to your store can help you translate unique designs into items for sale – without needing to buy or manage inventory.
- Sell content like tutorials or courses. Creators Colin and Samir have built a reputation for themselves as experts in creating online video content. After building trust with their audience, they launched a course teaching the story of YouTube.
Your Personal Brand on the Path to Success
Now that you have all the tools to bring your personal brand to life online, it’s time to launch it! Remember, as you grow and learn from your audience and your own experiences, your personal brand may evolve. The important thing is that it always aims to achieve your goals and receives a positive response from your audience, even if those things change.
How to Build Your Personal Brand – Frequently Asked Questions
What is a personal brand and why is it important?
A personal brand is a public statement about who you are, what you stand for, who your audience is, and what value you provide to that audience. It is developed based on your goals and values, which should remain central to your brand when used across channels. A personal brand is important for anyone building an audience online with a specific purpose (finding work, seeking funding, or becoming an influencer). Similar to a company’s brand guidelines, a personal brand helps you stay consistent across platforms and true to your vision.
What makes a strong personal brand?
A good personal brand has key elements such as a clear purpose and a defined audience. It is also a sustainable and authentic representation of you, even if it is a polished version. An effective personal brand remains consistent across social media accounts, like a Twitter bio or LinkedIn profile. An effective personal brand offers a value proposition and reaches a specific audience.
What are some examples of personal brands?
Some of the most famous personal brand examples are those who have become prominent figures independent of the career pursuit that initially brought them fame. Examples like Oprah, Richard Branson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Lil Nas X come to mind. Their personas transcend corporate branding or their work.
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