Personal Branding Tips (That Have Nothing to Do with Color Palettes)

When it comes to branding, a logo is often what comes to mind first.

But branding – and especially personal branding – is so much more than your visual identity: your logo or the color you use on your website (even though they play a role too!)

Personal branding is how you convey your business to the world, how you want others to feel when interacting with your company at every single touchpoint (which is simply, any point you engage with them from an email to your website). Above all, personal branding is how you want others to remember you when you’re not around.

Here are some personal branding tips to help you brand yourself like a pro!

1. Know your why.

Personal brands that have their why clearly defined, set up, and communicated to their target audience are the brands that make the biggest impact.

Finding your why requires a tiny bit more work than simply saying what you’re doing.

Your why is the reason you’re doing what you’re doing. Your why is what makes you tick. Your why is why and how you pick yourself up when going gets hard.

Pro tip: I wholeheartedly recommend reading Start with the Why – it’s going to give you so much clarity on around defining YOUR unique why! 

2. What are your values?

Your brand’s values are much more than just a few lines of text on your about page that no one will ever read. (hint – people do read them!)

The values you have in place show your ideal customer more around why you do what you do (and in the specific way you do what you do) and help you stand out from the crowd.

Pick 3-5 values that are most important to you when doing business. Think along the lines of open communication, partnership, trust, integrity, care and so on – as long as it matters to you, there’s no ‘bad’ value to add!

How to write your personal statement based on your values:

Even though it’s not mandatory to have this right from the start, a personal statement definitely leaves a nice impression and sets the foundation of a great personal brand.

Here’s a quick formula to write one:

• What do you do? Example: I help aspiring entrepreneurs start their passion-based business.
  
  
• How do you do it? Example: By offering mentorship, inspiration, and guidance in the areas they may struggle the most.  
  
  
• Why do you do it? Example: So they can live a life they’re passionate about!

Now, combine all of those three sentences together and voila – your personal statement is ready!

3. Clearly define your USP.

Your Unique Selling Point is what you have to offer to the world that no one else has.

And before you say that you don’t have anything unique to offer, let me stop you right there. There may be hundreds of others out there who do what you do but at the end of the day, they’re not you.

They don’t have the same skills, experience, values, life story, personality traits, and everything else that makes you… you!

No matter how saturated your industry may seem, define what makes you unique. Think – if you were a client, why would you work with someone like yourself? What do you value in a brand?  

That’s your USP!

4. Aim for the feeling – not for the color.

Ultimately, branding is how you want people to feel when interacting with your company.

True, colors convey emotion… but color isn’t the only thing to pay attention to. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal client.

How do you want them to feel when they’re, let’s say, on your website? On your Facebook page? How do you want them to feel after they engage with your brand? What can you do to make them feel that way?

Let’s say, if you have trust as one of your main values, then what are the ways you can increase the trust between the two of you?

For example, apart from choosing more trustworthy colors, you can add more testimonials, a money-back guarantee, and a complimentary phone call before you start working together.

5. Be consistent.

Consistency is the key ingredient to great branding. 

Naturally, your branding will evolve and grow over the years but chances are, those will be some minor tweaks – the foundation is going to stay pretty much the same.  

To make it easy for others to remember you, keep the same visual identity on every channel and touchpoint where your target audience may be but also keep being of service to others with your work.

Last but certainly not least, keep being yourself – there’s no way you’ll go unnoticed!

All of that made your head feel dizzy?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to do all of that alone!

Click here to sign up for my 12-week course that covers all topics you may be worried about as a beginner entrepreneur – personal branding included!