Personal branding is a prerequisite to building a compelling brand story if you are an entrepreneur. More than your product/brand, people will resonate with your story. Especially if you have a promising business and are looking to scale, this will help you get your business validation from the experts. Building a personal brand is one of the many milestones of your entrepreneurial journey. Consequently, this will improve the brand recall among the target audience. Let’s explore several personal branding tips that will help entrepreneurs build a brand to elevate business.
1. Figure Out Your Positioning Statement
This is the initial phase of your branding journey. This personal branding tip is similar to the exercise which companies undertake to create a positioning statement for their brand. This stage of retrospection builds a solid foundation for your branding endeavors.
- Who – Work on your backstory and figure out how it has played a crucial role in shaping your entrepreneurship journey.
- What – Figure out your key strengths and major highlights in your career.
- To whom – It is crucial to figure out who is your target audience and plan your communication accordingly.
2. Always Go Back to the Drawing Board
The most challenging part about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly evolving. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly assess the skills you are known for and the skills which people need. The best way to connect is to encourage people to learn what is essential for being a successful entrepreneur. Always run an audit on your skills which may or may not be directly aligned with the work you do (the skills could complement the core competencies).
For example: If someone runs a start-up in the fashion industry, he or she could showcase the PR skills that were acquired in the course of the career. This not only helps to showcase the skills that helped you succeed; it also helps to expand your target audience beyond the crowd that wishes to venture into the fashion industry.
3. Define Your Audience
Before you start building your story, it is important to find the right target audience. This will help you resonate well with the crowd. Your target audience is not just supporters who will read and share your posts. They should consist of a fair share of the following:
- Supporters who consume your content and resonate with the ideas
- Advocates who reshare your content to actively improve your social media presence.
- Public relations team focused on gauging your presence online and offline.
4. Design a Narrative
A Forbes article states that as an entrepreneur, you must tell a story. Your career transition is of particular interest to your audience. So always make it a point to share not just your story, but the value your experiences brought to your aspiration to pursue entrepreneurship. Your story must always remain consistent with the past. Constantly reinventing your persona might confuse our audience. This might impact the scale of your reach on social media.
5. Be Consistent
Our next personal branding tip is about consistency. It is crucial to stay consistent with your posts, engagements, and social media milestones. The ecosystem is highly competitive with multiple start-ups working hard to garner attention. Failing to stay consistent will only hamper the prospects of getting more traffic to your pages. Consequently, your brand recall might take a hit.
6. Always Engage Your Audience
Only striving to publish stories or blog posts will not work effectively. The key is to make room for more conversations. Once you figure out the channels, tactics, and type of content that resonates with your target audience, the next logical step is to engage and encourage them to have a conversation with you. The right time to start is when your audience is organically and steadily increasing. You can Indulge your audience in the following ways:
- Encourage them to speak up about what motivates them about your brand and product
- Incentivize your audience with visibility and rewards
- Nudge them to strike a conversation about you and your brand with their circle.
- Build a community on social media forums so that your audience is a part of your growth
7. Ask for Feedback
This step is an extension of the previous one. Big brands build a strong network of communication and feedback just before major product launches. The same can be done to keep your audience hooked to your content. This is the way that makes them feel that they are a part of the process and encourages them to engage with your content online. It brings in a sense of importance.
8. Focus on Communication
It is a good idea to diversify your content to avoid repetitive content. It will also be a good way to improve shares. Moreover, your content should have a proper narrative backed by your own experience and factual research. You can innovate with your content by exploring different formats of communication (Examples are the following)
- Blog posts
- Bite-sized videos
- Interactive live sessions
- Ebooks and learning resources on your area of expertise
- Collated course material on the core technical and functional aspects of your start-up among those target audiences who want to build competencies
9. Find New Ways to Network
If your start-up operates in a particular industry, always make it a point to network with the established players. They usually have the experience to guide you. Besides, their engagement with your content brings a sense of authority to your viewpoint. It will also act as a cascading effect where their target audience might end up being your supporters. Therefore, the bottom line is that in addition to growing your target audience, you must grow your association with people in a similar industry who have now established themselves.
10. Remember That Digital Is Not the Only Medium
Your brand is not just what you portray online. A large part of it depends on how your co-workers and people in your network see and perceive you. Leadership is cultivated on grounds far from online channels. Hence you must always strive to communicate, motivate and interact with people around you. Your everyday interaction breeds ground for an immense scope of personal brand building.
Hopefully, these personal branding tips will help you become a better entrepreneur and take your business to the next level.
