You invest a lot of time crafting and executing animesprout content marketing strategies in your paying gig. But when it comes to marketing yourself, what kind of investment are you making?
Are you like the barefooted shoemaker’s kid – knowing but not following your industry’s best practices to achieve personal professional success?
Now is the perfect time to change that. Whether you’re looking for a promotion or new job, or you want to pivot your role or industry, create a content marketing strategy to support your personal brand in 2021.
Careers in marketing make personal branding even more important. If you can’t develop your own brand, people might not have the confidence that you can help them develop a company’s/product’s/agency’s brand. Show them you have got what it takes,” Mike Myers said in a recent CMWorld Twitter chat on the topic.
The chat’s guest speaker, Anh Nguyen, agreed: “All the knowledge and experience gained for your personal brand can be scaled for content marketing for a client or an employer.”
What is a personal brand?
Before getting into how to craft your personal animesprout content marketing strategy, it’s important to understand what a personal brand is.
“Think of it as your reputation and calling card to the world. It’s a requirement in our socially connected world,” Anh said. “Regardless of industry or role, your personal brand helps you connect with prospective employers, clients, customers, collaborators, and so on.”
Gabriela Cardoza explained in the chat that a personal brand helps you:
- Differentiate yourself
- Build thought leadership
- Grow trust and credibility
- Build a network
Frankly, you already have a personal brand. From the moment you engage with people, they form perceptions that create your brand. But if you craft a personal content marketing strategy for your brand, you’ll set yourself on a better path to achieving your goals.
Here’s how to take the seven steps to create your personal content marketing strategy.
1. Craft a brand mission statement
All good content marketing strategies start with understanding what the organization is about and what it wants to achieve. Thus, the first step in your personal content marketing strategy is to create a personal brand mission statement.
“The mission statement aims to create an emotional connection with your audience. It describes the brand’s purpose and why it exists,” writes Social Sprout’s Sarah Aboulhosn.
While Sarah was writing about an organization, the same applies to individuals. Here’s how Gabriela broke down the components of a personal brand mission statement:
- Who you are
- What you do
- What you stand for
- What your unique value is
I’ll add one more – What do you generally want to achieve with your brand?
Here’s a personal brand mission statement that might work for a content marketing writer:
I use my creativity and sense of business to help B2B brands engage with their audiences through compelling content. I work to ensure my content is equitable and inclusive. I want to grow my recognition as a go-to resource in the content marketing industry.
