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Building a personal brand online is essential for almost everyone in our current society. A good personal brand, which is equivalent to an online reputation, can help you advance your career, establish yourself as an authority, or help you advance your social standing. The following tips can be used to help you develop an effective strategy for building a strong and positive online personal brand.
Create a Recognizable Online Personal Brand Image
The first thing you learn in how to build a personal brand is that you must have a physical representation for your brand. This includes defining your audience, growing your online presence, and networking among a variety of other ways. Just as a business has a logo to represent itself, you should have an image for your own followers to rally behind. Regardless of the size of your budget, you can find a freelance designer who can create a logo design for you at an affordable price. It should be something that uniquely represents your philosophy, goals, and persona. Once you have a logo, you should use it often as your main profile picture on every social media account and in email signatures.
Identify Your Target Demographic
Once you’ve created a logo design and social media accounts, you’re ready to begin interacting with your target demographic. You’ll want to know who to target, so the followers you attract will be interested in you and in what you have to say. There are several factors to consider in selecting a target demographic. For example, if you’re a real estate agent, you may want to target 20 to 22 year olds since that age group will just be graduating college. In addition to launching their careers, they will also be looking to buy their first homes. You may also want to target older professionals who are looking towards retirement. Those groups will be interested in real estate investing. By keeping your target demographic in mind from the start, you’ll waste less time trying to appeal to those who will never be interested in your expertise.
Start Building a Social Media Presence
You should begin building a social media presence by joining groups and following pages that align with your goals. You’ll gain genuine followers by commenting on posts and creating posts of your own in the groups that you have joined. Whenever possible, interact with others who comment on your posts or reply to your comments. This will show other social media users that you do interact with others, which will encourage them to follow you or send friend requests. As a general rule, you should avoid joining in online conflicts or creating drama by making controversial political or social statements. If you want to engage in those types of conversations, you should have a separate account that isn’t linked to your brand accounts.
Consider Creating a Website for Your Online Personal Brand
While you may know that it’s essential for every commercial business to maintain a website with a blog, you may not realize that most individuals also have their own websites. This is especially true for those who are trying to build their personal brands. A website provides a way for more people to find you on the internet, while also giving you a place to start a blog. The blog entries you make can be used to help you rank higher in search results when you create posts that are relevant to your expertise. As search engine crawlers find more relevant links to your blog, your site will become recognized as an authoritative source. Additionally, you can share links to your blog posts on your social media pages, driving more of your followers to your website.
Become a Professional Guest
Now that you have started to build up your personal brand, there are things you can do to capitalize on that momentum. When you appear as a guest for other internet personalities, more of your followers and their followers will recognize you as an authority. Since you’re appearing as a guest on someone else’s blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, users will lend more weight to what you have to say. This can be a great way to gain more followers and establish your authority in your designated industry. Just be sure you have new content to share with each appearance. Your discussions should be unique, engaging, and relevant to your expertise. This will draw more people to you and more people will want to share the content with their friends which will only help grow your audience.
Conclusion
The suggestions included here will be effective in helping you build a personal brand, but it may also require persistence on your part. This process involves developing trust among the followers you gather over time. However, if you persist and continuously employ these practices in your daily online interactions, you will see positive results.
