If I ask you to name an owner of an Electric car manufacturing entrepreneur and business – most of you will answer Elon Musk and Tesla without even thinking. But, if I ask you to name another Electric car manufacturer, the results wouldn’t be the same. One of the key differences between Elon and the others in that industry is the power of his personal brand.
An interesting article in the Entrepreneur magazine describes personal branding as creating equity for your name.
As a Marketing agency, we encourage founders and business leaders to have the presence of a face or multiple faces for their brand on their digital channels. This makes their business stand out from competitors hiding behind their brand.
An interesting article on Forbes which outlines a few reasons why business owners and leaders fear putting their faces out there.
- Afraid people will criticize them for the company’s mistakes
- Afraid of being seen
- Afraid of their flaws
- Afraid it could affect their personal life
While all these potential reasons are understandable, the benefits your brand could gain by having a face for the brand outweighs these reasons.
Here are some of those benefits
1. Customers will connect more with a personality than a faceless brand
People are increasingly becoming hesitant to trust brands due to many bad incidents caused by greedy businesses. Having a face for the brand will go a long way in breaking this wall and getting you closer to your customers. A personal brand associated with your business will make your customers realize that your company is run by real people instead of just some soulless money-making enterprise.
2. It is a bold move and it’ll grab your audience’s attention
It takes guts to put yourself out there for the world to see. Your customers will appreciate a business owner who will speak to them directly.
They will admire you for having the courage to be vulnerable. All the personal brand-led businesses, including Elon Musk’s Tesla and Steve Job’s Apple are well-loved despite the many flaws of the founders.
3. Stand out from the competition
Your competitors can outspend you in marketing and copy your product, but they cannot replicate ‘you’. You could become one of the biggest differentiating factors that sets your company apart from your competition. Your brand will be known as “so and so’s company, ” helping you clearly distinguish yourself from other players in your industry.
4. Positions you as an industry expert and a thought leader
As the business owner or leader, you know your products better than anyone else. You will also know your customers’ pain and pleasure points the best.
You are exposed to the latest information affecting your business and industry. Presenting this to your customers on video, in writing or through socials helps position you as an industry expert in your area. This respect you have gathered can then be leveraged by your brand.
So how can you create a strong personal brand of yourself?
1. Treat your personal brand like you would a business
You would identify your business’s strengths, weaknesses and attributes before starting any branding activities. Your personal brand should be treated the same way. Clearly map out what makes you unique and why someone should listen to what you have to say.
It would help if you outlined your story, your core values, your expertise and what is your life’s mission. Then it becomes like in the movies; people start rooting for you, as people love an inspiring story of a hero who overcomes obstacles to do something for the greater good.
2. Define and understand your target audience
Just like in the case of a business, you then need to clearly define your target audience and do further research on them. This will help you create the most useful content for this target audience, and you can make your message resonate better with a clear understanding of them.
There could be 2 types of the target audience
- Is your direct customer
- People that will be inspired by your personal brand and will learn from it
3. Create Content Pillars
Then you want to identify what are the main content pillars your personal brand would cover. Content pillars are a set of themes your content would cover. Some of these content pillars could be
- Industry updates
- Podcast
- Future of the industry
- Role of technology in the industry
- Business updates
4. Create content
Batch produce content. This is the most effective way of creating content which we use for both our marketing purposes as well as for our clients. It’ll be no different for you as a Personal brand.
Instead of trying to shoot a YouTube video every week, do a master shoot of 1 months’ worth of video (4 videos) in one go. Then your video content for that month is sorted. Your video and marketing team will take care of the rest.
They will create the full-length content for a platform like YouTube, create snippets for Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and Transcribe it as a blog. And use snippets from the blog for Tweets and LinkedIn posts.
5. Distribute them in the right channels
Some personal brands are built on YouTube; others prefer Blogs, still, others use Twitter and LinkedIn or Newsletters. A good distribution strategy would be to use a combination of all. It is strongly advised to create as much video content as possible, as video is the future of all marketing activities.
- Long-form content distribution channels: YouTube, Blogs, Podcast streaming platforms
- Short form content distribution channels: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tik Tok
You will use a funnel approach to drive traffic from your short snippets to your long-form content platform. Your personal website, company website and social media platforms will also be linked where ever necessary to achieve your marketing goals and gain cross-platform growth.
If you’re looking for a one-stop service provider who can help bring your dream of making a personal brand come true, Ladder is there to help.
Book a free consultation with us now.