The short answer is YES! Your personal brand and your business brand are distinct entities and used well, they’ll support each other intrinsically. The Personal adds depth to your business. Your business is a way to buy your services once someone has connected through your personal site and your socials.

‘People buy from people’ is not just an aphorism. Your ‘Personal Brand’ delivers a layer of familiarity and recognition that creates connection and affinities. It’s a place to share and show your values, your ambitions, tastes and passions, oddities and quirks. Such personal traits are recognisable. When people recognise themselves (the personal) in you the connection is easier, deeper and more valuable.

A personal brand has transferable benefit for your business or career.

Want to build a larger clientelle, get more leads and new opportunities, increase your prices, transition into a new career, be offered more creative projects at work, get a promotion, move into an executive role? Show the skills you bring to the table through your personal brand. Through speaker roles and podcast guest spots, socials and networking groups, your Personal Brand is an online entree into a bigger game. It establishes your credibility and trustworthiness, and enables clients to find you.

Like all good marketing, it will attract as well as filter. As people interact through a personal brand, you’re funnelling them through the world of you. Those that are still on board are resonating on a deep and personal level. This loyalty helps if you decide to move away from what you’re doing now. You’ve built relationships that aren’t attached to your brand and business, they’re attached to you and will travel with you.

I was recently reminded, by SEO and business mentor, Kate Toon, that ‘we need to honour ALL THAT WE ARE not all that we aren’t.‘ No one is ever really ‘good enough’ – that bar is everest-ine. Most of us have imposter syndrome, doubts and insecurities – they’re part of what makes us human and have kept our place by the camp fire or in the cave safe and secure. The riches, though, are found in the niches out beyond our comfort zone.

Working with Love Communications has been just what I’ve needed to develop my personal brand. I’d been floundering, not sure how to position myself or my brand and how they entwined, hankering after a personal brand website but unsure how to make it happen and putting in the too hard basket. 
I wasn’t sure how much of my life and personality to reveal, how relevant and authentic it would sound. But from the start in the Discovery Workshop, Jude asked the right questions to coax these answers out of me and then sent over her summary. Wow.  This is the game-changer. 

Henri Bird, Local SEO specialist and business mentor

How do you build a Personal Brand without making a great deal of work for yourself?

We know the benefits outweigh the costs and while a brand is not built overnight, there are formulas to get you started. I’ve written another blog about building a personal brand, so take a look at this one if you need a step by step guide.

Craft your pitch

1. What are your values – This is the mix of the things that you hold dear and the things that show up in your interactions with your clients and customers. Use testimonials to check for common things people say about you. Are you patient, helpful, thorough, hilarious, crystal clear, calm on the waters when a zoom meeting goes feral, a great project manager, a hard task master? All of these things make up you.
2. What sets you apart? Step into what makes you YOU and what sets you apart. Are you more creative than clever? More clever than sporty? More sporty than efficient? More efficient than flexible? Do you fear cracks in the pavement?
3. What’s your story? A personal story, with your highs and lows, your peaks and fallows, your good and bad and sane and mad puts flesh on the framework of the content you’re writing for your Personal Brand site AND gives a human face to your business and products.
4. Define your goals – do you want to build an audience, support a cause, change the world, get speaker roles, eventually monetise a service you’re building
5. Share your goals = on your site, through your socials, talking with friends and colleagues . If we are brave enough to be visible in knowing and saying what you want to achieve, people are happy to get behind it. A personal brand states that you value what you want to say so much that even when life is busy and fraught, and there are many messages trying to get through you are standing up to say this is my intention.

You + your story + your goals = Your Pitch.

Craft this pitch into your 200-300 word opening paragraph and you’re almost there. Place this on your home page, break it up to include more paragraphs further down the page to draw people further into your other pages. Flesh this out with your experience, education, skills and values for an about page, add a speaker reel if you have one, or contact us to edit one if you dont, and give your tribe an eas way to contact you with a safe, spam free contact form.

One final point – Share value: Be helpful and connected. Respond to social media comments, write posts that solve problems, break these down into social media posts and reach out. Write blog posts about your values and your passions, post these to social and connect with your audience.

Build your Brand. Share Value. Build your audience.