Personal brands aren’t just for celebrities and media personalities anymore. Luckily, anyone can build a personal brand by using the right digital marketing tactics.
One effective tactic is content marketing, which involves the creation and sharing of online content (such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, and social media posts) designed to spark interest in a brand while not explicitly promoting it.
Content marketing can help you build your personal brand by helping you reach your target audience, engage them, and incentivize them to keep coming back.
Here are seven ways to leverage content marketing to build your personal brand.
1. Create a unique and consistent brand image
One important characteristic of a personal brand is that it needs to be unique and identifiable.
People should be able to recognize you not just by your name or picture but also by your content and style of writing. You need to have a consistent brand voice, tone, and overall content aesthetic.
But, how do you keep a uniform brand voice across platforms?
The first step is to identify and define your personal brand. Who are you? What do you stand for? Are you funny or serious? What are the distinguishing characteristics of your brand and content?
The next step is to create a checklist or guideline document to ensure that you incorporate your distinguishing features into your content. This could be your preferred color palette, font, tone, and anything else that can help people identify your brand.
Here’s an example of the digital art creator Matt Crump, who has an immediately recognizable and unique personal brand. The picture below has screenshots from his LinkedIn page, Instagram account, and website.
Do you notice the distinguishing brand elements, like the use of candy colors and that unique profile picture?
2. Start a blog
The next step towards building a personal brand using content marketing is to start a blog on your personal website and post regularly. This helps you attract and engage your target audience.
Make sure to create high-quality content on topics that are relevant to your audience. This will help establish you as an authority figure on the subject and will cause Google to rank your content higher, thus making it more visible online.
It is also a good practice to share your content on other platforms like LinkedIn or Medium. These platforms have millions of users and they can help your content get the desired reach and views.
3. Promote your blog on social media
While your blog should be your main content publishing platform, you should use social media to promote your blog and stay connected with your audience. It’s a good idea to post something every day.
While posting daily may seem like a daunting task, it is actually not that difficult. You can create fresh content on some days and post curated content on others. The key is to post content that will resonate with your audience.
You can also use third-party tools to help you manage your social media accounts. These can help you design, plan, schedule, and post your social media content with ease.
Social media can also help you gain access to a whole new audience, who may not directly visit a blog.
4. Write guest posts for relevant websites
Another useful tactic to build a personal brand using content marketing is to post high-quality, relevant content on high-authority websites in your niche. This helps you in two primary ways:
- It gives you access to that website’s audience, who are similar to your current audience.
- It establishes you as an industry expert on the topic.
Both of these benefits help enhance your personal brand and make people notice you more. An added bonus is that guest posting helps you build backlinks and directs traffic to your blog.
5. Start a newsletter
Writing a newsletter helps you keep in touch with your audience and is the most direct way of communicating with them. You can send them your latest content, wish them well on important occasions/holidays, and offer first access to offers and discounts.
Sending emails with your signature makes your audience feel that you are personally making the effort to connect with them. This builds strong audience relationships and fosters brand loyalty.
However, you need to ensure that your newsletters reach the subscribers’ inboxes and not end up in the spam folder. You can improve your email deliverability by following best practices like providing relevant content and cleaning your email lists regularly.
6. Host podcasts and webinars
One of the most effective ways of establishing your personal brand is to host podcasts and webinars. And, of the two of these options, webinars are better as they also include a video.
Here’s how webinars/podcasts can help you build a personal brand:
- Starting your own podcast/webinar gives you a chance to talk with industry experts, which further enhances your image as an expert and provides valuable content to your audience.
- Webinars help you put a face to your brand and help people remember you better.
Just make sure to maintain a consistent brand image in your video and audio content. This also pertains to the tone (serious, casual, funny, etc.) in which you talk.
If you want to start your own webinar, you can use any of these solutions to host webinars.
7. Nurture connections with influencers
It may sound counterintuitive but the best way to make your mark is not to hate your competitors but to make friends with them.
Having good relationships with prominent industry experts and influencers is mutually beneficial. You can support each other and provide more valuable content to your respective audiences by collaborating.
Similarly, you should also nurture your audience relationships by responding quickly to comments and messages. If someone mentions you, you should show your appreciation by liking and commenting on that person’s post.
Small gestures like these go a long way towards building long-lasting relationships.
Ready to build your personal brand?
Perhaps the most important thing to remember when using content marketing to build your personal brand is that, regardless of what type of content you create, you need to remain authentic and true to your brand.
This means that you should strive to provide your audience with the best, original content. Don’t try to imitate anyone else.
Are you ready to start using these tips to create your personal brand?
This article was contributed by Shane Barker, a digital marketing consultant for 15 years with an emphasis on Influencer Marketing in the last 5 years.