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Culture March 26, 2020
Controlling your image doesn't have to be difficult.
Many mistakenly believe that building a brand is only for businesses. This is wrong. Anyone who wants to influence others or have an online presence needs to start building a brand. Otherwise, how will they cement their reputation?
Brand isn’t synonymous with company. According to BusinessDictionary.com, a brand is a “Unique design, sign, symbol, words, or a combination of these, employed in creating an image that identifies a product and differentiates it from its competitors.”
If you parse through all these words, you might be able to find the term “image.” Simply put, a brand is an image. And if you’re a young professional or influencer, you need to control this image by making it cohesive, simple and appealing to others.
But if you’re new to personal branding, don’t worry. ENTITY has a checklist for building a brand that fits you.
What do you, as an professional, want to accomplish? What is the core of your identity, and what are your goals as a young worker or online influencer? The answers to these questions make up your mission statement. While you don’t necessarily have to share your mission statement with the world, its key ideas should still be apparent throughout your brand.
These statements should be short and sweet, which can be hard when you’re trying to summarize your identity and goals. HubSpot, a marketing platform, shared an example from Patagonia which is: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”
Keywords are another great way to develop the core of your brand. These keywords are three to five terms that summarize your professional identity. Depending on what’s easier for you, you can choose these keywords before or after making your mission statement.
For example, when creating my brand with ENTITY over the summer, I came up with the keywords “independent,” “emotional,” “eccentric,” “storyteller” and “feminist.” These ideas are central to my personality, and I know that they are also central to my identity as a young woman in the workplace.
If you want to create a website (you should), association keywords are especially helpful for directing your online traffic. Make a list of “trends” that you want your brand to be associated with.
For example, when you Google “social media,” Social Media Examiner and Social Media Today appear. When you type in “photography,” National Geographic comes up. These brands have associated themselves with these keywords, which allows them to show up in those searches.
To start your brand, only pick a few association keywords. You don’t want your brand to feature everything that catches your eye. Otherwise, your followers or consumers won’t understand your specialty.
Start with a couple of topics you’re passionate about, like Bitcoin or landscape painting, that preferably match your identity keywords. You can always change them later.
A target audience is another part of developing the core of a brand. With your identity keywords and mission statement, you can determine the niche, or focus, of your content and image. After coming up with a few areas of interest, like beauty or travel, you can analyze what type of people are drawn to these niches.
What’s their age? Location? What percentage of each gender make up these groups? Income level? Education? What else do they like? The more specifics you can draw from your audience, the better you can understand how to get their attention.
You can’t appeal to everyone, but if you understand what type of people you want to draw, you can get a lot of positive feedback on your image.
Building a brand heavily involves design. The design of your brand includes colors, fonts, symbols and logos. The more cohesive your brand is, the more appealing it will be. On Instagram feeds, CrazyEgg.com advises:
“Try incorporating brand colors into your Instagram photos so people begin to associate those colors with your brand. They’ll be more likely to stop and look at your photos and engage since they have a sense of familiarity.”
When determining your brand’s design or style, only choose a few colors and two fonts at most. ENTITY mentees chose six images that represented their brand’s keywords and identity to help them pick fonts and colors.
Before making this decision, take time researching the meaning of different colors and fonts! You shouldn’t choose the basis of your brand’s design on a whim.
Lastly, you should create a strategy for your online presence. Determine the platforms you want to use and create content to prepare for the first month or two of building your brand. If you want to make a website, start working on its theme and formatting. If you want to use Instagram, start building a prototype feed before posting. This also applies to any other social media platform.
In other words, focus on your goals and determine the best way to get there. The best way to do this is creating a schedule. For example, let’s say you want to create a professional Instagram for future employers to look at. Your strategy could involve taking more pictures at work events and posting them every Sunday. This demonstrates your professional passion, and it gives your followers a set time to check in to your work.
Building a brand can seem daunting, impossible and unnecessary. But if you follow this checklist, you’ll realize that personal branding can be pretty fun. With these steps, you’ll grow your following, land that job or cement your reputation in no time.
