How To Create A Content Strategy For Your Personal Brand
92% of buyers are more likely to trust a recommendation made by a person — even if they don’t know the person — over a brand.
We’re in the day and age where the consumers’ trust incorporate brands is at an all-time low and personal brands are thriving.
You are likely to perform better if you focus your content strategy on personifying aspects of your brand i.e, your story, journey, and values.
We’ve come up with some killer tips to help you create a content strategy for your personal brand with minimal effort. You can get started on them right away.
Before we dive into the guide, let us first take a moment to understand what a personal brand is. Put simply, personal branding refers to marketing yourself as a brand. This includes your career, experiences, values, and journey.
The biggest examples of personal brands can be Elon Musk, Alice Thorpe, and Neil Patel.
The idea is to market oneself as if one were a brand. You create the products and services under yourself along with your logo and slogan. And content marketing helps you create a marketing strategy around building your personal brand.
You create content — be it blogs, posts, videos, live streams, etc. to help interested users and establish yourself as an authority on a given topic. Slowly, you veer the users towards engaging with you more and more.
Without further ado, let’s get to creating your content strategy for your personal brand.
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Use social media in a proactive way
The power of social media in boosting a brand’s image is not even in question anymore. Everyone is on social media today. What you need to focus on is using social media in a proactive way — one that is specific, informative, and engaging.
With over 3.6 billion social media users in the world, it’s about focussing on the most beneficial platforms. Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter have emerged as some of the best grounds to promote oneself with minimal to no budgets.
1. TikTok
An average person who uses TikTok on a regular basis spends upwards of 50 minutes on the app every day. And over 30% post daily. It is a platform tailor-made for personal brands. Not so surprisingly, corporate brands have had a hard time finding a footing there where personal brands have skyrocketed.
Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae are some of the most popular TikTokers who have continued to appear in their own shows (The D’Amelio Show) and movies (He’s All That). You don’t have to look that far though.
All you need to do is start simple and small. For starters, you should pick a niche for yourself. Say, skincare, makeup, or organic farming — whatever it is, stick to that one thing instead of very many.
Try to post content daily. This is where you can experiment to your heart’s content. Most popular TikTokers post daily. The best way to go about it would be to keep your videos short. If you have, say, 10 tips for monsoon skincare, spread them across 10 different videos for 10 days instead of a single video.
Further, switch it up with collaborations and go live with someone on TikTok. These live streams allow you to innovate and experiment with your content. It also gives you an opportunity to expand your subscriber count as you reach out to the fanbase of the person you collaborate with.
2. Instagram
Think of Instagram as a portfolio of sorts. You can make great use of the platform to display who you are, what you do, and you can help others in more ways than one. It helps you build your credibility and form connections with like-minded people.
Start by building a profile that clearly displays who you are. Simple things like stating your full name and job can go a long way in appearing genuine. Moreover, you should list out how to contact you and what you offer.
Other than that, when posting on the platform, try to mix it up with picture posts, videos, stories, and lives. In your content, try to switch it up with posts about products, behind-the-scenes, a day in your life, podcasts, tips and tricks, processes, and anything that catches your fancy.
3. Twitter
One of the benefits that Twitter has over the other two platforms is that you can post textual content as a complete post. This makes it beneficial for people who have a way with words and can truly engage people with their wits.
Wendy’s, an American brand has made a name for itself for its sarcastic tweets, something that it may not be able to pull off other platforms, given the formats. You too can take advantage of this. You can post the excerpt to your blog with the link to it.
Not to mention you can post pictures and videos all the same. Another advantage of Twitter over other platforms that tends to slip under the radar is the ease to post pictures of various dimensions together. It makes for minimum effort posting.
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Newsletters — but make ‘em matter
If you were to examine the best newsletter examples out there, you will see that they are quality over quantity. This may seem contradictory to one of the goals of a newsletter which is to establish regular communication with users.
But in actuality, you won’t have much to talk about if you publish them this frequently. Not to mention the cost and effort of putting them together. Therefore, you should stick to a routine that suits you best. It can be every week, every fortnight, or even every month.
Pick a template that is simple and, inclusive and enhances the content you put in. This ensures consistency in your newsletters and helps your users identify your brand in general. Lastly, try to weave a story about your brand through your newsletters.
It helps connect with your audience in an authentic way. Remember that a great newsletter always offers something of value to its reader. Healthline, for example, has aced the formula of being the authority of medical content that its readers won’t find anywhere else.
It comes up with unique findings and breaks down complex surveys into information that affects/matters to the users the most. For you to strike the right balance between education and promotional content, remember the rule of thumb to be 9:1.
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Approach an agency
It may seem counterintuitive to partner up with an agency for branding something that is personal. But it can be of tremendous help, especially if you don’t know where to begin. Not everyone is a marketing genius and you will be better served to seek professional help if marketing is not your forte.
A content marketing agency helps you identify your own brand and lays the ground to market it in an optimum way. It will take care of creating a website and portfolio for you along with setting up your socials.
When you don’t have to worry about the marketing side of things, you can focus your energy on creating the content you love and care about. What is more, you can always run up your ideas with your team to refine them.
Working on something as a team gives you a wider, more comprehensive perspective. You get the opinions of people from different backgrounds. It also brings to light many aspects you may have escaped otherwise.
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Keep learning
No matter what content strategy you pick, the constant in every one of them is going to be your expertise in the topics, subjects, and fields you love. You should always strive to learn more in your chosen niche to help people with your unique knowledge.
Take YouTuber Lindsay Ellis for example. She is a video essayist whose works primarily revolve around the cinema. She began her career critiquing the Transformers movie franchise and musical movies but has now expanded to all sorts of cinema.
Had she limited herself to just those two, she may not have been able to be as successful as she is today. As a personal brand, it’s important to not just be on the top of things in your specific niche, but also be knowledgeable about related topics.
Keep trying to learn new things and enhance your knowledge. It helps keep you on your toes. Also, try polishing your prior knowledge with new challenges. It goes a long way in helping you deliver top-notch content.
Conclusion
The USP of any personal brand lies in delivering content that no one else is able to. You can follow some of your favourite influences and personal brands to get inspiration.
Remember that building your own personal brand takes time and effort. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it right at first.
Learn from your mistakes and focus on delivering valuable content and engaging with like-minded people.
Let us know in the comments which tools help you the most in advancing your personal brand and what is your next goal with it.
