Personal branding is the talk of the town for entrepreneurs, business owners, and coaches alike at the moment – and for good reason.
Company content is reshared 24x more frequently when it is posted by the company’s employees, receiving 561% more reach than it does if shared by the company page alone.
561% more reach.
People want to do business with people, not companies.
With the continual development of social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, personal branding is becoming increasingly popular.
The Neil Patel’s, Grant Cardone’s and Joe Rogan’s were some of the earliest and now most successful examples of powerful personal branding.
Their personal brands offer them the ability to:
- Charge more for their services
- Diversify their income with speaking engagements, courses, and training conferences
- Hire the top talent
- Collaborate with other top brands
- Make money from courses in their sleep
- Grow a clear company culture
At this point, you’re probably thinking,
“What’s the secret? What have they done that I’m not doing?”
Maybe you’ve tried building your brand recently, but without anything really taking off?
You’ve been showing up and posting consistently, giving value in every way you can?
You’ve tried to build relationships, engage on other people’s posts and attend networking events?
But it’s not working for you like everyone else…
People aren’t buying into your brand.
This a common problem, and it distinguishes the profitable personal brands from the average.
Because once you get people to buy into you, they buy from you.
Trouble is, amongst the noise of social media today, achieving that can be pretty difficult.
So, here are my top 10 tips for getting people to buy into your personal brand.
1. Be authentic
A lack of authenticity is the main reason why company social media campaigns are out of favour at the moment. Consumers see through the bullsh*t ‘we care about you’ façade that companies so often bear in their branding attempts.
Similarly, if people think your attempts to personal branding attempts are merely a ploy to sell your product or service, they won’t think twice about following your insights.
Take a genuine interest in other’s lives and show some personality.
2. Document
Personal branding is all about getting people emotionally invested in your product, values, purpose and success. What better way to show them all of this authentically than documenting your journey?
Take your audience along with you through a camera lens and show them the problems, solutions and exciting success you go through. They’ll feel as though it’s happening to them
3. Educate Yourself
No one is going to follow you, care what you say, or buy into you if they don’t think it will benefit them in some way. Yes, the classic ‘provide value’ is relevant here, but provide value that no one else is providing to solve a problem no one else can solve.
Whilst you don’t have to know absolutely everything about your niche, you need to have done more than just watched a few YouTube videos on it.
4. Be Consistent
Not the ‘post every day’ consistency (though that is vital), but consistency in your messages and values.
It’s pretty difficult to buy into something that is unclear or keeps changing.
Write down a set of values that you stand for – that are aligned with your audience’s values – and keep them in mind any time you say or do anything.
5. Appeal to emotion
Think about all the brands – personal or business – that you really care about. There must be some sort of emotional investment in there, right?
They stand for something you care deeply about, or solve a painful problem you have. Again, it’s unlikely you’ll really buy into something, follow it and engage with it if you don’t care about the end goal, purpose or outcome.
Particularly if you’re looking to charge big bucks with your personal brand, you’ve got to solve something they care strongly and emotionally about.
6. Resonate
This has become a bit of a buzzword recently, which I think has made it lose meaning. We know we need to resonate, but we don’t actually know how to do it.
Resonate with your audience by speaking their language, telling stories they’ve probably been through and understanding their problems. You want them to think, “He/she gets me.”
If that means you have to speak to your audience daily, study other personal brands in your niche or do some detective social media stalking, do it…
7. Build a community
This is actually something that company brands have done far better than personal brands previously.
Create a community of your like-minded followers where they can support, discuss and engage with each other. They now ‘identify’ by something, rather than just follow it…
Think Gym Shark wearers, Apple users and Starbucks latte drinkers.
8. Demonstrate success
Your audience will buy into you because you can solve X pain point, get them to Y goal or achieve Z results.
Attempting to build an engaged audience without actually being able to do this is like trying to build your house on sand. Showing off your results reassures your audience that you are worth their time, which spirals exponentially when you have a community marveling over them.
Obviously, this also has a huge role in the ‘buying from’ decision too.
9. Collaborate
We’re reaching new heights now, and we want to increase the number of people buying into us. The most powerful way to do this is by collaborate with other high-level personal brands.
Whether it’s podcast episodes, short videos or training days, collaborating with other personal brands both reassures your audience that you’re worth their time and opens you up to new audiences.
10. Focus on the few
Don’t always get caught up in the numbers game. Personal branding is about power first not size.
If you’re constantly focused on trying to increase follower counts, engagements or website visits, you’ll lose your existing audience and end up with nothing again.
Serve the few by doing things that don’t scale – interacting one-to-one, making time to solve their specific problems, and following up with their progress often. This is far more powerful than any Facebook ad campaign ever will be.