Welcome to personal branding 101.
Friends, we are holding a funeral for the niche. The niche is dead.
The truth is, you no longer have to hide behind one specific topic or niche down. Because guess what? You are the topic.
Let’s be honest, people connect with people. Which means that your followers connect with you, as a person. In fact, I guarantee that some of your favorite people on your socials are the people who you relate to the most. They’re the ones who are not afraid to show you who they are, outside of what they do. They give you in inside look into their life, and show you the behind the scenes, their failures, their triumphs, and the things that make their hearts beat wild. Most of the time, the people we follow, feel like friends.
Personal Branding 101
That’s the thing about personal branding. It’s about building an authentic sustainable brand, and that starts with community. Not only are we talking about a real audience that is going to connect with you, but also support you. Most importantly, get you. They’re coming to you because they see themselves in you, they can relate. (Listen to this weeks podcast on personal branding 101)
You might be wondering, well how do I discover my personal brand?
Well, I’m glad you asked. Grab a pen and paper, or better yet, whip this up in Canva. (If you like visual guides, you’ll like this post on visualizing your dream life.)
Step 1: You start by answering the following questions.
- What are your interests?
- Hobbies?
- What do you do for work?
- Where do you live?
- What do you want to teach people?
- What makes you happy?
- Goals you are working on?
- Things you’ve learned?
We are talking about EVERYTHING that makes you, well… YOU. Write it down, make it a fancy visual with your photo, and place it somewhere you can see everyday!
You might be thinking, well what about my business, the things I sell, or the services I offer? You should still be sharing those, in fact they should be a part of the answers to the questions above.
Personal branding, is mostly about who you are with a little bit of what you do. Connection is key, people are coming to you for you.
I made my personal brand 101 visual in Canva. Want to know how I made the photo cutout? Check out this reel or TikTok.
Content Pillars
Now what? You have the visual, or the post it note. What do you do next?
You use that as a guide to map out and plan your content. Those things should be what you are talking about, sharing, in order to grow an authentic and sustainable community.
If you’re like me, you probably want a little more organization in order to better plan content. In that case, you can introduce content pillars. These are the top three that I swear by.
- Educate
- Entertain
- Relate
You can take your list, and begin to add the different things about yourself underneath each of the pillars. Easy.
You can then use that as a guide on what to share/post. You can post content based on theme days.
For instance, Mondays can be educational (and you should have a lot of ideas to choose from). Tuesdays can be entertainment (again, you should have a list underneath). Maybe Wednesday could be relatable content (with whatever you put underneath that pillar) and then you can repeat with however many days you want to post. (Check out this podcast episode, on how to get sh*t done with theme days or time blocks.)
Final Thoughts
Show up.
Be cringey.
Post it.
Be consistent.
Metrics don’t really matter. Let me tell you why. You could have 10,000 followers, but if only 100 people show up for you everyday, and engage, then your metrics aren’t going to truly be accurate. Where as you could have 200 followers that show up in your stories, comments, share your reels, are on your newsletter list, and constantly support you.
Who do you think is going to be more successful in the long run? The one with the authentic community who shows up everyday.
Growth can be slow and steady, but knowing that your community is there for the right reasons makes a world of difference, and it’s more sustainable in the long run. Your personal brand can truly take you the distance.
My final piece of advice, be brave enough to try. Just try, you never know what amazing things can come out of this.
I am cheering for you every single day. Until next time…
