This week we’re moving away from the blog a little bit and talking more about you. Your personal brand is a big part of most blogs and blog credibility is often linked to author trust. So, you need to work on building your own credibility and authority in the area you blog about too.
What is Personal Branding?
Personal branding utilises public perception of an individual to differentiate them from others, advance careers, increase network of influence and have a bigger voice on particular topics. This is done through intentional efforts and strategy to position a person as an authority on a topic, increased credibility and a trusted source of information. Personal branding is inherently linked to brand repuation and is affected by many different factors, both manageable and those out of your control.
How is Personal Branding Linked to your Blog’s Branding?
Depending on what kind of blog you have, will depend on how linked your personal branding and your blog is linked. If you have a personal blog, they’ll be very linked however if you’ve created a more brand/niche focus which doesn’t include author, doesn’t use first person, is more formal in tone etc. then your personal brand may not even interact with the blog.
But let’s talk more about personal blogs. Firstly, blogging is actually a way to form a personal brand, and your blog and peronal brand can be the same thing. For exampole, Zoella and Lydia Elise Millen have both built personal brands with their blog/YouTube channels and it’s worked in their favour within the beauty industry.
However, personal branding doesn’t have to be the same as your blog. You can have a blog which probaby is similar to your personal brand, but your main personal brand could be something different. For example, I currently I have multiple social media accounts and whilst I always try to be myself, I know on my work socials (Like LinkedIn) that I need to be more professional, on my blog socials I try to focus on my niche topics (fitting the blog’s brand), on TBG socials I keep it positive and about boosting other bloggers, and on my personals I have more freedom to post what I like.
Whilst I do blog, my personal brand is linked to my industry and career so my personal branding is built up on work and personal accounts. The other accounts have their own brand, however my personal brand is incorporated into them to protect the personal brand. For example, if you worked in the beauty and makeup industry, having a blog that shouts about no makeup, it could negatively impact your credibility both personally and on the blog if people connect the two.
Do I Already Have a Personal Brand?
So you’re probably thinking you already have a blog and social media and do you already have a personal brand? The answer is “probably”. If people you know associate things with you, then you have started to create a perception of who you are online.
To check if you’ve go a personal brand you can perform an audit of your personal online footprint. To do this, check all your social accouts (that old tumblr account counts too…) and make notes on them. These notes can be about the content you’ve posted, your TOV, the formality, and the topics you cover most. At this point, if you see anything that could hurt your reputation (i.e. public facebook arguments you had at 13…) feel free to delete them.
Creating a Personal Brand
Whilst you probably already have a personal brand, you can definitely work on defining who you are and choosng what you want to be known for. The first thing you need to do is to write down the key charactersitics and qualities about youself that you want others to see – this could be a topic such as books or art, your morals and ethics such as being sutainable or vegan, and can even be certai personality points such as being positive, or being sarcastic.
The next step is to curate your online space to include those with similar ideals, values, and content. Finding your audience often means finding your community too, so support others whilst you build yourself up. Next step is to create a conent plan and tart creating and posting assets that highlight the personal brand you’ve thought of.
Personal branding takes tme, you can’t post for a week and think that it’s done – you need to think of this as a long-term strategy to encourgage others to see you as a credible source in the area you’re focused on.
Maintaining a Personal Brand
Speaking of long-term strategy, you also need to think about the maintenance of your personal brand. You can help strentghen your brand by sticking to it, and also reducing posts that may negatively affect it. If your brand is about being positve – then a negative toned social post may be out of place, for example.
You should also monitor how people react to you personal brand. If your audience react negatively (or not at all…) what does that tell you? Try tweaking it slightly to increase engagement and retention of your audience. Try AB testing different content and see what works better, and repeat the positively engaging content topics where possible.