3 Things You Need to Know When Building Your Personal Brand

A huge step you need to take before you even consider hiring a publicist is to establish your personal brand. Without taking the time to work through exactly what you want to be known for, earned publicity can feel like spinning your wheels. 

Here’s 3 things you need to be super clear on before you hire a publicist:

• Establish your story

We all have a story of how we got to where we are today. This is key to your personal brand. Why did you establish your business? What has happened along your journey? 

Disclaimer – It’s important when you create messaging for your story that you include the good, the bad and the ugly. Now, you can choose in a particular interview what to include, but often, what is compelling to others about your story is how you have overcome challenges. Being authentic and honest about where you have been will gain the trust of those you want to reach with your message. 

Think about your story in terms of “the dip”:

• • Here’s where I am today, but I haven’t always been here.
  • Here’s where I used to be.
  • Here’s what happened to inspire me to change.
  • Here’s what I did to gain the knowledge to change.
  • Here’s how I arrived at where I am today.

• Build a website

It may feel like you don’t know where to start. But if you have a book or a business, in today’s world you need a website to build your personal brand. If you’re planning on putting in the time and money to promote yourself, you have to have somewhere to send people who are interested in learning more about you.

You’ll want clear messaging on what you do and what your story is (see above), you’ll want to establish a blog where you can add new content to increase your SEO, and if you have a product for sale, you’ll want to prominently feature it, along with a link to buy. Make sure you include a lead magnet and a form on your site to capture the emails of those who visit your website. 

You can start with a free site using Wix or WordPress, or you can hire a professional to help you build your site if you have a larger budget. 

• Get Active on Social Media

This is a big hiccup for a lot of people, and starting from scratch on social media is intimidating. But we all have to start somewhere. And this step is also essential to building your personal brand. Don’t overthink it. Just get on and start creating content. You can repurpose information you share on your blog. Make sure you have images to accompany your posts. These can be stock photos, canva designs, or personal headshots and lifestyle shots from a professional photographer. 

In the beginning, just set a goal to post 3-5 times a week. Also spend some time engaging with other people in a similar business area and people who fit into who your ideal customer would be to start getting engagement and followers. Once you get going, you’ll start noticing ways to make your posts better and the topics that are getting the most engagement. The key here is to just get started. 

Have you completed these steps and you’re ready for PR? Schedule a free call with us here. We’d love to talk about your PR goals and how we can help you reach them!