Branding needs to be authentic, consistent, and efficient. That’s why you need to have a system in place that works. This includes all of the things you need to do before you start branding as well as routine tasks you’ll continue to perform ongoing. Everything needs to be as efficient as possible. This is how the branding pros do it and you can do it as well.
1. Be Clear from the Beginning
Know your passion and your purpose and express it through your mission and vision statements. It should be as short and concise as possible, and should include who you are, what you do, and your promise to your audience. Whether or not you use this as an official statement doesn’t matter; what matters here is just getting it clear for yourself. What do you want people to remember you for? What’s you’re unique position in the market? Start with these 42 Questions.
2. Identify Your Natural Strengths
Your natural strengths provide the engine for your personal brand. It’s these strengths that will shine through everything you do. What are you good at naturally without even trying? Discover these strengths and figure out ways to make them work for you. When you know what you do well, you don’t need to be egocentric or fake. Your promises will be real. The more you know yourself, the better you can see and help others. Check out the Connect Now Coaching Toolkit for a complete set of assessments for you and your clients.
3. Choose Your Channels and Tools
Branding is about getting your message in front of the people who need to hear it. There are many online and offline channels to achieve this, including live meetups, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, your own blog, article directories, forums, press release sites, podcasts directories, webinars, and more. You also need a capture system such as Constant Contact to capture the leaders generated by those channels. Brainstorm a list of these avenues for exposure and decide which you’re going to use. You should also devote time to searching out new sites and strategies.
4. Create Your Design
Your design features should be consistent. Choose fonts, colors, phrases and images that embody your brand. Take a good headshot that reflects the image you want to convey. Make sure it’s not too close or too far away. Choose other images and templates that you’ll use. Look at some sites and profiles of people that have strong brands to get ideas. If you don’t have a website, use a simple yet highly effective landing pages with Instapage or Lead Pages.
5. Create a Schedule
Take all of your routine branding tasks and budget and schedule them. Decide how much time you’re going to devote each day to each task. If you’re not sure what these tasks should be, start with your goal (the statement you wrote to clarify). How can you achieve that? Keep asking yourself ‘how’ until you arrive at concrete tasks that will get you closer to it. If you’re objective is to increase your revenue, then make sure every task is directly associated with generating income. Your time is worth money, so schedule your calls and meetings carefully using Time Trade.
6. Listen to People
Learn about your audience by getting active on social media and subscribing to like-minded blogs. See what people are sharing, bookmarking and talking about. The better you know your audience, the better you’ll be able to tailor your offers to them. You should also sign up for alerts so that you’ll know whenever your brand is mentioned. Keep a careful eye on what people are saying about you. Use a Survey tool that integrates with your email marketing and capture system.
7. Get Organized
Use bookmarks or Evernote to keep track of the login links to all your tools and resources. Don’t let usernames and passwords be a barrier to getting stuff done. When you have everything organized, it saves you lots of time and makes your personal branding much more efficient.
For organizing your social content, Hootsuite is the best social management tool on the market today. You can write and plan your content ahead of time, and then schedule over the weeks and months to come, saving you time when you need it most. For example, if I’m putting on an event, I’ll schedule my reminders and other event related posts leading up to the event, freeing up my time to complete other tasks as it get’s busier closer to the event.
The most important thing is to monitor everything you do and look for results. If certain daily tasks aren’t getting you results even after a few weeks, drop them and focus on something else. Whenever possible, split test your images, posts, and offers to see which version your audience prefers. Finally, because things are always changing in the online world, devote some time to searching out new ideas. Stay creative!
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