In order to take your side hustle to the next level you might want to consider creating a personal brand. But what exactly does that mean? A personal brand {as opposed to a business brand} is connected to an individual which allows clients/readers to put a face to a business/account and therefore make a more personal connection.
Creating a personal brand is about much more than creating a logo. It’s about making sure you stand out, are recognisable and remembered and building trust with your audience – think of Oprah Winfrey, Marie Kondo, Mrs Hinch and YouTubers such as Emily Norris and Tiffani Beaston – all of which have amazing personal brands!
So how do you start to build your own personal brand? Here’s 10 steps to get you started {plus don’t forget to subscribe to get your FREE personal brand resource PLUS an exclusive 20% discount code for This Splendid Shambles’ Ultimate Blogging Bundle!}
1. Define your why
How does your business {or blog, Instagram account etc.} add value to others? What are your values and beliefs? What areas are you experienced or have expertise in? What solutions can you offer? Do you want to inspire and motivate? Do you want to share your experience or teach? Think about what you would include in an elevator pitch or purpose statement. Jot some key words and ideas down and create a tagline.
For example, my elevator pitch for a Life twintastic is: “I’m Ellie, the founder of alifetwintastic.blog. As a mum of three, wannabe-perfect housewife and small business owner I love to equip, enable and empower busy mums looking to balance business, family, health and home through blog posts, vlogs and digital products.” My tagline from this is: “To Equip, enable and empower busy mums to balance business, family, health and home.”
2. What sets you apart
What’s your unique selling point {USP}? Put simply, your USP is YOU! It’s your personality, expertise, quality, customer service, reliability. Once you know what sets you apart you can start to think about how you can provide content which delivers consistent expectations your readers or clients can count on.
For a Life twintastic, I like to think that my personality, authentic, down to earth style and useful resources and products attract readers, followers and customers.
3. Think about your ideal client/reader
What age range are they? What do they like to do? Where do they hang out online? How will they interact with you {via your blog, Instagram account, in person or in print?} What feelings do you want to evoke? Excitement? Motivation? Calm? Solidarity? Your personal brand needs to reflect who you want to attract to your business and in turn this will help define your brand strategy.
My ideal client/reader would be women/mums in their 20s, 30s and 40s who love to expand their personal development and knowledge by reading and connecting through blog posts and Instagram. They would reflect my love of organising, planning and self-improvement through resources, creating systems or simply having a good de-clutter. I would want them to feel inspired and find my content relatable and empowering. Basically an organised mess with a kick-ass attitude.
4. Create a Pinterest/mood board
Crank open Pinterest and type in some ideas like “feminine brand board” or “food inspiration” and go wild. Once you’ve got 10-20 pins step back and assess what you have. Is there a trend? Common colours or styles? Start to narrow your pins down to hone your style. Voila! Instant mood board.
5. Create a colour palette
From your mood board start to pull out the colours which jump out at you. Once you’ve picked a couple Canva is a great tool for selecting a colour palette around what you have chosen. You’ll probably want a couple of colours which “pop”, a couple of accent colours then a base colour. Again go back ti your ideal reader/client and what feelings you want to evoke. Calming blues or exciting yellow? Feminine pink or stylish monochrome?
For a Life twintastic I originally chose blue and yellow as my main colours, with black and grey as accents and a white base colour. I am now in the process of re-branding using more green, blush pink and blue as my main colours, sage green and gold as my accents and again a white base colour.
6. Consider your font
Similarly in Canva you can road test different fonts and how these work together. Think about how a font may look on a short logo compared to a piece of text. Will be be easily readable? What size works well for your brand? As a general rule you should use 2-3 fonts maximum.
For a Life twintastic I use a font determined by my chosen WordPress theme for my blog posts and Cooper Hewitt thin and body for my logos etc. Both my colour palette and fonts are saved in my brand kit in Canva Pro.
7. Create a logo and alternative/sub logo
Again, Canva {can you tell I’m a fan?!} is the perfect place to make a FREE logo. Canva offers hundreds of customisable templates for pretty much any business or platform – plus if you’ve set up a brand kit you can try out different logos in your chosen colours and fonts with a simple click. As well as your main logo, it’s a good idea to create an alternative or sub logo, for example an abbreviation of your main logo which can be used for smaller templates. Alternative or sub logos should still be easily recognisable to your brand.
Main logo 
Alternative/sub logo
8. Create brand collateral
As well as your logo and sub logo you might want to think about what patterns, social media icons, headers etc. you want to include in your brand kit. For example I like to use a simple “double arrow” line and my signature | dividers and { } brackets.
9. Consider the types of images and/or videos you use
Again use your mood board to decide on the style of media you use then start to collate stock photos. Create your own, consider getting some professional shots taken, use a free stock photo website such as Unsplash or why not create or purchase a preset. Quality media is a must for websites and blogs, whilst more “real” photos and videos are much more acceptable on platforms like Instagram.
10. Create a cohesive brand board
Finally bring everything together to create a cohesive brand board. Your why, tag line, USP, colour palette, fonts, logo, collateral and stock images – all brought together to create your own personal brand.
Next steps – things to consider:
- Your language and tone
- Creating easily customisable templates
- Getting at least one professional head shot
- Using a stock of buzzwords, tags and hashtags
- How to best deliver consistent content and connect with your audience
To help get you started I’ve created a FREE personal brand workbook to help brainstorm and checkoff all the different steps mentioned in this post. As an added bonus I’ve teamed up with Anjali from This Splendid Shambles to offer my subscribers an exclusive 20% discount code off her hugely popular Ultimate Blogging Bundle which includes Blogging for Beginners, Unleashing the Power of Pinterest plus exclusive adds on including stock photos, colour palette inspiration, Canva templates, content planner and soooo much more! I purchased this package and it as levelled up both my blog AND my business!
To access your freebie and discount code simply subscribe below to gain access to a Life twintastic’s VIP subscribers only page.
Do you have a personal brand? What attracts you to particular websites, blogs or instagram accounts?
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