21+ Personal Branding Practises To Grow Your Small Business

Personal branding is about taking responsibility for how you are going to present yourself. With this, you create your position as an expert or influencer in your niche.  

It can help you establish yourself as a leader and showcase your traits to create your persona in the industry. 

However, the process can be daunting and lots of people feel lost as it’s not easy to know where to start with.

In today’s evolving market of small business, it’s important to stand out and with personal branding, you can do it much effectively. 

To understand how you can improve and achieve the goals,  here are some of the best practices that can help you in improving the personal brand but also to your business. 

What Are The Rules Of Personal Branding?

Personal branding has some rules which help the person to guide. With these rules, you can plan your journey and achieve what you have decided. 

To make sure you are following the rules, here are some of the important ones listed that can help your personal branding engaging, unique, and inviting. 

Have Your Focus 

Personal branding can be a confusing journey for lots of people. You might be started with something but following something else now. 

The first and most important rules highlight the importance of having your focus. When you are building your personal brand, make sure you know where you are going. 

Have your key messages and stick with those throughout the process. 

Do not try to be everything to everyone. The process can take dramatic effects from time to time, but a focused mindset on what message you want to give can keep the whole shift smoother for you. 

Be The Genuine One 

In a world where it’s impossible to hide the real you, it’s useless to act like someone that you are not. 

For lots of people, personal branding means changing their personality. But to make sure you are not losing effectiveness, it’s important to be a genuine one. 

People can see what you are doing and they can notice as well as call out if you are copying someone. 

Also being genuine makes the process easier for you. 

You can connect with people who genuinely want to get in touch. 

Create The Positive Impact 

Once you start building your personal brand, there will be two major options you can choose from.

 Either you can hop over the others or keep your steady growth to create as well as grow the community. 

To have a successful impact, it’s important to remember that you are brand too. 

No matter what you do, it will affect what you are creating. Instead of focusing on the negative side, as a brand you need to keep your impact positive on your community and audience. 

Keep your attitude positive and help the people who are in need. This will not just grow your brand but you can create your own community that will be loyal to you. 

Focus On The Story 

Personal branding heavily depends on the story you are telling through your process. If you don’t have one, you clearly lost half of your potential customers. 

Building a true narrative can be your most effective strategy for creating a personal brand. 

The people are not interested in what you are talking about the brand, it’s important for you to tell them a story through your interactions and engage them to create interest. 

This interest will lead them to know more about the brand as well as your business. 

Not just that, hear about people’s stories too. It will help you in building your reputation and with this, it will make you more open to others. 

Also, the most effective PR that you can find is word of mouth. And when you let your people share the story, it will keep your brand much more genuine and reputable. 

Pro tip: Use video or written content to share. However, video messages can connect on a personal level to your audience. 

Consistency Is A Key 

Consistency is similar to having a narrow focus. With this, you can focus on one niche and build the audience by being consistent. 

Not just online but offline, focus on both ways to show your consistency. This should be communicated through your different ways of connecting,  appearances, and gravitas.

Being consistent also helps in creating your branding voice. People will start acknowledging you if they are seeing you more often. 

It makes your brand much easier to find in the crowd instead of not being the consistent one. 

Live What You Created 

When you create two separate versions of yourself, this will be hard to keep the balance. Also to focus on both will consume too much energy from you. 

The successful way is to live what you created and make sure that you and your brand are not too different. 

Have your lifestyle actual the way your brand is about and live both of it together. This will follow you everyone, and switching is not the option. 

Failure Is Inevitable 

Being a human, everyone wants to avoid the point of getting failed in what they are doing. However, to build something extraordinary, it’s important to understand that failure is not something you can avoid. 

As Walt Disney shared, that says failure is important as it can tell what can happen. And with this, you can be ready for more instead of being frightened.

With this, you also push your comfort zone when you fail. This helps you in creating an effective and much starting personal brand. 

Leave Your Legacy 

Once you create your brand successfully and have your community, the next point is to leave your legacy behind. 

This brings to an important question – what is the one thing that you want to be known for?

When it’s about personal branding, it’s a lifelong project.  Not just it keeps changing over time but also keeps evolving too. 

Make sure that you know what your legacy is going to be and how it will impact others in the market. 

Tips For Your Personal Branding To Elevate Your Business 

To make your personal branding success and make sure that it’s elevating your business.

 Here are a few tips that you can apply, also make sure that you understand what purpose you want to fulfill with this. 

Make Your Personal Branding Authentic

When you are focusing on personal branding, make sure you are focusing on being authentic too. 

However, lots of people get confused about how to be authentic when you are presenting yourself to the outside world. 

Since all humans are built differently and they have their own business. use your quirks to show yourself in a different light. 

The key here is to find what makes you different. The uniqueness you carry is what you need to help your personal branding authentic. 

The example you can consider is Gary Vaynerchuk. He created his personal branding on the way he carries which is a man without a censor.  The way of his treatment is similar to how anyone treats their friends.

Start Blogging To Power Your Voice 

The one strategy that is followed by most of the influencers is creating the blog. This helps you in powering your voice. 

When you keep writing and creating content on the niche you want to build your brand. Within one or two years, you will create your own audience base. 

However to approach this, either you can build your own blog or you can do guest blogging. 

When you choose to create your own blog, it will require most of your upfront work but for the long term, it’s most rewarding. 

But if you are focusing on creating a fast audience, guest blogging can help. However, you don’t have your own virtual properties. 

For example,  Rachel Parcell started her blog Pink Peonies. She shares about fashion, lifestyle, and beauty. 

 With the years of working on the blog, he created her brand as an influencer and on Instagram, she has more than 97300 followers. 

Step Out Of Your Spotlight Now & Then 

Depending on the people, but thawing yourself out to the public and under the spotlight, it can create a toll on your real life. 

There are lots of celebrities and influencers who take a break from time to time to get out of the spotlight they have created. 

Just like Taylor swift who distanced herself from her social media for a year after her album Reputation was launched. 

When you have too much attention, it will create a downside too. It’s okay to take a break and back up again when you feel recharged. 

Provide Value Instead Of Running Ads 

Ads are important for benefit purposes, however, when it comes to building your personal branding it’s important to create value for your customs. 

Instead of depending on ads, focus on what you can offer to your customers when they connect with you as a brand. You can use this opportunity to help in solving their pain points. answering their questions and sharing creative ideas to boost their engagement. 

This will naturally affect the positive of what you are selling. For example, if you are running a brand that focuses on beauty, you can run tutorials, tips, seasonal events to help your customer. 

With this, the customer will be interested in trying what you are selling too.

Build Your Networking Strong 

When it comes to mastering branding, it’s important for you to meet more people and connect with them. 

It means you can start blogging, host the events and attend the ones. Conferences, sharing a post on media, meeting with people, etc are also helpful to increase your network. 

Instead of sticking with one niche, go with more options too. Expand your reach to different categories. This will bring more opportunities to you so you can use it for the business as well as your brand. 

Create Something Valuable 

The safest bet you can put is starting as a creator. Instead of focusing on the controversy, make sure that you are offering something that can help others. 

You can create your online store,  products, content, etc, Being a  creator is important and powerful. 

However, you have to commit to what you do. When you create something and offer valuable content, then people will come to you. 

This is a helpful and authentic way to create your audience and have loyal people as well.

 

Have Your Niche Of Expert 

Branding can be difficult if you don’t have any niche where you don’t have the expertise. The top influencers with strong personal brands have their expertise in their niche. 

However the level of expertise depends, and there will be an audience who know less than you in the area you are working.

That’s why it’s important to understand the niche you have and what things you hold the most knowledge that you can share with the world. 

Amplify The Version Of You 

Being authentic is important but the next step you need to take is amplifying yourself. 

The world is filled with people and it’s hard to stand out if you don’t have the essence that can be amplified. 

Your personal branding should show what kind of person you want people to see you. Your activities should be revealed around the message and make sure you are being as original as you can be. 

For example, you can consider Simeon Panda. He focused on physical appearance and his self-branding revolved around that. 

He makes sure to showcase his fitness to be taken seriously by others on being fitness expertise.  He appeared on magazine covers and has muscle which is more than the average person. 

He sells online training about fitness and equipment related to that. Due to his appearances and his social media accounts where he keeps sharing his photos, this helps the people to connect with him. Also, it boosts the sales of what he is selling. 

Have More Interactions 

Without being social, you can interact with more people and this means you won’t be able to fulfill the purpose of creating personal branding. 

Take your time and connect with people. If your followers commented on a post or texted you, repay their comments. 

Also if someone wants help, you can share your answers and solutions if you have one.  The point here is to interact more with the people who want to know you. 

Make sure you are humanized by your brand. However, also focus on how far you can take this, fix your time instead of responding randomly. 

Important Points For Personal Branding Practices  

Personal branding is based on your reputation.  With this, you create the one and that carries throughout the process and reflect on what you do. 

For a small business having personal branding is helpful to make their business successful but also representing the brand in better ways. 

Developing your personal brand can help you in building the business faster. This will also increase the trust and help in bringing more customers as well as clients. 

To understand the personal branding practices, here are the points that you need to know. 

Focus On What You Are, Not What You Do 

Consumers are going to attract based on how you are interacting. It’s important to understand that having an interaction and making sure that you are not missing any opportunity. It’s important to define your brand too. 

People connect with the energy that you share when you interact with them. It means you don’t have to pitch your services all the time, the potential clients will attract you if you have an engaging personality. 

Personal Branding Is All About Your Voice

The point of creating your personal brand is to establish what you think and give a voice to your own thoughts. If you are copying about others and parroting the same thing, you will not attract people’s attention. 

Too many examples are there where the so-called thought leaders are copying the statements of others. . Here you need to be brave and build the audience based on the truth that others are supporting. 

Think about the points that you have to say and document what makes you different.  Learn how you can be helpful and see what others are doing. 

Show your support and speak what you want to establish as your brand voice. It will help you in keeping more competitive in the long run. 

Don’t Build Something Like Others 

It’s important to understand that being authentic is a vital role in successful personal branding.  You cannot survive if you are a copycat and trying to ride the coattails of others.

There is nothing you will get from it, the only way for surviving is to create your own brand. Make it something unique that no others have. Come up with effective ideas and your own mantra for success. 

Make Your Brand Futuristic 

The important point here to remember is never brand on trends or certain platforms. Instead of limiting yourself, focus on the future. If you have a reputation only for one platform, it could be easily damaged if the channel decides to shut down. 

Instead of following trends, consider the factors that your business has. It will help you in understanding the future. Also, you will be relevant in the coming years. 

It will help you in choosing the right path for developing as well as building your personal brand. 

Change Something If It’s Not Working 

This journey is not going to be smooth, and during your personal branding, lots of things will not work as you expected. 

Analyze how much you are adding, review goals and ROI, consider factors that are affecting you.  It’s important to point out the strategy that is not working. 

And don’t be afraid to change to achieve your goals. To explain the change, you can write blogs. 

Make sure you are truthful and honest with your approach. People appreciate the transparency and you can help others too. 

Help Others To Build Brand Faster 

If your focus is to build your brand faster, you first need to become the helper. Don’t become the person who is always doing self-promotion. 

Let your brand develop based on administration by other people. You don’t even have to explain everything, your own community and contributions that you did will help you in creating your persona out there. 

Know Why You Started 

When you start the journey, make sure the reasons are clear. Without knowing what drives you,  it’s easier to feel lost and lose sight of the future. 

Make sure you know the strong reasons for creating your personal brand. The strong one is based on purpose with passion, and you should have one too. 

Also, help others to build your personal bard,  It will be helpful for creating a reputation and trustworthy leader image in the market. 

Storytelling Is Critical  Component 

Everything you are going to do or doing is driving the narrative of your personal brand. How you are talking to others, the conference you are attending, and the image you are sharing, every single thing is contributing to your personal story.

It’s important to be cognizant of your actions and make sure you are having the right narration of your personal branding. 

Commit To What You Love 

Personal branding should revolve around what you love and are passionate about. Do not keep your focus on the trending or lucrative ideas but focus on the authentic version of yourself. 

The potential clients will stay away from you if they don’t feel you’re authentic. Build your brand on what you feel are the version of you or show the real you. 

When you are following this, you don’t have to worry if your strategy is going to work or not. 

Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)

The post 21+ Personal Branding Practises To Grow Your Small Business appeared first on TheBrandBoy | Creative Small Business Blog with Free Resources.