How To Create A Personal Brand Visibility Strategy
In this day and age it should be easy to create visibility for your personal brand, right? There are so many social media avenues available at little or no cost that getting your brand out there and making it as visible as possible should be a piece of cake, right? Unfortunately everyone else feels this way too and if you don’t have a clear brand visibility strategy your brand will drown in the sea of virtual content. As a brand visibility strategist I feel that now is one of the best times to not only create a personal brand, but to amplify it and become known. With so many options available to reach your audience, becoming more visible is within your reach if you have a cohesive strategy. This strategy plays a major role in your visibility success, here are the things you’ll need to know in order to build a visibility strategy for your personal brand.
Stage 1: Refine Your Brand
Simplify Your Message
In today’s digital media age the typical consumer’s attention span is incredibly short. It’s important to be able to convey what you want to be known for in one simple sentence. But it’s hard to condense a complex idea into something brief, especially when it’s something you’re passionate about. It doesn’t necessarily need to be what you do or what your company does, it’s what you want to be known for - your first and lasting impression on your audience. Dig deep and really think about the bigger picture, that’s when the true strategy will emerge.
Generate Targeted Content
Brand visibility is largely dependent on content creation. The main reason so many business owners write books is that it is instant visibility for their brand. There is a wide range of content that you can create, anywhere from teaching online courses to producing original songs. You don’t have to paint with such a broad stroke that you begin creating content in every way possible though, just be smart about it. Study your audience, if you know they prefer to consume content via video you can focus your output on YouTube or TikTok videos. If you find that they would rather read a newsletter, curtail your content to the written form in email blasts and blog posts. If you find that the way you like to produce your content doesn’t jive with how your audience likes to consume it you’ll want to revisit how you're reaching your audience to gain the best visibility possible.
Establish Subject Matter
Work out a few different subjects that you can divide your content into. Once you clearly outline these subjects it will be easier for your audience to identify exactly what type of content you will be providing and they will come to expect it from you. For example, if you are a personal trainer and you can divide your content into four main subjects it could look something like this - 1) Before and afters 2) Testimonials 3) Workout Tutorials 4) Nutritional Advice. Your audience will come to recognize the trends and depend on this type of content from you and in turn be able to recommend your brand as a reliable source for this content to friends and colleagues.
Provide Meaningful Material
People like Gary Vaynerchuk are the perfect example of providing meaningful material to their audiences. He makes it clear that his mission is to provide you with no-nonsense opinions and actionable advice and has built his entire personal brand on this premise. All too often new entrepreneurs want to focus solely on themselves when it comes to establishing their brand, but audiences tire of that quickly. Providing your audience with educational content or advice that is relevant to them will soon create brand trust and loyalty. Once that is in place peppering in personal stories and life lessons learned will come naturally later on.
Stage 2: Enacting a Plan
Now that you’ve really honed your messaging and identified clear and concise content and how you want to share it, it’s time to enact a plan.
Social Media
Social media is a necessity for your brand visibility. While your content may not be applicable to every social media channel, just choose what makes the most sense for your brand and start there. In recent years it has become increasingly easier to cross post over multiple channels. For instance, if you make a TikTok video you can also post on Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels to reach a broader audience. You’ll soon realize which channels are giving you the best engagement and be able to focus the bulk of your efforts there.
Mainstream Media
Mainstream media – newspapers, television news networks, cable news and radio are a great way to get visibility to your brand. But with these outlets you are “here today, gone tomorrow”, there is such a quick turn around with daily headlines that you must capitalize on these opportunities and give them “legs.” Once you are featured, share it with your social followers, your email list and link to it on your website to get the most from your press piece. Be sure that you are prepared with a way to capture information from any new visitors to your website that may arise as a result. Press can be invaluable in lending credibility to your brand and exposing you to an audience that you might not have reached otherwise, but you cannot rely solely on it to help augment your brand visibility.
Repurposing Content
Repurposing your content is one of the most important things you can do for your visibility. Generating a single piece of valuable content takes a lot of time and effort—so don’t waste your time utilizing it in only one place. Take a blog and make a video out of it, modify it for a press release for distribution and record a podcast about it. Morph it into as many media opportunities as you can, because if you’ve made the effort to create it you should get as much mileage out of it as possible.
Create Alliances
Building relationships with like-minded brands is a surefire way to increase your visibility. Aligning with a brand that is complementary to yours, but may have a slightly different audience can be a mutually beneficial way to increase awareness of both brands. Supporting one another will provide extra value and credibility towards each brand as a result.
Nurture Your Following
Now that you’ve built a following around your personal brand, don’t forget to nurture it. You will undoubtedly lose followers if you don’t continue to engage and intrigue them. Time and time again content creators quickly and exponentially grow their personal brand, just to have it drop off once it is clear that they don’t have the capacity to continue captivating their audience. If you want to build a legacy you have got to take care of your loyal consumer, have systems set in place to interact with those that take the time to engage with you. A perfect example of this is Elyse Meyers–she answers questions from her followers and spotlights those in her community that are doing great things and in turn her personal brand has skyrocketed. Just remember, the whole point of creating a personal brand visibility strategy is to increase your audience and maintain your following for the long haul so don’t neglect those that continue to invest in you.