Are you feeling overwhelmed with creating your brand? You are not alone. Not by a long shot! Personal branding can be daunting, especially when there are so many different ways of going about it. However daunting it may seem, branding is also necessary to open a realm of possibilities for yourself and your career.

Let’s wade through the tide of branding together. Here are five easy steps to help you create your brand.

1. Let the brainstorming process lead the way. The brand you build is a direct reflection of your core values. You should weave the values you have and the standards you hold for yourself directly into your brand.
It’s essential to take time and brainstorm ideas. Bust out a notebook or crack open that laptop and start writing down ideas! Begin by asking yourself this simple question. ‘What is my brand?’
You may even break this down further by asking some key self-discovery questions.

• What do I love to do?
• What helps or hinders my creativity?
• What makes me stand out?
• What are my values?
• What are my goals?

I could cover this whole page in self-discovery questions that can help form your brand. The important thing is to know your values going in and find what resonates with you.
You can take it one step further and ask yourself, ‘What am I doing?’ I ask myself this question regularly throughout the day. How are you serving people through your business? Using this question as a check-in point, you’ll be able to slow down and take a mental note of what you are trying to accomplish.

2. Figure out your ideal audience.
The better you know your audience, the easier you’ll be able to provide content for them and keep them visiting your site. Understand and know the audience you are trying to attract and cater to them.

What are their likes and dislikes? For example, if you have a hiking shoe business and have a small website with a blog, you might consider writing a blog about steps to take for a cleaner environment. This captivates a common interest your audience shares and covers a different topic than you’d normally do as a hiking shoe company.
Find your ideal audience, piece together common interests, and use it as content to build your web-based presence.

3. Choose a name and set up your web presence.
Now that you’ve gone through a brainstorming process and self-discovery and decided who your ideal audience is, it’s time to begin building your brand.

A great place to start is the wonderful world of the interwebs. The web deeply connects us, and it’s an important place to establish your brand. This is where consumers and partners will find you. You’ll want to have a website where you can direct all your potential customers and that your ideal audience will immediately identify with when they reach your site.

You can’t forget social media! When you create your brand, it should be consistent throughout social media. Whenever your brand reaches a client they should have a similar experience with that piece of content to ensure that you are memorable and cohesive throughout.

It will help to establish a memorable and related name for your brand. Think about what you do – are YOU the brand? Then your name might be the best choice for you moving forward. Does your brand provide a service? Then a name related to what you provide will be helpful for ideal customers to resonate with you. Once you have that name be sure to secure the domain set, add your bio and links to your various other accounts.

4. Network Network Network!
The best way to create and spread brand awareness is through, you guessed it, networking! Networking with others in your industry or that need your product. You can also build these through your social media (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc) to encourage engagement from your ideal audience.
Make sure you are targeting the right people for your brand, and reconnect. The worst thing that can happen is if there’s a huge opportunity for both parties to benefit, but the connection is never revisited. Even if it feels weird and awkward, it’s really not.

If you put yourself out there with that radiant confident boss energy, the world will respond in a powerful way. Don’t be quiet when it comes to building connections for your brand.

5. Take helpful feedback into account and allow yourself room to grow.
I get it. Sometimes critical feedback can be a hard pill to swallow. If you receive feedback, good or bad, ask yourself, “How will this help me grow? How can I take this and use it to become better?” These questions will help reshape your perspective on critical feedback being entirely negative. It’s important to allow yourself room for growth and improvement. Change is the only constant in reality. The world is changing daily, and in order to brand yourself with the world and not against it, you’ll have to change throughout your life too. Creating a solid plan for yourself while still allowing for flexibility when changes come up allows your future self to be set for success.

My last piece of advice when creating a brand is to be authentic. People will be attracted to your brand with it is authentic, real, and honest. It’s okay to be vulnerable with your consumers. It’ll actually help them relate to you in a much deeper way, forming connections that will last.

Building a brand is a big endeavor and sometimes you need help! That’s where I come in! I would love to learn about your vision and dream for your brand and business.

Schedule a call here or message me today. I can’t wait to help you elevate your business!