Personal Branding: A Ten Step Approach

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Sophia Carey and I'm a photographer and graphic designer. Today, we're going to be talking about how you can create a personal brand that reflects you and they can help you in the world of business. Just a little bit of background about me. I have been a photographer and graphic designer for the last five years. My work ranges from various commercial brands to musicians, models and I also shoot weddings. Having this creative background, allows me to see the idea of personal branding from every creative point of view, as well as a business point of view. Within this class, we're going to be exploring how you can make your personal brand look well and work well. There is a worksheet that accompanies this class, so you can download that, print it off, however you feel your best to use it. I would encourage you to follow through the worksheet as you watch the class, take some notes and engaged with the activities. There are also some tearaway bits in there that you can rip out or cut out, stick up however, you consume and retain your information, just make it work for you. With that we're just really going to get stuck straight into the class, talking about what is a personal brand and then talk about how you can build your personal brand and how you can utilize that in your business. Without me waffling on for much longer, grab your worksheets and let's get going. 2. What is a Personal Brand?: What is a personal brand? As I mentioned earlier, I came from a design background and almost immediately when someone says what brand they think of a logo, whilst the visual brand identity is definitely important and we will get onto that late under the class. It's not the whole brand. When we talk about a brand, it's so much more than the way it looks. Your personal brand should not only reflecting you, but it should reflect, what you do and how you do it. Personal branding is how you interact, how people perceive you and just your presence in general. A great quote sum this up is, "A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company." In short, you want your brand to represent who you are, what you do, why you do it, how you do it so that people can get a gist of what your business or what you are all about. When we talked about branding and personal branding, we're talking about the way that you present yourself and your services, your business in a way that other people can perceive it. A great way to think about this is your personal brand is your story. We control our own narratives in this sense. What story are you looking to tell? What are you trying to tell about yourself, about your business, about your services, about whatever it is that you're selling? What do you want other people to take from that? What story do you want people to relay? If someone asks someone else about you, what would they say? What things will come to mind? How would they present you? Is that in line with the way you want them to present you? Personal branding, that is really what it's about. It's about aligning your story. It's about controlling the way that others perceive your brand. Remember, your brand doesn't have to be concrete either. You'll grow as a person and your business will probably grow. It's okay if your personal brand to grow with that. One thing to note is that you shouldn't really change it too drastically too often. But if you do need to change it from time to time, that's fine. 3. What is a Mission Statement?: [MUSIC] What is a mission statement? We will be talking about mission statements throughout this class. I just wanted to give you an overview of what it is. A mission statement is usually used in more like traditional business marketing sentences. You might not necessarily hear all the time when you're talking about personal branding, but more when you're talking about branding. But ensure, a mission statement is a short statement that explains why an organization exists. Generally, a commercial mission statement is consisting of three main components, your key market, which is also known as your target market or your target audience. We will be talking about that in this class. Your contribution, which can be referred to as your product or your service and your USP, what makes your production unique, your unique selling point. We're going to be taking the concept of a mission statement and we're going to be applying it to our own personal brand. Mission statements don't just have to be for commercial entities to a big companies. It can be for you. When we're advertising you, when we're marketing you, we want to be thinking about ways through components. We want to be thinking about what makes you special, we want to be thinking about your target audience, and we want to be thinking about what it is you're selling. Whether that's your service or your product. 4. Benefits of Personal Branding: What are the benefits of having a strong personal brand? Having a strong personal brand or having a strong brand has a lot of benefits actually. Firstly, it allows you to control perception people have of you. We did speak about this when we were talking about what is a personal brand. You building your personal brand, you building your brand identity is a good way to control the way that other people interact with your brand, how do people perceive your brand. Not only that but it makes you recognizable. It makes you stand out in the market and a lot of markets can be very oversaturated and having a strong personal brand can really help you pop and make people see you amongst all of the other people doing the same or similar things to you. Not only that, but it can also make you seem more credible, which in turn means that people might trust you more. This is important when you want to be building relationships with your audience or your customer base for people to instill their trust within you. Not only that but having strong personal brand and increasing your credibility can also help position you as a leader in your field or an expert in your field. This allows you to create more opportunities for yourself. Not only are you then able to sell it to people that you're selling to you but you can also branch out and sell to the people who are also doing what you're doing. This is why things like courses are so important and so successful because people have been able to establish a strong personal brand and a strong position within that community or within that field, to the point where then they can sell to those people that are also in the field. Similarly to making you more recognizable, it can also distinguish you from your competition. 5. Step One: Define Your Purpose: [MUSIC] Let's get onto your first step in this adventure and this approach to creating your personal brand. The first step we're going to be talking about is defining your purpose. Earlier when we were talking about your USP and your contribution, when we put those things together it creates your purpose. For this lesson, I would definitely recommend taking some notes. I'm going to be talking about a lot questions that you might want to ask yourself. You could maybe start down on your worksheet or if you have a pen that'll be good, just alternate down their answers to the questions. I always find it useful to answer all the questions even if you don't find that relevant so that you can look back later on and it's all there. You've answered all the questions that you to create your personal brand. First off, when we're talking about finding your purpose we are talking about what do you do? What do you currently do? Are you service-based? Are you product-based? Are you a designer? Are you a blogger? Are you a teacher? What is it that you do? What is it that you offer? What is it that you want to do? Do you have aspirations? Do you want to scale up your business? Do you want to venture into new avenues? What is it that you want to do? What do you bring to the table? What's different about what you are providing? What's different about your products and your services? What skills are you known for? Are you a really good illustrator or have you got really good understanding of the way light works when you are talking about film and photography? What skills really set you apart from everyone else is doing the same thing in the same field. Maybe most importantly, how are you going to help your audience? You may have heard of the theory of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that all humans have basic needs that follow along a continuum with physiological needs being always basic, followed by safety, social esteem, and self-actualization. I like to use this model, you look at the triangle and you think why are my clients coming to me? Are they trying to fulfill something on this triangle? For example, if you teach about personal finance, are your clients people that are coming to you because they are looking to learn about how they can provide themselves with a sense of security? Really tapping into why your audience are coming to you, and why audience need you is a really good way to tailor your services, your products to meet those needs. It's also really useful to incorporate this into your personal brand so that when someone comes onto your page, when someone sees your products they know automatically that you're going to help them with that thing that they need help with. Typically you could use the model well of uses and gratifications, especially if you create content or videos or entertainment. This model could really be useful for you. Similarly to Maslow's model, this uses and gratifications model can help you understand why your audiences coming to you in the first place. The theory basically describes the reasons that people consume media. For example, they might be consuming it because they want entertainment. They want to escape from reality or maybe they want to be educated. Again, understanding these needs of your clients, if your audience is a great way to really refine what it is you're doing. So why do we need to define our purpose anyway, when we give ourselves clarity about what we want to do wherever we're going, what we're doing. It helps us communicate that to other people. How are we meant to communicate to potential customers, clients? What is we bring to the table, if we don't know what we bring to the table ourselves? If you are struggling to clarify this a good idea could be to ask your friends, ask them how they might describe you to another person, what words they use, what sentences were they use? Would they talk about your profession or what they talk about particular skills? For example, if you're a writer for music magazine, someone might say, this is my friend Sarah. She's a music journalist. But someone might also say, Well, this is Sarah, if he needs some music recommendations, definitely go to her. What is it that people will say about you? What is it that people will say to describe you to someone that has never met you? Asking these questions can often help to understand what your USP really is and what is it that you bring to the table if you don't quite know yourself. 6. Step Two: Define Your Personality: Step number 2 is defining your personality. Who are you? Who is the person behind the personal brand? Who is the person behind this brand? How do you say things? How do you communicate? How do other people perceive you? Are you fun? Do people think about you and think, she really has a head screwed on? Do people think of you as the person to go to for lighthearted humor? What are your attributes? What do people think about you? In this again, you can ask other people. You can ask your friends and family if you're stuck on answering this question. I know that realizing these things about yourself can be difficult sometimes, so don't be scared to reach out and ask people. I think the most important thing about defining your personality is just to be authentic. It gets a lot easier to be you than it is to try and be another version of you that is not real. In our worksheet, we have a page which I've put up on screen now and this worksheet has a few different adjectives on how you might describe yourself just to get a ball rolling. I would really encourage you to write down a list of objectives or things that you think describe your personality just to keep it in mind. When we talk about commercial businesses and businesses that aren't necessarily personal or individuals, we often refer to these personality traits as brand drivers. For example, you might think of Apple and you might think revolutionary or you might think progressive. You might think state of the art. These kind of words that you associate with the personality of Apple are part of their brand drivers. Similarly, as personal, business or entity or individual, you should have your own brand drivers. That worksheet will hopefully help you work out what those are. 7. Step Three: Define Your Content: So for Step Number 3, we are talking about how do you find your content? When we're talking about your content, a way I like to think about it is we've just defined our purpose and we've just defined our personality. If you mix these together that should define your content. So purpose plus personality equals content. When we're thinking about content, we are thinking about how can you share your mission statement and show your purpose and your personality. What content matches the personality, the purpose? What content matches all of this stuff to present to your audience? What's the best way to communicate what you do? If you're a visual artist, then that might be a portfolio. If you're a writer, then you might need to blog. You want to think about what kind of content will support your mission statement. What kind of content will support your purpose and your personality? I keep saying that, but really that is what it is. Your content is just a way to push out. What are the stuff we've spoken about, your purpose, your personality, your mission statement out into the world. It's like transportation. Your content is your car and it's going to take you from what you know about yourself and it's going to deliver those messages to your audience. When you're talking about your content, you also want to make sure that your contact information is available. Otherwise, how people couldn't get in touch? How are people are going to hire you? How are people going to buy your product? If you want to make it very clear what you do, you want to look at your content and think, "Does this reflect my personality? Does this reflect who I am as a person?" Personality can be explored and represented in a lot of different ways. For example, your tone of voice, the way you write your messages, the way you put out this content is all part of the personality. If it's very formal and very academic that is a part of your personality. If it's a little bit more informal and a bit fun, a bit cheeky than that's a part of your personality. Similarly, your choice of imagery can also reflect this personality. Are you using bright fun colors, or is it more monochromatic, subtle colors that you're using? When we're talking about using imagery to explore your content and promote your personality, you might want to think about things like color psychology. Are you using bright fun colors to connote like a really optimistic, upbeat personality? Or are you using more monochromatic colors to promote a more professional environment? We will be talking about color theory later on in the class but that for now is just something to think about. Or maybe you don't have content at all. Maybe your content it's just the way you engage with people. Maybe you're not putting out blogs and you're not putting out photos, but you're corresponding with the audience. You're sending out emails, maybe your DMing them, replying to comments, and in that case, your tone of voice, the way you converse with people is very important. 8. Step Four: Define Your Target Audience: For step number 5, we want to be talking about your target audience. When you know who your target audience is and you know what you're offering them, it's going to be a lot easier to create content that reaches them. For example, if you're searching for a job at the moment, then you target audience might be a specific employer, a company. If your business is [inaudible], then your target audience might be a client. Who is that client? You want to really get into their head. Or maybe you're an artist that is looking for collaborators, who is going to be interested in the content that you're creating? A technique that I think is really important, and we have included a template in the worksheet for this, is to create a persona. Who is your ideal target person? How old are they? Where do they work? What do they like? Do they have hobbies? What gender are they? You'll see on the worksheet that there's a little space for you to draw your person. That's just a little bit fun. You don't have to draw your person. But I find that visualizing your person, maybe give them a name, can be a good way to really solidify the idea of your target audience in your head. For example, my business, as I said before, a photographer and graphic designer, if we take one avenue of my business, I shoot weddings. My target audience for my wedding business, for that part of my business, might be newly engaged young woman, for example. I want to be thinking, okay, she's probably between the ages of about 24 and 30. Where is she working? Is she Metropolitan? What does she like? Is she the bride to be? All her stuff on Pinterest, make pin boards of her dream wedding. Really getting into the head of your target audience is a great way to define content and to find the messages that you're putting out. Again, when we're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and uses and gratifications, using these models to target your target audience can be really effective in defining the purpose, your personality and your content, and how you get there. When I use the analogy of the content being your car, your personality, your purpose, this is your start point. Your target audience is your endpoint and your content is your car. Really the content is what bridges the gap between you, your personality, and your purpose, and your target audience. 9. The (Almost) Midpoint Review: At this point of the class, we are almost halfway through so I just wanted to take a quick break, recap what we've spoken about already, and see where you guys are up to. At this point, you should be thinking about what your purpose is, how your personality is defined, what you want to share, what message you want to share, and who you want to share it with. Some examples of what you might want to be thinking about right now is if you are a wedding photographer, for example. If you're a wedding photographer, maybe your purpose is to capture people's memories photographically. Maybe your personality can be described as positive, relaxed, dedicated, and your content is therefore photographs of couples on weddings with a target audience of young couples who are newly engaged. Or maybe another example could be that you are an author of a self-help book. Your purpose is to sell books to enrich people's lives. Your personality might be knowledgeable, enlightened, and respected and your content might be motivational quotes or short-form video content that's easily shareable. Your target audience might be mid-20s to early 40s interested in personal development. If at is point, you don't have a sentence or a few sentences as concise as that, take the time now to have a look through your notes and really try and nail down what it is you want to do, who you want to share that with, and how you're going to share that. At this point, you should have really started to define your personal brand and the foundation of it. From now on, we're really going to be talking about how you take what we've discovered, what we've defined and implement that in a successful method. 10. Step Five: Target Your Audience: How do we target your audience? We've already defined your audience. You've already got a person, maybe they're called John, maybe they're called Steve, maybe they're called Rafael. I don't know. You've got this person, you've got this ideal client in your mind and we're going to take them and we're going to take them on a journey. What we're going to do here is we're going to do a user journey and this is something that we use a lot in UX design and user experience. We're going to think about the persona that you've created and we're going to take them on a day in their life. The purpose of this exercise is really to define in what situations, where and when your target audience might come into contact with your brand. Let's answer that. Where will your target audience come into contact with the brand? Is it on social media? Is it a billboard? Is it on the TV? If it's social media, what channels are you going to be present on? Are they likely to find you on LinkedIn or is it more of an Instagram kind of thing? Let's go through a user journey. Maybe your persona wakes up. The first thing they do is check the phone. That's one touchpoint. Touchpoints, it's something we're gonna be referring to a lot and that is the point in which your user touches your brand, essentially, when it's exposed to your brand. Now they've checked their phone, they've checked social media, they've been exposed to your brand once. That is one opportunity where you can target this audience. Maybe the next step they do is turn on the TV. That's another touchpoint. That's another opportunity for you to target them. Maybe they have breakfast, they read the newspaper, there's a touchpoint. Do you want to advertise in a newspaper or maybe some a magazine and it's a niche magazine? Maybe they're picking up a edition of their favorite knitting magazine for example. Have you written a story in there about your knitting company, your knitting services? Have you written a story about your knitting world, your experiences? Can you provide value through that touchpoint? Maybe then your person goes on a walk and they get on a bus and there you've got advertisements at the bus stop. You've got advertisements on the bus. Maybe they shut the phone on my commute, again, they're accessing social media. If you've got an idea for a persona in your head, then this journey is probably going to be a lot smoother. Just think about what is it your ideal target audience with that age, that gender, that demographic that you have created is likely to be exposed to in a day and how can you get in as many of those touchpoints as possible? 11. Step Six: Use Social Media: Social media, whether you love it or you hate it, you can't really deny [MUSIC] the amazing effect that it has on business. I have a relationship with social media where I don't want to be logging onto my phone every day, and won't turn my social media accounts every day, but when I don't, I do see a dip on my sales, I do see a dip in my inquiries, I do see a dip in the people that are consuming my content. Understanding how to use social media to further target your audience, and promote your content, and your personality, your purpose is really important. A few things you want to be thinking about when you're utilizing social media. Do you have an engaging bio? Does your bio, concisely, tell people who you are and what you're offering? I'm going back to that personality that we were talking about. Is it really reflecting your personality? Is it using the right tonal voice? In your worksheet, that is a template for your bio. On the template, it does have a short sentence on how you can use your bio. Your bio should impose your personal brand with tonal voice and content. Consider how you might write out your mission statement in a way that is attractive to your target audience. We've also written down how many characters you should be thinking about for specific channels. For example, if you write your bio on Twitter, that needs to fit into a 160 characters. If you're writing on LinkedIn, it only shows when you go on to the LinkedIn profile, the first two lines, so you would be thinking between 200-250 characters, for example. That means so some really nicely to defining the channel that you're utilizing for your brand. Different social media platforms call for different kinds of content. For example, more professional content might belong on LinkedIn. Especially if you're looking for job opportunities, you might want to put more of your efforts into LinkedIn. However, if you are a visual creative, if you're a photographer or videographer, whilst LinkedIn will be important in terms of network and meeting like-minded professionals. Having a platform such as Instagram, might help in attracting your target audience or showcasing your portfolio. Remember, you want the channels that you're using to really be influenced by the type of content that you're putting out. When we spoke earlier, we're on about whether or not portfolio is the best way to promote your personality and your purpose, what it is you're doing. Then maybe you want to think about using a site more like Instagram. Of course, you can use multiple sites. I use multiple sites for different things. I just think it's important that you tailor the content to those sites. For example, Twitter, people follow me to hear what I want to say. My personal brand is very personal to me. It's very much about the music I like, the fashion I like, the people I engage with, the events I go to, as a photographer working in some of the scenes that I work in, that's important to my personal brand. Twitter is a good way to explore my interests and show my audience what I'm interested in. But on the other hand, I do need to communicate with professionals. In that sense, I use LinkedIn. I wouldn't necessarily put the content that I put on Twitter on LinkedIn, because you're catering for your audience. On your worksheet, that is a little bit, it's called Which Channel. It just shows some of the most popular channels, and how you might want to use them. For example, Facebook is great to sharing content that you've already created. Facebook marketing also allows you to target your demography very specifically, geographically age-based on their skills or their hobbies or their interests. Like I said before, Twitter is a great way to share content. Again, Instagram is a great way to share content or maybe build a portfolio. Pinterest is a great way to share content. When I was talking about my example of wedding photography, if you're using Pinterest to target people who might already use Pinterest, that's a great way to get your brand out in front of that touch point. We might use LinkedIn to network with professionals, [inaudible] YouTube video content, stuff like Skillshare. You might want to use those platforms to share value with your audience. Sharing value can be a very great way to build meaningful connections with your clients and your customers. Again, it will position you as expert in your field, and allow you more opportunities to advance your brand. If you're using Instagram, using things like Instagram Stories, this is a great way to show your personality, show what you do. You might want to share stories that are behind the scenes, give a bit of insight into what you are doing. But similarly, you might want to share work in progress or you might want to share sneak peeks or maybe you want to use video content on your stories to, again, share value with your audience. Something that Instagram also offers is, something called Story Highlights. Story Highlights are folders as such on your Instagram page that are permanently there for people to see when they visit your page and you can categorize these. For example, if you wanted to have one that showed people the behind the scenes, then you can [inaudible] it behind the scenes, and choose stories that feature your brand doing things like that. I would recommend using stories to feature along those Story Highlights that really feature your brand, and show your brand in action that really drive home your purpose and your personality. 12. Step Seven: The Importance of Your Own Website: I'm now going to move on to talking about the importance of a website. Outlining your content on social media is great. It's a great way to get your message out there. It's a great way to attract new clients. What happens if Instagram collapses or Twitter or LinkedIn? Having control of your own content is important. I like to think of a website a bit like a home. You can go to all of these different clubs and you can do with these different activities that enrich your business and your social presence. But what you really want is to come back to something that's stable and that's yours, something that you have control over. Having website is also great to utilize SEO. You can use SEO and more effectively to drive traffic to your website because you have more control over the headings, the type, the keywords that you're putting out there. This means that you can rank higher for keywords and attract people that are interested in your products and your services. Similarly, having website can just make you that a little bit more professional. If you're hiring a wedding photographer for example, you might find them on Instagram. You might love their work, but the chances are you're going to want to go on their website to find out more information, contact them, and ensure that they have a degree of credibility. Another way that your website can work in your favor is that it can act as a hub for all of your different social media presences. Again, using the analogy of home, think of your website as a home for all of your content and your social media presences. It can all live there and be found there. Having a website is also a great way to host a store, so you can directly sell your own product. So a lot of different wholesalers, for example, Squarespace I'm sure you've heard of. I use Format which is especially good if you're a photographer or videographer. You can also other things like Wix or Tumblr. You can set them up for free or for cheap. I recommend buying own domain which can also be very cheap. I think I paid something like eight pounds a year for mine. You link your domain to your website. This helps to create a bit more professionalism, bit more credibility and obviously you're driving home your brand again, your name of your brand is there. You're not forfeiting that for a dot Tumblr or dot WordPress or so whatever it might be. 13. Step Eight: Write Your Bio: Writing a bio. We touched on this when we're talking about social media. But what should your bio look like? What should be in it? Your bio should really be your personal branding statement. When we were speaking about your mission statement earlier on or businesses mission statement, you really want to take that and adapt it to suit you as an individual. Again, like I mentioned earlier, you want to optimize it for different channels in terms of character counts. You can use your bio to really enforce your personal brand as well to enforce your personality, the tone of voice, the language, the dialect, the jargon that you use it in your personal brand, bio is really essential. Your personal brand really is a great way to just throw out with this information and say, hi, this is what I am. This is who I am. This is what I do. You could use emojis on channels that are formal, but make sure that that fits your brand. If you are really an academic that is targeting other academics and that really doesn't fall within the conversation that you usually have them and maybe steer clear of that. But if you're trying to make yourself seem approachable online or create that connection with the customer or potential client, then using emojis and informal use of language can be a really great way to compliment your personal brand. 14. Step Nine: Create Your Visual Identity: [MUSIC] Visual identity, of course, this one is probably what you thought of when you thought personal branding. Most people do think of visuals when they think branding first and foremost. But hopefully by now, you've realized that you can't recreate a visual identity without understanding what you're trying to communicate, and that's why I've left it until so late on in the class. By no means have I left it later on because it's important, just that it's something that you want to think about after you've defined who you are, what you do, and what you're trying to communicate. Without really knowing what you're trying to communicate, you can't create visuals to complement that. A great quote to sum up, your visual identity is, "Image and perception help drive value. Without an image there is no perception." We can use images to create visual connotations. We can communicate visually, and send subliminal messages to your audience through using visuals. For example, earlier on I briefly spoke about color psychology. As per the term visual communication, each color sends a message. Bright colors tend to connote fun, and desaturated colors tend to appear more professional, but it also always depends on the context. An interesting thing about colors is that they actually have the power to influence the way that your brain works. For example, if we take the color blue, it's often associated with loyalty and trust, and it's also considered a corporate color. Some studies suggests that the color blue can increase productivity, for example. When we look at the color red, red is a really stimulating color. So it can do insane things to the brain. It can even encourage hunger, which is said to be why a lot of fast food brands such as KFC, McDonald's include red within their branding. But of course it can also connote danger or threat so you want to be mindful of how you're using the color red. The color also has a long wavelength, which means that it's good at catching people's attention. This is important because you want to really think about how your visual identity might stand out against competitors. When we're looking at the color yellow, the color yellow is quite an intense color and it can make people feel quite irritated, which is why a lot of, again, using fast food restaurants in example. A lot of fast food restaurants who use yellow in there decor to get people in and out quickly. Similarly, I think there's a study that says that if you paint a baby's room yellow, it's going cry more. Undoubtedly the effect that color can have on your brain is insane. You want to be mindful of this, and what messages the colors you're using are sending. When you're creating your brand identity, you also want to think about what visual assets you're going to need. So what brand collateral suit your business? Do you need social media header? Do you need stationery? Do you need an office sign? How can you use your visual identity to get your message out? How can your visual identity in portray those touch points that we were talking earlier on, on your user experience journey? Similarly to colors, typefaces and font choice, send a message. You want to make sure that the typefaces, and fonts that you're using are sending the right message about your brand. Think of your visual identity as a part of your content. It's one of the people in your car that's taken you from transporting your purpose, and your personality to your target audience. With that in mind, you want to make sure your visual identity is effective in targeting your audience. Is it something that might appeal to that? Does that make use of trends that are important to your target audience? But also you want to make sure that it's true to your personality. Does it explore the way that you feel as a brand? Also does it complement your purpose? Does it fit the jobs, the services that you're offering? When you're creating your visual identity or if someone else has creating for you, you want to be asking yourself these questions just to ensure that it really is fitting with your personal brand. 15. Step Ten: Create Your Content: Now you've made it to your 10th step. By now you should really have to find your personal brand. You should know what it is you want to communicate and who you want to communicate it to. You should have an idea of how it's going to look as well as how it's going to feel and what it's going to say. It's now time to create your content in line with your personal brand. The first one, you want to make sure that your content is following your visual identity. Number 1 you want to make sure that you're utilizing tone of voice. I spoke about this one a lot, but you really want to make sure that the language and the formality of the language that you're using matches your personal brand. You want to make sure that all of your content enforces your personality and your purpose. That it either explores who you are as a person, who your brand is, or what is you're doing, and ideally you want to be showing both of that at the same time. Remember that personality plus purpose equals content. You want to be mindful of the different dimensions per channel. Again, you want to make sure that the content you're creating works for Twitter, and LinkedIn but be mindful of the fact that they're not going to work in the same way so you need to tailor them. Again, you want to make sure that the actual content that you're creating suits the channels that you're putting out for. There's a checklist detailing all of it in the worksheet. I'd recommend just keeping that to hand and when you produce that content, you just run through that and you think, yeah, it follows my brand identity. I'm utilizing a good tone of voice that matches my brand and I'm showing my personality. I'm showing my purpose. You can just take that off when you're producing new content or putting out new content. 16. Next Steps: Hopefully, these 10 steps have helped you in defining your personal brand and thinking about ways in which you can implement it. If you have questions or you need advice, you can always get in touch with me by my email or my website. But for now, I'm just going to run through some next steps that you might want to take when you're thinking about your personal brand. Firstly, make sure you've gone through the worksheet, you've filled out properly, and you've put all your notes. To make sure you don't use these, it might be a good idea to scan them in or take photos of them and store them digitally as well as physically. Another step I recommend taking is to create an inspiration board. An inspiration board or mood board is something that really defines your personal brand. You can put quotes, you can put images, colors, things that you think really represent your brand onto a mood board, and that might help you in redefining what your personal brand is. You could have a physical mood board with actual pin board and you stick things on, or a scrapbook, or maybe you could just use Pinterest or something like that. Next step, you want to be thinking about designing your brand. Whether or not you're designing it yourself or you're hiring someone to do that, you want to be thinking about maybe designing a minimum of three assets. For example, you might want to get your logo done, have to find a color palette and your typeface, and you might want to make sure that you've got some social media headers. That brings me on nicely to the next step. Start to set up your online presence. Hopefully this class has given you things to think about, and ways that you can create a personal brand to treat yourself, and that you can use it to drive sales, increase credibility, and just generally promote your services. I cannot wait to see what you guys are creating, so don't be scared of sharing that with me, I'm always here to give feedback and advice. But thank you for watching, and I will see you guys in the next one. Good luck with your personal branding.