You Are a Brand- It’s Time to Share Your Personal Brand With Others

You Are a Brand- It’s Time to Share Your Personal Brand With Others

What is a perfect example of a brand? You, my friend, are a brand.

An artist. A photographer. Life coach. Presentation expert. Alternative energy entrepreneur. Website developer. Skin care clinician.

This is not a trend. This is social media, publishing, marketing, sales, work, play, passion and everything you read about all rolled into one.

1. Define your audience.

Tell yourself this: The focus of your blog—and all of your content—must be your readers. What do they need? What are their pains? How can you help them?

Of course, doing guesswork is possible, but chances are, you’ll run the risk of being wrong. One ideal way to removing the guesswork is to conduct a survey. You can ask a few specific questions to uncover demographic and psychographic information.

From the results of your survey, you’ll be able to profile your audience and work toward developing a more focused content with a higher probability of connecting with your readers.

2. Create a clear value proposition.

What is the unique thing that you can offer to your audience? Are they going to get something from investing their time in your content? What resources do you offer? Do you offer resources to help people work smarter? Leadership insights? These are just some examples of questions you should be asking yourself before proceeding.

What you need to do is to create a succinct and simple answer and you have your value proposition. However, you may have to experiment with your value proposition and revise it from time to time.

What will serve as the framework for all your efforts is your clear value proposition .

3. Write a compelling brand slogan.

Always be aware of the level of noise in media today and then recognize how critical it will be to make a strong impression quickly.

A great way to address this challenge is to put your value proposition into a slogan.

Here are some good examples:

• Lifehacker’s slogan is “Tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done.”
• Social Media Examiner claims to be “Your guide to the social media jungle.”
• Ramit Sethi promises, “I will teach you to be rich.”
• Feldman Creative promises to “Turn on the power of online marketing.”

Now, how can you summarize your brand promise in a concise slogan?

4. Show yourself.

Of course, the best thing you should remember is that people want to connect with people, not merely brands.

One way is presenting a great photo of yourself which helps establish credibility and build trust. It also helps you connect via social media.

You can do this by simply getting a great headshot that captures the real, authentic you. You can invest in a professional photo shoot or if you prefer not to part with the money, hit up a friend with a quality camera and a command of portrait photography.

Always go into the session with a plan. You have to tell the photographer the impression that you aim to create, the you you’re looking to capture.

After reviewing the photos, pick one headshot to use on your website and across all your social media networks.

• Working at your computer
• Analyzing your client’s data
• Coaching one-on-one
• Facilitating a small group meeting
• Recording a podcast
• Shooting a video
• Speaking before a large crowd
• Autographing your book at an event
• For the photo that will serve you best is simply you looking into the lens smiling, looking friendly and approachable—with no distractions.

5. Establish a look.

Any brand that is memorable, your personal brand included, should present itself consistently. Using a variety of logos, colors, and fonts will confuse your audience.

Develop a look for your personal brand with simply the following:

A professionally designed logo

A pleasing color palette

A limited menu of fonts

Then you can now apply the standards you created to everything—your website, business cards, advertising, etc.

For now, you’re off to a good start….

‪#‎BEUNSTOPPABLEwhileBRANDING‬

Source: Personal brand equity

Color Psychology and What it Has to Do With Branding

Color Psychology and What it Has to Do With Branding

Color is extremely important in branding your business. When someone looks at a logo, the color is the foremost thing that they remember. In fact, according to Color Matters, 80 percent of visual information that we take in is related to color.

Why Color Matters

According to the research that was conducted by the secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo, they found that-

• 92.6% of consumers say that visual factors influenced their purchase decision
• 5.6% said that touching the product had influence on their decision
• 0.9% said that smell had anything to do with their decision

They determined that anywhere between 62% and 90% of purchases are made based on color alone.

Branding Identity

The color that you chose has everything to do with your brand identity. Color increases brand recognition by up to 80%.

Many brands have sets of colors trademarked for protection against other brands in the same market. For instance, Coca-Cola has its iconic red and white scheme protected. Lots of others have single shades of color trademarked too, like John Deere, McDonalds and Starbucks.

These brands try to associate themselves with their color at a fundamental level. To achieve that sort of recognition, brands have to peg their signature color to nearly everything—marketing, packaging, uniforms, store decor and more.

So when you hear one of these brands’ names, it should be easy to think of its color. What about your brand color or imaging?

Can you be identified over anyone else ? This is what all marketers and personal brands should strive for. To create a USP (Unstoppable Sexy Positioning) for your brand that your customers recognize throughout your whole sales process.

Increase Engagement

Ads that have color are read up to 42% more than the same content in black and white. It also can improve the ability for your audience to read and comprehend your content. Taking learning styles into account when building ads is highly important. If you have written something or presented it in a way that they cannot understand, you are wasting your time.

Color Psychology

Take a peep below at the psychology of color when developing your brand.

Red- Energy, Passion, and Boldness

Orange- Health, Wealth, and Youthfulness

Yellow- Joy, Energy, and Warmth

Green- Growth, Balance and Well Being

Blue- Peace, Confidence, and Serenity

Purple- Royalty, Luxury, and Success

What Colors and Styles You Wear Is Part Of Your Branding

During the first Media and the City event, we brought in Brian Cook. He’s a stylist with many prestigious clients. He gave us many tips about what to wear on camera to represent our brands well. Colors had a lot to do with his suggestions.

Brian estimates that it takes 1/10 of a second for a person to assess your competence and trustworthiness. The colors and styles you are wearing is a big part of your message whether you realize it or not.

Implementing color psychology into your wardrobe is an important part of your branding strategy. This is important to think about when you are creating promotional materials and videos.

Source: Colors marketing strategy

Tips, Tricks, Do’s and Don’t’s of Social Media Marketing- Selling the Dream & Living the Nightmare

Tips, Tricks, Do’s and Don’t’s of Social Media Marketing- Selling the Dream & Living the Nightmare

In here, what I want to talk to you about today is selling the dream and living the nightmare.

Being a Freedom-Preneur Means Having Fun!

It can be inferred that there is a huge struggle for those that leave the corporate world. It’s this– we don’t take time to have fun.

Now let me ask you: So you finally did it, right? You left your corporate job so that you could pursue being a Freedom-preneur, only to turn right around and put in the same amount of time and effort to your home based business as you did for someone else.

What is the point of all of that? You left but then you were just going to still spend all of your time working, then why did you not stay in the industry you were in? Don’t ever forget that living the dream means taking the time to live.

In all seriousness and strictly speaking, you have to get away from your desk. You didn’t sign up for that. You signed up to be a Freedom-preneur and determining what your version of the Dream is.

Here are some of the tips I have for you today:

• You need to get out in the world and have fun! This is one of the most important things to remember. Take the time– in fact, a lot of time– to get away from your computer and enjoy life. Furthermore, spend time with your family, do something new, whatever you enjoy, go do it!

• Create a business that you can enjoy- We all know that there is no end to the number of things you can do in the online world. The key to this is to pick something you enjoy. Take note that you aren’t in it just for the paycheck, but for the other benefits of being on online marketer. Namely, those benefits are creating a business that you actually love. You don’t like what you are selling? Then sell something else.

• When you are doing what you love, you can do it longer- When you sell the things you love, then you will not even feel like you are working. You might find that you have been running non-stop 12-15 hours doing the thing you love. It won’t even feel like work, because you are so passionate about it.

Don’t Sell The Dream While You are Living the Nightmare

It’s time to get real people.Always be connected and transparent to your audience. You can’t sell them a dream life while you are living your own worst nightmare because people are going to see right through that.

For a long time, I was selling things that I didn’t like and couldn’t feel passionate about. I woke up and asked myself, “What am I doing this for?”. To me, my realizationwas that, what I was doing at home wasn’t much better than what I had been doing in my corporate career.

So, here is something you need to know about being a Freedom-preneur: the direction of your life is up to you. You don’t have a boss hovering over you dictating to you the exact dimensions of the box that you have to stay in.

It is undeniable that being in the online marketing industry will either energize you, or drain the life out of you. I am encouraging you to make 2016 your best business year yet and get your priorities straight. Last word of advice: Figure out what makes you tick and pursue it.

Source: How to personally brand you