Building your personal brand with content writing.
What is different about writing content for personal branding?
What is content writing for personal branding?
What do you look for if you need a content writer to build your personal brand?
Personal branding is the association that people make with your name.
What sort of feelings does your name arise among people you are targeting?
What do they think about you? Do they respect you? Do they recognize your authority? Do they pay attention to what you say or what you publish?
Building your personal brand matters to you if you seek business partnerships through the power of your name and recognition.
Content writing can help you clearly define your personal branding on the web and reach your target audience through it.
In the times of Covid-19, an increasing number of people are working from home.
Many successful professionals have lost their jobs and they are eking out their own livelihood.
Previously they were using their talents and abilities for the companies that hired them, but now they’re trying to use their talents and abilities as individuals rather than employees of a company.
Personal branding through content writing
For them, building their personal brand is as important as setting up a business. In fact, for people offering their skills as individuals – for example, I promote myself as a content writer and my content writing services are basically me – it is very important that their target audience recognizes them for their talents and abilities.
But first,
What is personal brand building?
What does personal branding mean?
Personal branding has two attributes: your name and its association.
Although, I don’t want this to be my identity everywhere, in business circles, when someone comes across the name Amrit Hallan, I want people to immediately associate the name with “content writer” or “content writing” or even “SEO content”. My regular content writing helps me in this regard.
If enough people see my name enough number of times and they can recall that I am a content writer, my personal brand is established.
Even conversely, when people come across terms like “content writer” or “content writing services” or “content writing” or “SEO content writer” they should be able to recall, “Oh yes, Amrit Hallan does that!”
Of course, branding is more than that. Branding isn’t just about knowing what you do, it is also about how well I do it.
Hence, aside from knowing that I am a content writer, my personal branding means people know that I can help them improve their search engine rankings or provide them content that improves their conversion rate.
They recognize me as someone they can depend on. They respect my knowledge. They acknowledge my experience and expertise.
Famous examples of personal brands would be, if you come across Guy Kawasaki, you can immediately recall that he is an Apple evangelist, a venture capitalist and an author. If you come across Avinash Kaushik you know that he’s a data scientist.
So, personal brand building includes:
- Associating a skill, a knowledge domain, some character or quality, a speciality or anything that sets you apart from the others, to your name.
- Making sure that you are easily findable based on what you can deliver.
- Trust factor.
Why trust factor?
When you want to get work based on what you can deliver, people need to trust you.
For example, if someone hires me as a content writer, that person should be able to trust that I’m going to deliver quality content writing.
He or she must feel reassured that once he or she decides to work with me, he or she can count on me.
Otherwise, no matter how great a content writer I am, if I’m not reliable, if lots of people have shared bad experience about me online, brand building is of no use.
Hence, personal brand building means establishing yourself as an authority in a topic or domain so that people hire you or decide to do business with you, coupled with creating your presence so that people can easily find you when they need you.
“Finding” doesn’t just mean that when people come across Amrit Hallan the expression “content writer” must immediately pop up in their minds.
Sure, this should happen. But it should also happen the other way round. When they are looking for a content writer, they should be able to find me.
Enter content writing.
How quality content writing helps you build your personal brand
Quality content writing helps you build a personal brand.
As I have explained above, brand building means associating your name with something that you can deliver, as well as associating something that you can deliver with your name.
Along with that, it should be easier for people to find you for what you can deliver.
Quality content writing helps you achieve all these.
Associating yourself with your capability through content writing
Suppose you want to be known as a business coach.
You can just write on your website that you are a business coach, you give good advice, you have helped so and so and hence, people who are looking for a competent business coach should get in touch with you and preferably, should hire you.
There is nothing wrong in doing that, but the problem is, just like you, thousands of other business coaches have similar websites.
They have more or less the same information.
They call themselves great.
They showcase their achievements on their websites.
They also have testimonials.
They also insist that people who are looking for business coaches must contact them and hire them.
In such a case scenario, you need to establish yourself as an authority in your subject. You must stand out.
Why do professionals write books?
There are many business coaches who are also authors.
If there is a choice between hiring a business coach who has published a few books and a business coach who has never published, who do you think people are going to hire?
Yes, you’re right. The business coach who has published books.
Writing and publishing a book is not a mean feat.
Just the fact that someone has completed a book tells you that the person can focus and work hard.
Don’t see yourself writing a book in near future but would like to be known as a professional in your field? You can work with a content writer to publish authoritative content on your website or your blog.
Regularly publish articles and blog posts on your website. They are as good as writing and publishing book. Sometimes, even better.
Seth Godin, for example, built his personal brand through his blog. He wrote and published books much later.
Share your knowledge. Share your insight. Help people who come to your website.
When people regularly come to your website and read your thoughts on business coaching, they begin to associate your name with business coaching. They begin to recognize your brand.
Isn’t it obvious? If you are constantly writing about business coaching and how it can help people, people begin to recognize you as a business coach.
If your advice is good, if your advice is applicable and if people begin to benefit from your advice, they begin to trust you.
They begin to talk about you. They begin to tell others that you are a business coach. Even those who have never come to your website start visiting your website.
Making it easier for people to find you for your skills through content writing
Regular content writing and publishing builds your presence.
When you publish blog posts and articles on your website, you promote them on your social media timelines. You may also broadcast them to your newsletter. It becomes easier for people to find you.
Your targeted content also improves your SEO. Your organic search engine rankings improve for relevant search terms.
It’s obvious that when people search for your name it should come up in search results along with your speciality.
But, even if someone searches for your speciality, your name must come up.
If someone searches for a business coach in a relevant field, if you provide business coaching services in that relevant field, your name must come up.
Persistent content writing helps you achieve that.
Search engines love fresh content. They also love authoritative content.
You can provide them both with regular content writing and publishing on your website and blog.
You achieve personal brand building when people are able to find you, whether using search engines or social networking websites or direct references, both by your name and by your skill.
Again, you can achieve this level of personal brand building only through regular content writing.
Why regular?
Just as you are doing personal brand building, so are other professionals in your field. Everyone is constantly catching up. This is the reality of our times.
What sort of content should you write and publish for building your brand?
Your content should be able to achieve the following if you want to build a personal brand on its shoulders
- Help you stand out
- Build thought leadership
- Grow trust and credibility
- Help you build a solid network
Listed below are a few writing tips to build your personal brand through content writing:
Write a brand mission statement
What defines you?
Who are you as a person?
What do you do and what do you deliver?
What change do you make in people’s lives?
What do you stand for?
What is your philosophy in life?
What are your values?
What can be your most valuable contribution?
Write a list of your brand content goals
What do you want to achieve with you content that will help you elevate your brand?
Do you want to raise awareness about your field?
Are you a brand ambassador of your field of expertise?
Do you want to portray yourself as a trustable individual?
Do you want people to get familiarized about your thoughts and opinions?
Write and publish content regularly
Once you have clearly defined your objective and figured your target audience, start publishing content regularly.
You can begin with explaining the various concepts of your profession.
For example, if I claim that I can help you improve your search engine rankings with my content writing services, I should be able to illustrate this ability through proper examples.
In my case, my clients get live examples because they can find my web pages and blog posts for the search term they are using.
Regularly publish your research and observations.
Talk about your interactions with other industry leaders.
Share useful information from other sources that you come across.
Remember that regularity is very important.
The Internet is quite noisy.
In fact, it is one of the noisiest ecosystems in the world.
Within seconds thousands of pages, blog posts, videos, and images are added to the web.
Amidst all that, you need to remain visible if you want to build your brand on a sustained level.
Even the biggest names begin to lose their presence when they don’t constantly write and publish content.
Be persistent. Remain focused. Share your knowledge. Prove to people that you are an authority in your field. Sustain it over a long period of time. You have built yourself a personal brand.