Tag Archives: brand building

Are you creating these branding mistakes while creating your personal brand?

How do you create your personal brand?

Decide what you want to be known for.

Have very clearly laid out goals.

Audit your existing brand – search yourself on the Internet and find out what people are saying about you, if at all.

This will give you an idea of how much effort you need to put in and what direction to follow.

Come up with a consistent strategy.

What branding mistakes could you be committing when creating your personal brand?

I came across this list of mistakes on this LinkedIn update and thought of creating a small blog post listing them here.

One branding mistake is pretending to be someone you are not.

What are your core values?

How do you define yourself?

Don’t deviate from your core values just to appeal to the crowd.

Stick to your personality and you will attract an appropriate audience.

The second mistake is not differentiating between marketing and personal branding.

Most of the personal branding is one-on-one engagement.

You build your personal brand by providing some sort of value to people through blogging, social media updates and videos.

Advertising and marketing don’t work in personal branding.

You can read about the remaining mistakes in the original post.

Personal brand building through strategic content writing

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.

7 ways you can use content writing for better brand awareness

1 Reply

7 ways you can use content writing for better brand awareness.

Brand awareness is an important segment of your overall business strategy. It’s the extent to which your potential customers and target audience are familiar with your brand. Naturally, you want to raise your brand awareness to a higher level and ensure you’re reaching a wider audience. Content writing is one of the best tools to help you reach this goal.

Using content writing to boost brand awareness is a great strategic move you need to consider using. If you’re not sure how to do it, just keep reading. Here are the best methods for using content writing to increase brand awareness.

Let’s take a closer look together.

1. Establish a Brand Personality

Before you even start writing and go deeper into your content writing strategy, you have to think about your brand.

How do you want to represent it? What do you want from people to think about it?

It’s important that you establish a brand personality before your major content writing efforts. This will ensure uniformity across all platforms you’ll be using.

Establish a brand personality by defining:

your tone & voice
your style of writing
your identity & traits

Try to define your brand as if it was a person, and make this a foundation of your content writing strategy. Then, stay consistent in your brand personality in everything you write.

This will help your target audience understand you, embrace you, and recognize your content.

2. Use Blogging

If you know anything about content writing, you know blogging is one of the strongest tools that you have to own.

Blogging gives you a chance to reach out to your target audience and build a relationship with them.

Diana Adjadj, a marketer and writer at Best Essays Education, agrees: “Your content writing strategy should heavily rely on your blogging strategy. The two are inseparable and have to go hand in hand together.”

There are two ways you should use blogging to raise brand awareness:

In both cases, make sure that you:

write posts for your target audience
provide valuable information
serve as a credible source of data and facts
cover trending topics from your niche
write interesting, relevant content

Blogging is a great way to get organic traffic, build brand awareness, and expand your audience.

3. Rely on Storytelling

If you want more people to learn about your brand, and share it with their friends, you should rely on storytelling in your content writing.

You may also like to read: The importance of storytelling in content marketing.

Storytelling is great for building firm bonds with your target audience and deepening your relationship. It makes them feel emotionally closer to you, which is the recipe for success.

Share stories such as:

how your brand was established
people behind the brand name
fun acts
inspirational team members stories
customer stories

Give them something more personal and revealing to make your brand even more human. The further you go from your image as “just a company” or “just a brand”, the better.

4. Socialize

Social media is powerful. Today, almost every brand has a social media account on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

You may also like to read: 5 ways to make your content social media friendly.

You shouldn’t be an exception.

Social media allows you to aim your content writing directly towards your target audience. All you have to do is take the right steps:

create interesting social media posts
reply to comments and messages
get involved in discussions within your industry
communicate with other brands

Your social media presence can win you a huge number of new followers. It also creates additional space for you to show your brand personality, as we’ve discussed in point 1.

5. Team Up With an Influencer

Influencer marketing is flourishing. Brands team up with people who have a large audience and get them to promote them.

But, there’s more to influencer marketing than you think.

Here’s what you need to have in mind:

choose an influencer from your niche
make sure it’s someone your target audience likes
make sure you agree with all their public attitudes, opinions, and their ideology
choose an expert, celebrity, blogger, or anyone who could win you more audience

Neightan White, a blogger and contributing writer at Supreme Dissertations, says: “Once you choose an influencer to promote your brand, you’re linking your brand to everything that person says or does. Choose wisely and make sure you preserve your brand personality.”

6. Use Visuals

When we’re talking about content writing, we have to mention the power of visually appealing content.

Naturally, what you write is more important than what it all looks like. But, visuals have far greater power than just making your content look better.

Visuals can turn your content around and make it:

appealing
dynamic
entertaining
memorable

Images, videos, GIFs, and infographics are there to support your content and make it richer. They will make your content worth sharing and thus more popular.

Use visuals to add more appeal and value to your content. It will skyrocket your brand awareness.

7. Watch Your Competitors

Your brand needs to be unique and stand out from the rest. And the only way for you to do it is to know what everyone else is up to.

To raise brand awareness, you need to:

identify your competitors
keep an eye on their content strategy
understand their plans and goals

Once you know all this, you’ll be able to think of something new, fresh, and different. And that’s what your target audience is going to appreciate.

Final Thoughts

Raising brand awareness is a task you should constantly work on. From one level to the other, use content writing as a tool to help you improve.

Use the tips we’ve shared above and start working on your content writing strategy. Focus on raising brand awareness and give your target audience a reason to love you even more.

5 ways content writing improves and promotes your brand

Improving and promoting your brand with quality content writing

Quality content writing and brand improvement are inextricably related, especially on the Internet, especially when you have a limited budget.

When writing content for your website or blog, it is often advised that you tell stories. People love to read stories about how others improve their lives using your products and services. It is reassuring. It helps them make a connection. So, a big part of content writing must be highlighting stories of other people doing great due to your business.

Your brand can also be highlighted by encouraging influencers to write testimonials about your business. Influencers are like celebrities. They are known within their circle. People want to be seen with them. People want to be associated with them.

What if you don’t have stories? How can you build your brand through content writing if you don’t have stories to tell?

Help your visitors as much as possible.

Share your wisdom and your knowledge through regular content writing.

Remember that quality content writing helps your brand when you are not constantly promoting your brand. The promotion and improvement of your brand through quality content writing must happen as a byproduct of the helpful content that you continuously write and publish.

Listed below are 5 ways quality content writing can improve and promote your brand:

1. Content writing improves brand visibility especially on the Internet

Visibility is very important. If people don’t come across your business how do they do business with you?

Quality content writing increases content wealth of your website or blog and this in turn improves your search engine rankings. Not just search engine rankings, since you provide valuable content, people like to share your content on their social media profiles, increasing your visibility in the process.

The key is, valuable content. If your content doesn’t satisfy the needs of the people who come to your website or blog, it becomes counter-productive and instead of increasing your visibility, it begins to decrease your visibility and even begins to get your negative visibility.

2. Content writing encourages people to connect with your brand on an ongoing basis

When you regularly publish quality content on your website or blog it draws people to your brand on regular basis. When your content helps people, when it solves people’s problems, even when it entertains them, it repeatedly brings people to your website. This increases brand exposure and people become familiar with your brand.

Again, positive association is must.

3. Content writing improves your search engine rankings and this in turn helps your brand

You want your content to be found for good reasons. I want to be found for “best content writer” and not for “lousy content writer” or “sloppy content writer”. This is one.

Two, they should know that I’m competent. When they are looking for content writing-related information, something like

Why quality content writing improves your SEO?

will bring them to my website and they will begin to recognise Credible Content with authoritative information on quality content.

Hence, good content should increase your search engine rankings – improve your SEO – for the right search terms and this in turn helps your brand.

4. It helps you send out emails without spamming

Worldwide, 293.6 billion emails are sent out every day, according to this Statista webpage dedicated to the corresponding piece of information. By 2023, 4.3 billion people will be using emails on regular basis. According to this link, when you send out an email campaign, the average CTR on desktop computers is 13.3% and on mobile devices, 12.7%.

What I’m saying is, if you want your brand to reach out to your target audience, sending out regular emails is still the best option you have got.

But, email is notorious for spam. This is where quality content writing can rescue you.

By regularly publishing high-quality content on your website or blog you get enough material to broadcast your email campaigns. You can provide highly useful information through your email campaigns and instead of avoiding your messages, people will be waiting for them.

5. Content writing allows you to promote your brand for different stages of your sales funnel, differently

A great thing about content writing is that you can publish highly unique content for different stages of your sales funnel and consequently, promote your brand for different user needs.

Here is a typical sales funnel:

Importance of content writing throughout the sales funnel

As it happens with every sales funnel, the biggest group you can attract is the one that still needs to be educated and made aware of your business. Content writing targets this group separately without pushing products and services and just focusing on educating and providing information.

Then you can have different content for people who are interested in your business. Although they are aware of what you do and how you can help them, they still need to decide in your favor.

People are distracted. They are constantly being approached by your competitors and even if not by your competitors, then by thousands of distractions on mobile phones and the web. Even when they have decided to do business with you, they may get distracted and end up doing business with someone else. A strong brand connection through highly focused content writing can keep them from going away.

When people have purchased from you, you want repeat business from them. Content writing and brand building for this section is different. People have already gotten a taste of what you can deliver. You need to keep reminding them without bothering them. They are the ones who become your loyal customers and clients and fall in love with your brand.

Concluding remarks on building your brand on the strength of quality content writing

At the crux of every successful branding effort lies an ongoing interaction with customers and clients. No business can become a brand without an emotional connection.

Quality content writing that focuses on user needs instead of branding needs creates multiple channels for interactions and consequently, forming positive associations with your business.