6 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand

You’ve started out on your own; You’re going to freelance/consult with your incredible set of skills. With more professionals in virtually every industry going the freelance road, you’re going to have a lot of competition. How will you set your personal brand apart and attract more business to you?

Here are my top tips for increasing your brand. I’m beginning a program in July this year which I will personally work with a small group in a marketing mentorship. We will be covering these topics and work on your brand and story.

1. Tell your personal story
Incorporate personality into your personal brand. Explain why you got into the industry you did, and tell the story of how you got to where you are now by briefly referencing past work history or experiences that changed or inspired you. The goal is to be yourself, share your unique story and let it resonate with others.

2. Create a personal website for a niche audience
There are many people who freelance, yet only a small percentage have a personal website, and even fewer have a personal website that provides content for a niche audience consistently over time. If someone wants to be a freelance technical advisor, having a niche website with content that shares your knowledge and expertise is going to have to be a regular discipline.

3. Do for you what you do for others
Its the old builder/ tradie rule. The greatest builder of clients homes has unfinished work or hasn’t finished their own build or reno. Most ‘experts’ don’t do for themselves what they do for others. Web designers have basic/mediocre websites. Social media experts have limited social presences. An easy way to stand out is to be about what you talk about. Create and amplify a personal brand that walks the talk of what you can do for others.

4. Set higher prices
I talk about this a lot. You need to know your worth. Spend time on this. Don’t pluck figures out of the air,. You need to embrace it and feel it. If you don’t own it or believe it on a deep level neither will your clients. When your price yourself correctly, and great delivery work, Your clients will gladly pay and follow you. I remember talking with one of our members about this. One of our members is a practitioner that worked hard on her worth and what she was about. She shared with me how she raised her vibration, increased her self-worth and upped her prices, The result? She has been booked out ever since, and nobody questions her prices. This is key. If people are questioning your prices, I take this as a reflection of something not sitting right internally.

5. Serve your customers – before thinking about dollars
You move from job to job and understandably focussing on cashflow is important so you know when your next funds will be coming from, but I noticed that when I focused on serving the customers and their needs first, funds will follow. You need to trust in your process and emerge yourself into the vision of what you are trying to do for your client. When your focus is there the reward should follow with ease. A dear friend and member has done this really well and her consultancy is flourishing.

6. Spend time building your relationships and reputation
Your reputation is a valuable asset, and yet people treat it with disregard so often. Not getting back to people, back stabbing, not treating people well. Investing in our relationships to gain repeat and referral business is the pinnacle of business in my view. Engage and build and converse out of your own orbit. There is so much work, so many clients and so much help out there. Build those relationships and it will come.

There are way more than 6 steps, but I hope these get you started or thinking.
Andrea