Hewlko News - How to build a personal brand
A rose is still a rose by any other name
Self-promotion, personal marketing, positioning, whatever you want to call it, it’s important to have. I would know— I run a company with my name in it. People inherently associate Hewlko as a business with Hewlko as an individual so having a strong personal brand helps me to connect to my audience and differentiate myself from the competition.
That’s why I like to call it personal branding. The way I help my clients develop a personal brand is very similar to how I help corporations build a strong brand. But what even is a brand? It’s an accurate portrayal of what your business has to offer to prospective customers. That’s why it’s important for many professionals to have one— to differentiate yourself and to say what you have to offer to prospective clients. This month we’re going to share actionable ways you can start to build your personal brand.
The first step in building your brand is defining your personal values.
Like attracts like, and the message you put out in the world will help you speak directly to the types of people you want to attract. If you value creativity but all of your messaging is very straight-laced, you’re probably not going to attract the creative projects you want to work on.
Take some time to think about the successful partnerships or friendships you’ve had in the past, what you enjoy in your work, and how others describe you. Words that come up frequently over all three of these categories are probably a good hint as to your values. Knowing your values will serve as a foundation for the rest of your personal brand.
Next, map out your sales cycle.
A sales cycle is the process your clients go through from the minute they identify they have a problem till they sign the dotted line for your services. Where do your customers search when they experience the triggers that lead to your business? For instance, if you’re a mortgage broker that trigger is buying a house so where they search might be looking at various personal finance articles to learn about mortgage rates.
From here, how do customers come to find you? That could be through referrals, a Google search, a directory page, social media, any channel really. The most important thing is identifying the most common ways in which they find you and digging into that even further. If it is through referrals, what types of people have referred to you most in the past? Going back to the mortgage broker example, if 75% of your business comes from personal finance advisors, that’s important to note in your sales cycle. If your leads come through social, which channels?
Finally, list out the common factors between first contact and a sale. How many meetings does it typically take to close the deal? Do you have better luck with email or in-person meetings? List out all the steps of your typical sales deals. Knowing your sales cycle will help you to identify where you should dedicate more effort and how. Tracking your sales cycle is just as important, try using HubSpots free CRM - link here.
Build relationships in the community you’re targeting.
Join LinkedIn groups that have to do with your service or product, go to professional groups, or join a board in your field. Comment on people’s social media posts and engage with their content. Follow social media hashtags related to your industry so posts tagged with them come up in your feed.
One of the most important things to remember when you’re building these relationships is to be genuine and remember your values. Personal branding isn’t about constantly selling, it’s about building trust and a solid reputation. That comes from being helpful and creating meaningful relationships with people.
Last (but definitely not least), be consistent!
Personal branding is all about how you portray yourself and establish your credibility in your field. Out of sight out of mind truly applies here. Consistent posting is not only more regularly seen and engaged with, but it’s also heavily favoured by the algorithm of many social media platforms and search engines. If you’re going to start a blog, pick a regular cadence you can stick to for publishing. If you are going to get more active on LinkedIn, set a time in your calendar to post a few days a week. If you want to send out a monthly newsletter, you have to send it out every month.
This sounds like a lot but don’t let it overwhelm you. You don’t need to be everywhere, you just need to identify where your audience spends most of their time and get consistent there. For Hewlko, our newsletters and LinkedIn have some of the higher engagement so that’s often where you can find our efforts.
A lot of personal branding fundamentals overlap with corporate branding. We have a 3-part resource series on branding to learn more about the process.
Click here to access our branding resources.
Q&A with Shauna Mae Hartsook, Founder and Creative Chief at Boldface Goods.
Do you ever meet those people that just overflow with creativity? The types whose cast away ideas are still great. That’s Shauna. It also helps having as many cool stories as she does. In this month’s Q&A I got the chance to catch up with her to hear about all the adventures she’s been taking on lately. Learn about the ways she keeps her creative talents sharp and how she’s building up her business Boldfaced Goods.
Highlighting recent grads on Instagram!
Graduation looked a little different this year, but needless to say, all the grads worked so hard and their work should be celebrated. We wanted to use our platforms and connections to help spread the word on new students for hire! We are highlighting different grads on our Instagram stories for the next month, and will do a round up on our blog at a later date.
Follow us on instagram at @hewlkodesign