How To Build And Promote Your Personal Brand (Without Losing Your Mind)

personal brand and story

If you hate the concept of selling, marketing or promoting yourself, this post is for you! If you have a career and you want to promote yourself - your "thought leadership" - you can take the same approach as if you owned or ran a business.

At lunch today, a very successful friend asked me, “How do I build my personal brand?” Then – almost to herself – she mumbled, ” … it’s so confusing … too hard … maddening … I can’t believe I bought that software in a seminar.”

I hear the exact same question and the exact same complaints over and over again.

Personal Branding: Too Hard?

Have you given up on building and promoting your personal brand because it’s just too hard or frustrating? Maybe you couldn’t find the right person to help you. If so, you’re not alone.

Do you hate the thought of selling? We meet “non-selling” professionals all the time. These are often people in accounting, law, engineering, software development. Normally these are extremely bright and gifted human beings who absolutely hate the thought of selling anything, including themselves.

But if you don’t sell, market and promote yourself, who will? Fear not!

While it can be overwhelming to think about all there is to building and promoting your personal brand, knowing the fundamental building blocks is key.

The Essential Building Blocks

Here’s a short list of the most common things that blow people up when it comes to building and promoting their personal brands. This is pretty much what you need to build and promote your personal brand. (Yes, you can buy all sorts of fancy marketing automation software like SharpSpring, Infusionsoft, Act On or Hubspot. But please don’t plan on managing these systems yourself, no matter what the salespeople tell you!)

  • Who designed your website to be mobile and conversion-friendly?
  • Who crafted the landing page or free download on your homepage to build your email list?
  • Who wrote the amazing, conversion-friendly copy?
  • Who chose and paid for the licensed images on your site and blog?
  • Who’s writing your blog articles, (like this), every week?
  • Who’s keeping on top of your contact list? (Relationships are the entire point of marketing.)
  • Who’s following up with your email list and sending emails worth reading?
  • Who’s managing all your social media posts?
  • Who’s managing your online PR and advertising campaigns?

Maddening, huh? It doesn’t have to be. Read on …

Nine Steps, One Thing

Here are a few ground rules to consider when targeting your goal – your “One Thing” as we call it. Focus!

Building any business requires GREAT PEOPLE, PRODUCTS AND PROCESS. Given how important all three of these are, follow these nine steps to build and promote your personal brand without losing your mind.

These nine steps have helped hundreds of companies get better sales and marketing results with far less cost and stress. Your success depends on your leadership, your people, and how committed you are to producing and selling the best product possible.

  1. Focus on your plan of action. Get a new notebook or start a digital document that contains this checklist. Don’t wing it when it comes to your sales and marketing plan of action. Craft your plan with care. Begin with one, primary goal you seek to achieve.
  2. Describe your purpose. What is your primary, professional purpose? Write in three sentences or less a highly-descriptive Purpose Statement. What are you most passionate about professionally?
  3. Describe your vision. What do you see in three, five or ten years? Write – in three sentences or less – a highly-descriptive statement what you see for yourself, your people and your business. Write and act, “as if.”
  4. Take a stand for your brand. Why do people do business with you? What confirming belief or conviction do you have that serves your best customer? How do you make a difference? Write in three sentences or less a highly descriptive statement about your brand including keywords that hit the “essence” of your brand.
  5. Craft a better story. How compelling is your story? This is about crafting your story with care. You must polish and practice it. The more authentic and compelling your story, the more attractive your offers will be. Write in 500 words or less a short story about how you solved your best customer’s biggest problem. Describe who your customer is, what happened, what it was like for them before you met, and how you were able to take them through your process to get what they wanted.
  6. Develop a better hook. Your “hook” is your list builder that entices people to want to know more about what you do, your process and how you approach helping your customers. Your hook extends from your story. For example, do you want better sales results? Download your free guide, The 9 Laws of Conversion Marketing here. (You’ll see the pop up on the home page and the web form with the same offer on our blog pages.)
  7. Build your digital funnel. Find and hire a qualified professional to do this for you. I have seen hundreds of business owners and employees losing their minds trying to build their own digital funnels. The building blocks to integrate on the systems of your choice include website, blog, social media, contact management system, email marketing system, a simple reporting dashboard and knowledge of Google Analytics for your main “conversion event.” (This is when someone downloads your “hook.” They are opting in. Yay!)
  8. Never stop promoting and following up. This is where most business owners and their people fail. Once you build your digital funnel you have to feed it with regular, original and curated content that interests and engages your readers. You have for form your ad and list growth budget according to the goal you set. This combines your outbound with your “attraction” or “inbound” marketing at it’s best. Given the right digital funnel and discipline to pay for content (or generate all of your own), your traffic, email list and new customer flow should flow steadily.
  9. Teach and sell from your heart. I left one of the best tips for last. It could be first on this list because teaching is selling. Think about it. Give a speech, write an article, publish a book, fill a workshop and what will you see? You, teaching your process for helping your customers get what they want. It’s that simple. Forget selling. This is about helping people get what they want.

Final Thoughts

You will never be able to do all of this alone. No way. You focus on what you do best. Then, delegate the rest to the best people you can afford to hire.

The Good News? Once you build your personal brand and have a marketing funnel that actually works, you won’t incur all the unnecessary, surprise expenses you seem to get hit with all the time.

In closing, I’ve personally used these 9 steps to build my social media following over the years. Follow these steps, never quit and ask for help if you need it. It’s never too late to learn how to build and promote your personal brand!

I love to write and publish. I love to teach. I love to help people get what they want; better sales, marketing and business results without losing your mind! (I also have great people helping me all the time.)


P.S. Need amazing, original articles for your blog? Ask me about our amazing content marketing process. Let us do the writing and publishing for you. You can reach us here.

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