For any successful business owner, your primary goal is for people to recognize your personal brand as the authority in your chosen niche. No matter what niche your product or service falls into, you want your ideal customers to view you as the expert. One of the most effective ways to do that is to publish your own expert content on a consistent basis.
Doing so helps you provide information, expertise, and even entertainment to your ideal customers to achieve top-of-mind awareness as an authority in your industry. Consistent quality content also produces SEO-rich results that keep you at the top of search engines.
Here are six different types of content for personal branding that can give your brand a fresh, unique, and balanced approach.
Showcase Your Community
Your community is what often connects you as human beings. You can always find ways to connect with people through schools, sports teams, parks, attractions, and historical landmarks, to name a few. Become the expert on what connects you to your community.
Consider video interviews with significant community members to create rapport and relationships. Use a live streaming video app to broadcast from a local event. Share interesting trivia that people may not know about your area once a week. You can learn some very interesting things by consulting with historians at your library or historical society.
Over time, this could turn into an amazing video or podcast series. Not only will this approach position you as someone who knows your area well, but it can give you interesting content that isn’t solely focused on your product or service.
Promote the Good
Your support of charitable organizations say a lot about who you are, and people will make an extra effort to do business with you as a result of this connection.
You may feel hesitant promoting these efforts because you don’t want to seem as though you are exploiting the charities and organizations. But charitable organizations very often have small marketing budgets, if any. They rely on outside marketing forces like yours to promote their initiatives. In other words, they want you to promote them.
Keep in mind the purpose of your promotion though. It’s not about you. Make sure your content focuses on the organization you’re helping, what they do for your community, and how others can join in the cause. People will come to view your personal brand as giving and charitable, which are both impressions and connections you want to make.
Let Others In On Your Hobbies
You bungee jumped from one of the tallest bridges in the U.S. In your spare time, you go fly fishing. You love playing chef and use only locally grown, organic foods. You’ve done mission work in Haiti. You almost played professional baseball. You have an insane talent for gardening, landscape design, or bass guitar. Okay, you get the picture.
Your hobbies make you a three-dimensional human being whom others can relate to. People are interesting, and people are interested in interesting people. Others remember you for unique traits. And most of all, people love the story behind the face. Just think about what makes reality TV so attractive.
Don’t go overboard, but share a piece of your personal life and what interests you most. You’d be surprised by the number of people who will feel a strong, positive connection with you based on your hobbies. Before you know it, your hobbies may become a staple of your personal branding.
Make Creative Connections
While you want to contribute to your customers’ social media stream with information about your brand, you don’t want it to always be about buying something. Imagine a more creative twist to achieve top-of-mind awareness.
What if you posted your product being used in an unconventional way? Or you promote a sale tied to a time-sensitive event to attract more customers. Or you engage your audience by asking for input as part of a contest with prizes. What if you put a brand-related meme or joke that helps your audience get a laugh and connect with your brand in another fun way?
Do some research about what your competitors are doing to help you think of something people don’t see every day. Keep in mind that your creative content should still have a clear business connection — whether it’s through a logo or tagline related to your personal branding.
This way, you stay ‘top of mind’ and connect your business with the kind of creative messaging that boosts your personal brand.
Share Your Experiences
Your experiences are random happenings that can have great interest and meaning to your audience. Whether you have a unique experience buying a new car or a fateful conversation with a stranger in an airport, share it if you feel it ties into a life lesson or business lesson.
If you had an enlightening conversation while hanging out with your friends, share it in a thoughtful way. Think that coincidences happen as a message to tell you something? Share that with the world — especially if these coincidences happen during your work. Talk about a humorous customer experience or embarrassing but funny moment. People love to relate to genuine moments.
Any experiences you have which relate to your ideal customer are an opportunity to connect beyond the business world. And when you do that, you become a part of the family.
Give a Special Shoutout
Maybe you’ve learned a lot of your business knowledge from famous people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffet. Perhaps you like to quote Benjamin Franklin or Maya Angelou. Most likely you have some mentors you’d like to recognize and tell why they’re important to you.
Sharing the people and things that influence you is what makes you human. No matter how successful your business is, you didn’t get there alone. People and circumstances shaped you along the way. Recognizing others for their contributions in your life – large or small – is important in staying connected and grounded.
We hope these six types of content for personal branding help you to put a fresh spin on the content you share with your audience. Our years of experience tell us you must have a combination of both to build an incredible personal brand.
BrandFace® is here to help you elevate your personal brand. Get in touch to take your business to the next level.