I believe everyone is familiar with personal brand, especially in the Internet age. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a social business card for walking the Internet.

Because an excellent personal brand can not only help you expand your influence and allow more people to actively connect with you; at the same time, it can also help you gain more trust and opportunities.

Luo Yonghao, the first generation internet celebrity, is a typical example. From being a teacher at New Oriental to founding NiuBo.com, and then switching to making Hammer smartphones, social software, and e-cigarettes, Luo Yonghao has ruined almost every industry he has tried, and has always failed, earning him the nickname "Industry Death Light."

But such a middle-aged man, no matter how many times he fails, will always be sought after by loyal fans as long as he starts again. Many boys who never watch Douyin or live broadcasts waited in front of their mobile phone screens in advance to watch Lao Luo’s live broadcast.

Without spending a penny, he has repeatedly made himself a hot topic; without doing any live broadcast, his first live broadcast show created sales of 180 million. It is no exaggeration to say that Luo’s current achievements are inseparable from his excellent personal brand.

In this era, a personal brand is equivalent to a golden rice bowl that cannot be broken or destroyed.

How to build your own personal brand? How to make yourself stand out? It has become a problem in many people’s minds today.

I recently had some new insights when helping a client sort out his personal brand, and I would like to take this opportunity to share my views with you.

01

Building a personal brand is never achieved overnight, but is a long and lifelong process. Because in the process of building a personal brand, you have to constantly improve yourself.

On the one hand, your fans are constantly growing. If there is no information gap and ability gap between you and them, your fans are very likely to leave you. On the other hand, you need to constantly consolidate your moat. The times are changing too fast and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. If you stagnate, you will only be eliminated by the times.

02

Personal branding does require "packaging".

The "packaging" here mainly refers to the improvement of personal image, temperament, and speaking skills. Because many people often make choices based on their first impression, whether they like you or hate you. If they like you, they will find more advantages in you; if they hate you, they will find that you are full of shortcomings. The inner understanding of a person only confirms and strengthens the first impression.

Therefore, when we are promoting something, especially ourselves, intrinsic quality alone is far from enough, because too many people are used to judging based on appearances, and few people actively pursue intrinsic value.

03

So, how do you build a personal brand?

If we break down the development paths of internet celebrities and stars, we can divide personal branding into four steps: personal positioning → media communication → platform traffic → product monetization.

"Personal Positioning"

The reason why many people are unable to build their own personal brand is that most of them go wrong in the first step: either they don’t know their own strengths, or they have too many directions and cannot grasp the core. Positioning is the core of a personal brand. Only by clarifying your own positioning can you focus your energy and keep moving forward.

Among the clients I have contacted in the past, some directly regard their own goals as personal positioning, and believe that personal positioning is "packaging personality". They set a role according to the goals, and then conceive the content to be disseminated based on the personality.

This view is totally wrong. Building a personal brand should be based on one's own reality, not false propaganda. Even celebrities should start from their own reality, otherwise the collapse of their image is a matter of time.

Therefore, personal positioning is by no means set with reference to goals, but requires a full understanding of oneself, knowing one's strengths and weaknesses, and then positioning oneself according to one's own strengths. After all, it is often easier to succeed by magnifying one's strengths.

Before a consultation, I usually ask clients to fill out a detailed form, one of the items being “personal achievements”. If you have a very vague idea of ​​your own positioning and are not clear about your own strengths, then by sorting out these achievements, you can discover your strengths and development direction.

When building a personal brand, you must deeply adhere to one principle: less is more.

Find your own strengths and list your most important differences. It is best to delete the others. In today's society, people like to have more and always want to show off all their characteristics and abilities. But think about it carefully: wanting to show everything is equivalent to showing nothing, and all your abilities are your strengths, which is equivalent to having no strengths.

In this age of scarce attention, being distinctive is far easier to identify than being colorful. This is vision recognition. Find your own advantage, create a label for it, and magnify it infinitely. This is your personal brand.

This world is so cruel that people can only remember the first one but not the second one.

From another perspective, the approach to personal branding is actually somewhat similar to that of product branding. The core of a product brand is to refine a selling point and tell consumers the reason to buy through a slogan; while a personal brand is to refine a personality. The more distinct and prominent the personality, the stronger the fan connection point and purchasing power.

Whether it is a product selling point or a personal character, it must be simplified. Only by focusing can an explosion be formed, concentrating on a certain point to form a strong penetrating power. Narrow your focus and your personal brand will become stronger. Personal positioning is like the foundation, and the subsequent series of behaviors such as communication are all adding bricks and tiles to it. If the foundation is unstable, no matter how good the decoration is, it will be in vain.

"Media Communications"

In the past, the most common phrase I heard from customers was "I feel like I don't have anything to share." Is it true that they have nothing to share?

Not at all. After in-depth communication with them, I found that the vast majority of clients are actually leaders in their respective fields and have achieved good industry success. The reason for this feeling is that I have never sorted out and built my own content system.

Some clients, although they have their own content system, are always hesitant, thinking that what they say is not professional and authoritative enough, and are afraid that the articles they publish will be laughed at by their peers.

There is always someone better than you.

Those who are barefoot are not afraid of those who wear shoes. You haven't succeeded yet, so why are you afraid of failure? Keep your eyes on the goal, maximize your strengths, and try boldly. Don't be afraid of failure, it is your foundation stone. All big names grow up slowly.

You don’t have to create a lot of awesome content right away. Just start working on it, and in the process slowly find your own direction and style, constantly practice trial and error, and accumulate your own “inner strength”.

Once a qualitative change occurs, it is easy to increase fame, gain reputation, and then influence more people. Pay attention to every time point and every content, be patient on a timeline and in a direction, and then you can "snowball". In addition to building your own content system, you also need to learn marketing.

If a person who is good at self-media operation enters the operation circle, it will be difficult to build a personal brand. Because everyone is doing this, even if you are very good, the gap between them will not be that big.

But if you choose other circles, it is easy to build a personal brand, such as:

① Teach new graduates who have just graduated and entered the workplace and want to work in self-media;

② Moms who want to make money through self-media.

You have the advantages of information asymmetry and ability difference in the above two types of people. Which one you choose depends on your specific situation and which group is easier to approach. The core is: vertical field × segmented group × professional value.

What is the best communication effect for personal branding? I think it should be the "word of mouth effect". It is better to let others say good things about you than to say good things about yourself.

“Platform Traffic”

Speaking of traffic generation, I believe that those who are engaged in operations will be familiar with it, especially those who are engaged in private domain traffic operations. The traffic operation of a personal brand is actually to build your own private traffic pool.

Generally speaking, there are two ways to attract traffic to a personal brand: "you find people" and "people find you".

"You find people" means that you take the initiative to search for your target users through various channels. For example, participating in paid communities, business schools, offline salons, etc.

At this stage, the best way is actually to "take advantage of the momentum", to use the momentum of big names to achieve yourself; or to use the momentum of the platform to achieve yourself. Tang Jun from Tuandai.com is a typical example. He bought Shi Yuzhu’s “sky-high lunch” at a price of 2.13 million yuan, and rose rapidly with the help of Shi Yuzhu’s potential energy, achieving “a leap from the dragon gate”.

One thing we need to pay attention to here is to learn to pay for the value of others. If you are not willing to pay for the value of the big names, even if you do have the ability, why would they support you?

"People find you" means that users actively link to you based on the content you spread or other people's word of mouth. For example, Zhihu content traffic, Bilibili video traffic, etc.

This is more reflected in the aspect of media communication, that is, the accumulation of content on major self-media platforms. Content dissemination is one aspect, and converting traffic into one's own private traffic pool is the key. Only in this way can we maintain deeper communication and interaction and prepare for the next step of monetization.

You don’t need to promote your content on all platforms. It’s best to focus on a platform that suits you first.

It is not difficult for industry leaders to share professional knowledge and accumulate fans, but what is difficult is to attract traffic. The best way is to set up bait to attract traffic and let them add you actively. For example, if you just add my WeChat, I will send you an overall planning form for your short video account.

“Product Monetization”

If the first three steps of building are defined as effort, then the last step is the harvest. The prerequisite for harvesting is that you must have corresponding products or services to sell. If not, how to design a product with strong monetization potential?

Since the vast majority of transactions are now done online, we would like to provide you with a design idea for online products - lowering the entry threshold for users.

Many people have a misunderstanding when designing. They must design the best product to provide services. However, because they invest too much time and energy in it, the product becomes very expensive.

It is obviously unscientific to ask a user who has just established contact to buy a high-priced product.

Therefore, when designing, a "step-by-step approach" should be adopted, designing the traffic-generating products, fan-raising products, and profit products in sequence. By using low-priced traffic-generating products to convert users into customers and cultivate their paying habits, they can also gradually develop their own loyal fans, who can then be converted into high-priced users.

When it comes to product monetization, the most common problem is not product design, but personal concepts. For example, several clients I met before, when I started helping them design monetization products, their first reaction was “I’m embarrassed to talk about money”. Product monetization is one part of a personal brand. Only by getting others to pay can you truly verify your ability.

At the same time, the accumulation of a personal brand requires a lot of time and energy. I believe that the ultimate realization is the goal of many people in building a personal brand. Only by realizing monetization can a positive cycle of personal brand be completely formed, allowing people to persevere.

04

The future will definitely be an era of individuals, and the role of personal brands in the era of individuals is self-evident. I have told you all this not to ask you to build a personal brand. On the contrary, I would like to advise everyone to keep their feet on the ground and not always try to achieve so-called financial freedom through self-media, especially college graduates who have just graduated.

If you have read the above content carefully, I believe you should know that "self-media ≠ personal brand". Self-media is only a part of personal brand, not all of it. I hope everyone can understand. Anyone can build a personal brand, and it is never too late to build a personal brand.

Finally, I hope that everyone can achieve this on the road to building a personal brand - improve yourself and benefit others .

Author: An Weige

Source: Anweige