A manual for systematically building a personal brand

I believe everyone is familiar with the four words "personal brand". In today's Internet-popular era, personal brand is an "amplifier of ability". A distinctive personal brand can make us stand out in the workplace and enable us to grow at double the speed. So in this era of social networks, how should we build a systematic personal brand?

“A person’s reputation is like a tree’s shadow,” “A wild goose leaves its voice behind when it passes by, a person leaves his name behind when he passes by,” and “Word of mouth speaks louder than words.” We often hear these words praising a person’s reputation, fame, and reputation. These can be regarded as the earliest forms of existence of personal brands.

In the past, due to limitations in communication methods, personal brands were spread through word of mouth. Therefore, personal brands at that time mostly existed in the form of reputation and fame, and the efficiency of communication and the scope of influence were also greatly limited.

With the development of the Internet, especially mobile Internet, the way of information dissemination has undergone tremendous changes, providing a better fertile soil for the creation of personal brands.

The emergence of social tools such as Weibo and WeChat has greatly increased our social radius. The scope of a person's influence is gradually expanding, and the creation of personal brands is becoming more and more important.

After the rise of social e-commerce, many people have begun to build their own IP (IP is the abbreviation of "Intellectual Property" in English, which originally meant intellectual property, but now it has been extended and can be understood here as "personality") in the circle of friends to facilitate the promotion of products in the circle of friends.

When I was working as a consultant, many businesses often asked me about building personal IP. I have read some related articles and tutorials on the market, most of which tell people how to build a circle of friends. Generally speaking, they are not very systematic.

Based on my experience in business model building, brand marketing , media communication and Internet operation, I have sorted out the content of personal brand building.

In the process of sorting out, I increasingly feel the importance of building a personal brand in the era of social networks. I hope this manual can help people who are determined to build a personal brand and accumulate personal intangible assets.

When analyzing every topic we encounter, we should have our own thinking models and theoretical frameworks to analyze problems. Here we use the 3M cognitive model to break it down.

The so-called 3M stands for what, why and how. Since there are three "whats" in it, it is called the 3M cognitive model. The specific application to personal brand building is: why to build a personal brand, what a personal brand is and what it includes, and how to build a personal brand.

1. Why

When you open this article and read this part, it means that you have already recognized the importance of building a personal brand. As early as 2016, I proposed the idea of ​​building corporate IP. At that time, it was only aimed at the founders of the company, which was called founder IPization. After a few years, I have a deeper understanding of brands and IP.

The slogan of WeChat public platform is: "No matter how small an individual is, he or she can have his or her own brand." After seeing this sentence, I also refreshed my previous perception that only entrepreneurs and celebrities need to build personal brands.

In summary, the benefits and necessity of building a personal brand are as follows:

1. The era of social networks is an era of attention economy, with information explosion, social diversification and time fragmentation. A personal brand can help you stand out from the crowd of information.
2. A personal brand can accumulate potential, build trust, and potentially improve your social efficiency in the fast-paced Internet era;
3. In the workplace, personal brand is your "industry influence". Within the company, your industry influence is an important bargaining chip for your promotion, salary increase, or even becoming a company partner; even if you change jobs one day, your personal brand can make you the target of competition among major headhunters in the same industry;
4. In entrepreneurship, your personal brand is your “charisma.” In the process of starting a business, your personal brand will promote corporate financing, business cooperation, product sales and talent recruitment;
5. If you are directly targeting customers, your personal brand is sales power. Whether you are a real estate agent or an insurance agent, whether you are a course consultant or a training instructor, a good personal brand is your endorsement of trust. If you build your personal brand successfully enough, you can even achieve the goal of having customers wherever you are. Your personal brand is a traffic pool and sales power.

In the past, we often said: So-and-so got a job in a public institution and has a stable job. In fact, a successful personal brand is the “stable job” and is also an effective way to increase income and cross social circles.

2. What is

Having talked so much about the benefits of building a personal brand, what is a personal brand and what does it include?

Personal brand refers to the impression and reputation that people have when they mention someone. Liang Ning, a well-known product person, said: A brand is something that consumers are willing to take pictures with. A good personal brand means that your fans are willing to take photos with you and share positive content related to you.

A personal brand is a combination of a person's external image and inner cultivation, which can be broken down into four levels: original intention, ability, display and perception.

1. Initial intention: the original intention of building a personal brand

Every company has its own mission, vision, and values. It can be said that your mission, vision, and values ​​are the original intention of building your personal brand. If a personal brand is compared to a building, then the original intention is the foundation of the building. The more positive the original intention, the more stable the personal brand will be. We often hear the founders of some companies mention their own feelings or complexes when telling their entrepreneurial stories. These fall into the category of original intentions.

2. Ability level: qualities needed to build a personal brand

"When your talent cannot support your ambition, you should calm down and learn; when your ability cannot control your goal, you should calm down and gain experience." The talents and abilities mentioned here are all basic qualities we need to possess when building a personal brand. The ability layer is the steel and cement that we use to build our personal brand. The abilities can be divided into five categories:

1. Basic abilities: including a person's perseverance, learning ability, self-control and time management ability;
2. Professional ability: that is, the business ability in your field;
3. Extraction ability: your ability to summarize knowledge about your industry;
4. Output capability: your ability to convey the extracted expertise;
5. Application ability: the ability to apply learned knowledge to life and work and solve problems. These abilities cannot be acquired overnight. We need to be patient, take one step at a time, and continue to practice.

3. Presentation layer: The image that needs to be displayed to the outside world to build a personal brand.

No matter our original intention or our ability, we will eventually show it to our target users. The image we show to our target users is the display layer of our personal brand, which includes three dimensions: nature, society and behavior. The display layer is the exterior decoration of the personal brand building.

• Natural attributes include name, gender, height, age, body shape, hairstyle, clothing, accessories, etc.;
• Social attributes include family role, occupation information, network information (nickname, avatar, signature, etc.), social honor, economic status, personal network resources, etc.;
• Behavioral attributes include speech and manners, lifestyle, work style, and way of doing things.

4. Perception layer: target users’ perception of personal brand.

When we build a personal brand, the ultimate goal is to make users aware of it. We often say that "there are a thousand Lin Daiyu for a thousand readers", so the perception layer is more about the personal feelings of the target users, and is an analysis of the personal brand from the audience's perspective.

There are now many courses teaching people how to build personal IP, that is, personal personality. In fact, personal IP is more about the user perception layer.

For example, the characters we often see include: a good daughter-in-law, a good husband, a sports expert, a person who loves charity, and a lifelong learner, etc. When a person's personality accumulates a certain amount of potential energy, he or she will possess some attributes that the character does not originally possess, which often include the personal emotions and feelings of the target user.

If your personal brand incorporates the personal emotions of your fans at the perceptual level and possesses emotional value, you can then commercialize it on a large scale.

In the process of building a personal brand, the original intention layer, ability layer, display layer and perception layer are not separated, but unified. The content displayed in the display layer should be consistent and coordinated with your original intention layer and ability layer, so that users perceive you in a positive way.

3. How to do it

Now that we know the benefits of building a personal brand and the meaning of a personal brand, how should we build our personal brand from 0 to 1?

“Be your own CEO”, I believe you must have heard this sentence, what does it mean? It doesn't mean you have to quit your job to start a business, but you need to have the mentality, thinking and ability of a CEO and run yourself like you run a company.

According to the basic framework of operating a company/platform, we divide the building of personal brand into seven modules: top-level design, product operation, event operation, user operation, content operation, channel operation and data operation.

1. Top-level design

Lei Jun of Xiaomi once said something that I strongly agree with: Don’t use tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness.

Running a company requires strategy, and so does building a personal brand. We must not only lower our heads to pull the cart but also look up to see the road. Only by formulating a top-level design can we have a clear direction on the long road of building a personal brand and will we not give up easily when encountering problems. The top-level design of a personal brand can be carried out from three aspects: precise positioning, business model and operating principles.

1) Accurate positioning

The first step in top-level design is to have an accurate positioning. The so-called positioning, as explained by marketing guru Trout, is to make the brand occupy a favorable position in the minds of consumers and make it a representative brand of a certain category.

We know that personal brand is the impression and reputation of an individual in the minds of target users. If it is highly abstracted, it becomes a label and symbol. Therefore, the positioning of personal brand is to find our own labels and symbols in a specific field, so that people who need your services will think of you when they mention this field.

We can accurately position ourselves and lock in our own unique label through three steps: knowing ourselves, clarifying our positioning, and locking in labels.

• Self-awareness

Knowing ourselves means that we need to identify our strengths and weaknesses, find our core values, know what we can do, what we want to do and the gap between the two, and play to our strengths and avoid our weaknesses.

1. Find your strengths and magnify them: Some friends may not know their strengths. We can interview our friends, colleagues and family members to see what they think of you. Or you can pay more attention to what your friends, family and colleagues usually ask you for help. In that case, this area is likely your strong point.
2. Make up for shortcomings and avoid disadvantages: Building a personal brand requires multiple skills. Some skills can be acquired through deliberate practice, so we should make up for them through deliberate practice; some skills we lack talent for should be avoided as much as possible.

• Clear positioning

With a clear understanding of ourselves, we will know what we want to do and what we can do, and we can also position ourselves.

When it comes to positioning, we borrow a geometric concept. If we want to determine the position of a point on the earth, such as Beijing (center), we will say 39°54′20″ north latitude, 116°25′29″ east longitude; in a two-dimensional four-quadrant coordinate system, we will also use (X=?, Y=?) to determine a point.

In personal brand positioning, we can also learn from the method of locating a point in geometry and find specific latitudes to position our personal brand. We can position ourselves based on three dimensions: personal strengths found through self-awareness, areas of personal interests and hobbies or the profession we are engaged in, and target users. The intersection of the three dimensions is our positioning.

• Lockout Tags

After we have clarified our positioning, we also need to convey our positioning to our target user groups, which requires us to extract keywords and then lock in personal tags. Accurate personal tags have the function of screening users, activating users and enhancing cognition.

We have two ways to lock the tag:

One is to position yourself as the center, which is a slow but more lasting approach. Here are three examples: Papi Jiang, a woman who combines beauty and talent; Luo Zhenyu, who is interesting and informative; Luo Yonghao, an idealist.

The second way is to take advantage of the situation and use well-known figures to position yourself. This method is effective quickly, but it is not sustainable and will also be overshadowed by others. For example, many Chinese cities promote themselves as the Venice of the East, the Paris of the East, and the Las Vegas of China; some actresses are labeled as the little Zhang Ziyi, the little Maggie Cheung, and so on.

In the specific operation process, we can use the form of your industry + a celebrity or your region + a celebrity to position you. For example, the talk show host Pang Bo is positioned as Wu Yifan from Jiaotong University. If you are in the Internet industry and have outstanding looks, you can say that you are the Peng Yuyan of the Internet circle; if you are humorous and witty, you can say that you are the Guo Degang of XXX, and so on.

When doing personal brand positioning, it is easy to fall into some misunderstandings. There are two common ones: one is the abuse of first, only and pioneer; the other is the excessive pursuit of segmentation.

When companies are doing product marketing positioning, there are two rules that are often mentioned: one is to be the only if not the first, and the other is that whoever creates a brand will be the boss of that brand.

Let me give you a few examples, Gangrong Steamed Cake - in the past, all cakes were baked, but Gangrong became the leader in this industry after introducing the concept of steamed cake; Hengshui Laobai Gan - originally Hengshui Laobai Gan was defined as a light-fragrance liquor, and there are many masters in the light-fragrance liquor industry, especially Fenjiu, which is already very famous, so it is difficult for Hengshui Laobai Gan to stand out.

Later, Hengshui Laobai Gan found the difference between Laobai Gan and light-fragrance liquor and applied for the Laobai Gan flavor. Hengshui Laobai Gan naturally became the representative of this flavor. Lip Movement White Classic - previous chocolate-coated cakes were all black (chocolate color). Lip Movement found a white chocolate, so its slogan became the pioneer of white chocolate cake.

Many people also imitate the rules of corporate brand positioning when doing personal brand positioning, and label themselves as the first in a certain industry, the founder of a certain school, or the founder of a certain field. If you already have a certain influence in this field and this field does exist, there is no problem in positioning yourself in this way.

But with so many people in this vast sea of ​​people, how could China, with a population of 1.4 billion, have so many fields and schools?

Therefore, do not casually label yourself as XX Master or XX pioneer. Not only will it not make users feel that you are great, but it will make people think that you are impetuous and unsteady. It is recommended that you do not play with concepts, but provide good service in a down-to-earth manner. Sincerity is the best cornerstone of a personal brand.

Even if we choose a general field, as long as you are professional enough among people who know you, it will be enough for you to benefit greatly.

We all know that Jack Ma proposed the concept of "new retail" at the Yunqi Conference in 2016. Later, the concept of new retail became popular. Lei Jun said that he had already proposed the term new retail on other occasions on the morning when Jack Ma proposed the concept of new retail. But later we generally believe that the concept of new retail was proposed by Jack Ma. What do you want to illustrate through this example?

1. There are not so many concepts, schools, and fields waiting for us to create;
2. When your personal potential energy is not enough, even if you are the first to propose a concept or create a field, you will not be able to carry on. For example, when I put forward the idea of ​​"founder IPization", there was no record of this term on the Internet. I can say that I am the earliest proponent of the concept of "founder IPization", but now basically no one knows about it, and this concept has been used by many people.

The second misunderstanding in personal brand positioning is the excessive pursuit of segmentation. When companies position their products, they must do crowd positioning and find market segments. What are market segments?

I have a simple and direct explanation, which is to add adjectives in front of the market. The more adjectives there are, the more segmented it is. Personal brand positioning also requires crowd positioning, but the more segmented the better is not the case. First, the segmented population you define must exist. Second, the segmented population you define must have a certain population base. Only a sufficient population base can support your commercial monetization.

2) Business Model

The ultimate goal of building a personal brand is to generate profits and realize commercial monetization. With accurate personal positioning, we have found the field we want to engage in. If we want to achieve commercial monetization, we also need to systematically build a personal business model.

Business model refers to the way an organization makes financial profits. When studying business models, Alexander Osterwalder and others divided the business model into nine elements and designed a business model canvas.

We can use the business model canvas to design our personal business model and build our personal brand. Some of the content in the personal business model canvas will overlap with personal positioning, but overall it is more systematic.

• Core Resources: Who am I and what do I have?

Core resources correspond to part of the personal brand capability layer and display layer, including personal interests and hobbies, professional expertise, professional skills, personal connections, appearance, voice, etc.

For example, I am a consultant and training instructor. I am familiar with various business models, have business insight and problem-solving skills, and many years of marketing communication experience. These are my core resources.

• Key business: What should I do?

Key business depends on our core resources, that is, what we do with the core resources we have, that is, what services we provide to our target users.

If you are an employee of a company, then what you describe in your job responsibilities during the interview is your key business; if you are an entrepreneur, then the company's business is your key business. For me, my key business is providing training and consulting services.

• Customer segmentation: Who can I help and who can I serve?

It is impossible for us to serve all users, so we need to find those customers who really need us.

If you are in the workplace, your users can be divided into two categories: one is the superiors and subordinates within the company and colleagues across departments; the other is the customers served by the company; if you are an entrepreneur, in addition to the company's users, the company's shareholders, investors and even the company's employees are all the objects of your service.

• Value proposition: How do I help users and what do users gain?

All business activities are value exchanges. The services we provide are valuable only when users have a sense of gain. Is it saving money, trouble or time? In order to facilitate the development of our business, we need to refine our value proposition and let users understand what our business can bring them.

Let’s take myself as an example. I provide consulting and training services to users. What is the value of this service? I have extracted four points:

1. Save time: If users explore on their own, they can also find out many operational skills, but it will take at least three months. If you seize this time window, you may be able to catch up with the current trend;
2. Avoid risks: Users will encounter various pitfalls in their own exploration process, each of which may cause huge or even irreparable losses to merchants. One of the responsibilities of consultants is to use their experience to help merchants avoid these pitfalls;
3. Solve problems: Use professional capabilities to help users solve problems encountered during actual operations;
4. Guidance direction: Help users solve directional problems;
5. Shared resources: Consultants usually focus on one industry, accumulate industry connections, and provide resources for users;
6. Accompanying growth: Many businesses lose confidence in a project after investing in it and seeing no improvement after a few months of operation, and the project is quickly discontinued. An important responsibility of a consultant is to encourage the business when its confidence is shaken and help it through this vacuum period.

• Channels: How will my services be promoted and delivered?

On the one hand, we need a platform/channel to promote and showcase our services; on the other hand, we also need a way to deliver services. We will elaborate on channel access in the channel operations section.

• Customer relations: How to deal with customers?

Is the relationship with the user a one-time or ongoing one? How long is the service cycle? We will also elaborate on customer relationships in detail in the user operations section, including how to maintain customer relationships, etc.

• Key Partner: Who can help me?

In the process of building a personal brand, in addition to our own efforts, we also need the help of some celebrities and friends to endorse us and help us.

• Income Sources: What Can I Get?

Income includes two levels: one is the material level of finance, and the other is the spiritual level of fame, honor, sense of accomplishment, etc.

Take myself as an example. As a consultant and trainer, on the one hand, I can earn consulting fees and teaching fees. On the other hand, I can also gain the respect of users and their needs, as well as a sense of accomplishment after solving problems.

• Cost structure: What will I pay?

There is no reward without effort. If you want to get what you want, are you willing to pay with time, energy or money?

Taking myself as an example, if I want to give users the most reasonable advice and polish high-quality courses, I need to spend a lot of time and energy collecting and analyzing industry information, and I need to peel off the essence of the course like peeling off silk from an onion. I also need to spend a lot of time and training fees to participate in various trainings, listen to various courses, etc. These are the costs I have to pay as a consultant.

According to the nine elements of the personal business model canvas and after combing through them one by one in combination with the personal brand positioning, we developed a personal business model, which gave us a direction in the future process of building our personal brand and effectively avoided the situation of hitting the nail on the head like a headless fly.

3) Operational principles

Building a personal brand is not something that can be achieved overnight. It is an ongoing process. During the operation, we need to adhere to six basic operating principles: authenticity, uniqueness, verticality, consistency, continuity, and iteration.

1. Authenticity: You must be the real you when you show yourself to others. Otherwise, if users find out that you are not the real you, your “personality” will collapse and all your efforts will be wasted.
2. Uniqueness: Everyone is unique, so your label should be unique so that it can be more recognizable;
3. Verticality: Focus on a vertical industry to demonstrate your expertise;
4. Consistency: The label of the positioning should be consistent with the information you display to the outside world; the positioning should be consistent within a specific time period;
5. Sustainability: Building a personal brand is a long-term process that requires continuous accumulation of time;
6. Iteration: Affected by personal cognitive upgrades and changes in the external environment, personal brands also need to be constantly iterated.

Top-level design is the "Tao" for building a personal brand. Once you master the "Tao", you will understand the rules and direction and know the overall layout. However, if you want to build a personal brand from scratch, you must also be well versed in the "art" of building a personal brand, which is the following six modules: product operation, event operation, content operation, user operation, channel operation and data operation.

2. Product Operation

As a company's CEO, after you have done the top-level design, it's time to polish the company's products. From the perspective of personal branding, you and your services are the products of your company and the only way for you to gain commercial value.

To borrow the words of Liang Ning, a famous Internet figure: Product capability is everyone's basic ability. It trains a person's ability to judge information, grasp the key points, integrate resources, package and deliver them. He needs you to have a pair of sharp eyes that can discover user pain points, an empathy that can see through human nature and perceive details, and a pair of diligent hands that continuously iterate and optimize.

We can carry out product operations of our personal brand from four dimensions: product positioning, product delivery, product matrix and product iteration.

1) Product positioning

In the top-level design module, we have already done personal positioning and locked personal labels. While polishing the product, we still need to do product positioning.

This requires us to do a comprehensive review of the four levels of personal positioning, personal business model canvas and personal image, so that our personal brand and output products will not conflict with each other. We analyze the product based on three attributes, all of which are derived from physical products: physical attributes, functional attributes, and social attributes.

• Physical properties

The physical properties of a physical product refer to the product’s color, shape, size, and material. The physical properties of a product in a personal brand are part of the personal brand presentation layer, including a person’s body shape, hairstyle, clothing, speech, and behavior in the real world, as well as their online image in the online world.

In general, it is the collection of all sensory images that you personally present to your target users in the real world and the online world.

In the top-level design, we have carried out personal positioning and locked in personal keywords. The image you present should be consistent with the keywords you have locked in. For example, if the keyword you target is self-discipline, then your body shape must be relatively standard; if the keyword you target is business consultant, then your dress must be appropriate and not sloppy.

• Functional properties

The functional attributes of a physical product refer to the function of the product, such as a cup is used to hold water, a mobile phone is used for communication, etc.

In a personal brand, the functional attributes of a product refer to what services you provide and the value of the service. We can combine this positioning with the core resources, key businesses and customer segments in the personal business model canvas to make an overall analysis. When analyzing, we need to ensure uniqueness and differentiation.

• Social attributes

In addition to physical and functional attributes, some physical products can also bring status to users. I call this attribute of the product social attributes. Taking a famous brand watch as an example, the physical properties of a watch are its color, shape, material, etc.; the functional attribute of a watch is to record time.

As a general watch, it is enough to have these two attributes, but as a brand watch, it is far from enough to have only these two attributes.

It needs to enhance the temperament and taste of the person wearing it, making the person wearing it more outstanding in front of friends. This is its social attribute. When building a personal brand, the services we provide must also have social attributes, bring identity blessings to your target users, make users feel respected, and be willing to share your services.

2) Product delivery

After completing the product positioning, we need to design our product and complete the delivery to users based on the direction determined by the product positioning.

In the personal business model canvas, we mentioned core resources, key businesses and value propositions, that is, what I have, what I do and how I do it. The product delivery process is actually the process of integrating and packaging core resources and value propositions to form key businesses. We can polish it from two dimensions: image packaging and user experience.

• Image packaging

Physical products will have well-designed packaging to make the products look more attractive; software products will also have well-designed interfaces to make them more pleasing to the user. Building a personal brand also requires image packaging so that your image matches your temperament and social status.

In psychology, there is a "primacy effect", which is what we often call the first impression. Image packaging is to leave a good first impression on your target users. Personal image packaging can be developed from three aspects: what you wear, what you say, and what you do.

What to wear : Not only the clothes and accessories you wear in the real world, but also the avatar, nickname and personal signature in the online world. For our dressing image in the real world, we can find a professional image consultant to help us design it so that it stands out and fits your identity and temperament. As for the image in the online world, I will make a brief analysis using WeChat as an example at the end.

What to say: Your words and deeds represent your three views. Whether in the real world or on the Internet platform, what we say must be consistent with our own identity. Do not make arbitrary comments on hot topics on the Internet and do not make remarks that violate social ethics. Here is a negative example. Everyone should be familiar with the experience of "Grandpa Bi", the host of CCTV's Star Boulevard. Good news doesn’t travel far, but bad news travels far and wide. We must remember this lesson.

What to do : What you do reflects whether you integrate knowledge and action. If you position yourself as a sunny boy, many of your fans may not be able to accept you smoking.

A misunderstanding needs to be corrected here. Don’t think that image packaging is just “pretending”, it is hypocrisy and deception. As long as you can keep pretending, it will be true.

• User Experience

We have already talked about the product delivery process, which is the process of packaging our professional capabilities and social resources. So how should we package it? We can work backwards from the perspective of user experience. We can analyze it from three perspectives: convenience, professionalism and timeliness.

Convenience :

The convenience for users to obtain services. When a user buys a mobile phone, he will not pay attention to the various parameters of the phone, nor will he consider the internal structure of the phone. Instead, he will focus on whether the phone is easy to use and sensitive.

In the process of building a personal brand, most of our products are intangible services, so we must make users feel convenient when choosing services.

Here are two suggestions for you. The first is process-based, which means breaking down our services into several steps and making a flowchart so that users can understand it at a glance. The second is list-based, which means making a list of the services we provide so that users can check them easily.

Professionalism :

Professionalism determines users’ judgment of product value and also affects whether users will recommend it to friends. In terms of building professionalism, in addition to receiving formal training in the industry and ensuring that our operations meet industry standards, process and checklist-based management can also add points to professionalism. In addition, here are three suggestions for you:

1. Systematization: When we provide services to users, we should come up with a systematic solution instead of fragmented and sporadic ones.
2. Terminology: Use professional terms where necessary, and explain if the user does not understand;
3. Modeling, abstracting some common cases into models, especially for friends in consulting and training industries, it can make your work more efficient.

Timeliness

Our response speed and solution cycle when users have problems. There are some problems that we may not be able to solve right away, but we must also provide timely feedback. In addition, in the process of providing services to users, we must also find the key moment of service (MOT) to make our services conform to the peak-end rule.

3) Product Matrix

Whether it is a manufacturing company or an Internet platform, their products will be combined in various forms in order to obtain the best corporate profits. Taking car companies as an example, many car brands, in addition to producing popular models, also spend a lot of money to create some concept models.

These concept car models will not be mass-produced, so the design costs are basically unrecoverable. Their role is to reflect the company's technological strength and brand image, and to create publicity. E-commerce platforms will divide the platform's products into traffic-generating items, profit items and image items.

The basic logic of operation is to use high frequency to bring low frequency, high density to bring low density, and low average customer price to bring high average customer price. When building a personal brand, we can combine our services into three packages based on the basic rules of operation, forming a product matrix of traffic, profit and image:

On the one hand, ensure the frequency of interaction with users, on the other hand, ensure one's own profits, and on the other hand, enhance one's brand image. Taking the training and consulting industry as an example, we can regard online standardized courses as traffic payments, offline training and offline one-to-many consulting as profit payments, and offline one-to-one consulting as image payments.

4) Product iteration

When releasing an Internet product, there is a rule called small steps and fast iteration, which is what we often call iterative thinking. When building our personal brand, we must also establish an iterative mindset, constantly improve ourselves, improve our products, and provide better services to users.

To achieve rapid iteration, we can start from the following points:

• Understand market trends;
• I once sorted out a cognitive model called: taking advantage of the situation, understanding the way, optimizing skills, and using powerful tools. The most important thing about taking advantage of the situation is "take advantage of the situation, don't blame others." When we iterate our products, we must grasp the current situation and provide products that are in line with the current market.

• Avoid perfectionism
• Don't pursue perfectionism, and don't always think about having a big move to make a big splash.
• Continuous self-improvement
• Building a personal brand cannot be achieved overnight or once and for all. It requires us to constantly learn, summarize, and refresh our knowledge. On the one hand, we must participate in industry training frequently, communicate with peers, and avoid becoming an information island; on the other hand, we must summarize and review based on user feedback, and update the review experience and lessons learned to the service.

There is no perfect product, nor a perfect individual. Only by constantly evolving and upgrading services without forgetting the original intention can we meet the needs of the market and meet the expectations of users.

3. Event operation

Activity operation is called the operation method of quickly achieving operational goals among various operating methods on the Internet. If I were myself, it would be a gathering of a group of people to do things. In the process of building a personal brand, after we polish the product, we need to quickly let our target users know that this process is event operation.

There are two ways to operate events: one is to take advantage of the situation and the other is to build momentum.

Taking advantage of the situation means using the potential energy of people, things and things with higher energy than you for you. The people, things and things here are celebrities, hot events and well-known brands. We need to pay attention to when leveraging the situation:

1. Be good at grasping hot spots;
2. The momentum you take on should be consistent with your positioning;
3. Abide by the moral bottom line and don’t go out of the circle. Taking advantage of the situation is to dance on the tip of the knife, remember not to cause trouble.

Building momentum is to plan activities. Regarding online event operations, I have sorted out an "Online Event Operation Manual". Interested friends can click the link to read it.

While allowing users to quickly understand us, event operations create gimmicks for publicity and provide materials for content operations on the other hand.

4. User Operation

The process of building a personal brand is a process of continuously improving personal brand awareness, reputation and loyalty. These three "degrees" are all for users.

In the personal business model canvas, customer segmentation, customer relationships and important partners all fall into the scope of user operations. According to the growth path of users in the process of building our personal brand, I divide user operations into seven sections: user positioning, user acquisition, user retention, user stratification, user interaction, user monetization and user recommendation.

1) User positioning

In the previous section, we mentioned "positioning" many times. Whether it is top-level design or product operation, we must do positioning, and the same is true when using operations. We must first do a good job of user positioning and find the group we want to influence and serve.

When it comes to user positioning, many people will think of user portraits, labeling users from the perspectives of user identity, consumption, behavior, etc. These require the help of SCRM and other systems. They are all means for Internet platforms to operate users, and we don’t need to do so complicatedly. Here are three suggestions for you:

1. Find a target object in the industry and study its user positioning as your reference when you start;
2. In-depth interviews with your first batch of users, find the value points they recognize for your service and their common points, as the direction of user positioning;
3. If you have a WeChat official account, you can refer to the data in the WeChat official account backend to portraits of your fans.

User positioning cannot be achieved in one step, it is a process of continuous optimization. We just need to remember that our service capabilities match our user positioning.

2) User acquisition

There are two constraints on user acquisition, one is the source of traffic and the other is the acquisition method. The source of traffic is the channel, which is expanded in detail in the channel operation section; the main ways for users to obtain are activities, content, and introductions, and we will expand in detail in the subsequent sections.

3) User retention

We disassemble user retention from two aspects: one is the motivation carrier for retention, and the other is the motivation for retention.

There are many carriers for users to retain. If you are doing short videos, users will be retained if they follow your Douyin account and Kuaishou account; if you write an official account article, users will be retained if they follow your official account. To retention of users is actually building a private domain traffic pool. In the current Internet platform, the WeChat ecosystem is the best carrier of private domain traffic.

The most important thing in building private domain traffic is to be online in real time. Currently, only WeChat can do this (you can read previous articles about private domain traffic).

If you have a company, then WeChat for enterprise is the best precipitation platform; if you are an individual, then WeChat personal account is the best precipitation platform. WeChat groups, official accounts and mini programs can also be used as auxiliary services to undertake traffic.

There is only one motivation for users to retain, which is value. Either we can provide quality content or we can provide some free services.

In the user operation of Internet platforms, a user growth system, honor system and membership system will also be built to promote user retention. If your business needs to deal with a large number of C-end users, you can purchase a CRM system and connect to the WeChat official account to build a user's growth system to promote user retention.

4) User Segmentation

We have all heard of the "28 Principle", which means that 80% of an organization's profits are contributed by 20% of people. The same is true for us, so we need to group users (layers) so that we can allocate our energy reasonably.

There are two models we often use in user grouping, one is the pyramid model and the other is the RFM model (introduced in previous articles). In personal brand building, we analyze the user's grouping according to whether the user you are targeting is the C-end or B-end.

If the user you are targeting is a B-end user, you can divide the user into four levels: S, A, B, and C, and each level is assigned a different manager; you can also use your use of connection management according to the Dunbar number, that is, 5 life friends, 50 close friends, and 150 friends.

If it is aimed at the C-end, we also need to use CRM management tools to manage it, which will be more efficient.

5) User interaction

If you only add the user to a friend and have no interaction, then he is just a name in your address book and has no meaning to you. Only through constant communication can you truly activate him and influence him.

Interaction with users gives you four suggestions:

1. Reply to users’ messages in a timely manner;
2. Dare to show weakness and let users help you with some small benefits;
3. Dare to belittle yourself, don’t keep holding on and act like you are arrogant;
4. To tame each other, there is a saying in "The Little Prince": "If you tame me, we will need each other."

Let users participate in the process of building your personal brand, let users witness your growth and accompany each other. Interacting with users is to cultivate the emotional value of users. The more intense you fight with users, the stronger your user stickiness will be.

6) User monetization

The purpose of building a personal brand is to achieve commercial monetization and gain profits. Here are four ways to monetize:

1. Service income: that is, the source of income in the canvas of the personal business model, the economic benefits created by the services you provide, and if you are an office worker, your salary income is the source of income;
2. Training income: Your work will attract many enthusiasts in the field and can conduct training to generate income;
3. E-commerce revenue: that is, using your traffic to sell goods;
4. Advertising income: Advertising is also a consumption for users, and it is not recommended to use advertising to monetize.

7) User recommendation

User recommendation means asking old users to help you promote and recommend. The prerequisite for this is that you have professional service, sincere attitude, and good customer relationships. If you are facing a small number of users, just execute it manually through the above methods; if you are facing a large number of C-end users in the future, you also need to use management tools such as CRM to make users' operations more efficient.

5. Content Operation

Content operations are the best channel for us to acquire users and maintain high-frequency interactions with users, and it is also the most important way for users to understand us. Here I will analyze it for you from three dimensions: the direction of content creation, the form of content creation and the source of content creation.

1) The direction of content creation

Different types of content play different roles in the process of creating personal brands. I divide the direction of content creation into 5 latitudes: breadth, height, depth, frequency and constant.

• Broadness - to cover and drainage

We often mention content marketing, which is actually to attract traffic by casting a wide net of content. When doing traffic diversion content, we need to pay attention to the following points:

1. The title of the content must be accompanied by keywords for industry or personal positioning;
2. The content can show some user's pain points and personal cases, and provide appropriately some dry content;
3. When attracting traffic, many users find us by searching for keywords. Therefore, our distribution across the entire network, especially on high-weight websites such as Sina and Sohu, will be better if the SEO effect can be combined with it;
4. Leave a contact information so that users can find you. If you are afraid of information leakage, you can leave a WeChat account or a WeChat official account, so that users can accumulate into the WeChat ecosystem, so that we can access users.

• Height - Tree authority, build an endorsement

In the past few years, companies had three tricks when doing marketing: celebrity endorsement, CCTV advertising and channel investment.

Among them, CCTV advertising is to increase popularity on the one hand, and on the other hand, it uses CCTV as endorsement. If you pay attention, you will see that many products have the words "CCTV brand" printed on the packaging, which is to endorse your own brand.

When building a personal brand, we must also endorse ourselves and establish authority. We can sort out personal experiences, personal honors, success stories, celebrity photos and important works into several documents:

On the one hand, we edit our own Baidu entries and Sogou Encyclopedia; on the other hand, we publish them in professional forums and official media to sort out our authoritative image.

When I was doing marketing consultation in 2015, my partner was already well-known in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, but I couldn’t find any information about him on the Internet. I spent half a year to make his name overwhelmed on the Internet.

When others asked him what cases he had done before, he needed to talk for a long time. Now he only said one sentence: You can first learn about my name and company.

• Depth - do penetration and show professionalism

The depth of content is mainly to provide users with professional and in-depth content and break through the user's psychological barrier. The output of in-depth content requires us to have deeper insights in our professional fields, which is a time to test our internal strength and requires us to master a set of knowledge extraction methodology.

In-depth content selection, industry methodology, case in-depth analysis and other content can be selected. I would like to give you a suggestion on the output of in-depth content: the content must be systematic so that you can demonstrate your professionalism.

• Frequency - interact and maintain stickiness

Now is an era of fragmented time and explosion of information. Users are very forgetful, so content updates must be maintained at a certain frequency in order to maintain interaction and stickiness with users. We can use the output of answering user questions, commenting on hot events, sharing of successful cases, etc. to ensure the frequency of updates.

• Constant—make precipitation and build potential energy

If you travel a hundred miles a day, the most taboo thing in building a brand is to fish for three days and run on the internet for two days. In terms of content output, we must achieve continuous output. In terms of personal brand building, I have summarized a formula:

Personal brand = Positioning memory point x update frequency x duration

The longer we output and the more content we accumulate, the stronger the potential energy accumulated by our personal brand and the stronger the brand positioning will be.

2) The form of content creation

When it comes to content operation, many people think of writing at the first time. In fact, the form of content output is far more than just text form.

In addition to articles, pictures, audio, video, and H5 are commonly used forms of content creation. Each form of creation has multiple expression methods, such as pictures can be paintings, photos, or mind maps; videos can be shot and edited, animations can be made or training speeches.

Each form of expression requires a professional skill, which requires us to conduct professional learning and training. When we output content, we need to combine our expertise with presentation form to receive the best presentation effect.

If the field you are targeting is dance, then real-life videos are your best display form; if the field you are targeting is consulting or training, then articles, speeches, and mind maps can all be used as your display form.

3) Source of content creation

As mentioned earlier, we need high-frequency continuous output, and many people may gradually not find the source of creation. Here are a few creative directions:

1. Summary of methodology;
2. Pre-release and review of event content;
3. Analysis and comment on hot events in your field;
4. The disassembly of industry cases is based on the approval of the parties/enterprise;
5. Analysis and answers to user questions, or answers to questions on Zhihu about the field you are targeting;
6. An inventory of industry events;
7. Participate in events, conferences or take photos with industry celebrities;
8. To have continuous output, you must have more than ten times the input. Only by constantly learning and iteration can you improve and have more output.

6. Channel Operation

The wine is also afraid of the deep alley. In order to achieve twice the result with half the effort, we must be good at using the power of channels to enable our content to reach our target users faster and more widely, and continuously expand our user base.

Here I formulate different channel operation strategies according to two classification standards: the first is to divide channels into their own channels, paid channels and winning channels based on whether they are paid. This is based on the classification standards for media in the Five-Minute Business School; the second classification standard is to divide them into three categories according to the size of the channel potential energy.

1) Pay or not

According to whether the channel is paid or not, we can divide the channel into its own channels, paid channels and winning channels.

• Own channels

The own channels are online, and offline places such as our stores, salons, etc.

"Double Micro, One Dou, One Headline" is a relatively large user base and the frequency of use is a position we must occupy. Weibo, Douyin and Toutiao all have media attributes, and the rapid spread can be used for dissemination. WeChat can be used to precipitate and convert users.

In addition to these popular channels, we can also find some vertical channels based on our positioning.

If you are in the workplace, you can go to LinkedIn, Maimai and Rentong; if you are entering the Internet operation, you can contribute to everyone's product manager; if you are entering the beauty and makeup, you can go to Xiaohongshu.

Of course, there are many self-media platforms such as Jianshu, Baijiahao, Penguinhao, Zhihu, etc. Many times, after we complete the creation, we can just synchronize it with one click.

• Paid channels

Whether it is Douyin, Weibo or official accounts, you can promote paid, and some media and self-media can advertise through paid, so I won’t go into it here. There will also be some offline training, exhibitions, salons and other activities. As long as it is beneficial to our personal brand, we can participate appropriately.

• Winning channels

If you output content or organize activities, media and individuals with promotional points will be happy to help you forward it for free. I have sorted out some manuscripts of the operation system before. After seeing it, the editors of some operation platforms took the initiative to contact me for authorization and forward it, so that more people could know my point of view.

2) Potential energy level

According to the high and low potential energy of the channel, we divide the channels into three categories: high, medium and low. Our operation strategy for these three types of channels is to take advantage of the trend, replace and empower.

There are some top big Vs and celebrities in the industry. We should be good at borrowing their potential energy. Sometimes one of their recommendations is above your hard work for many years.

For the upstream and downstream of the industry, channels or individuals that are related to your industry but do not conflict with you, we should be good at displacing, sharing users, and achieving mutual success; for those channels with lower potential than you, we should know how to empower, authorize what should be authorized, and support what should be promoted. Don’t be stingy with your own feathers, and they will become your loyal followers in the future.

Regarding channel operation, no matter what classification method is used, we just need to remember one policy, that is, we will go wherever the user appears. In terms of specific implementation, I have another 12-word formula: accurate positioning, full-line layout, and optimal amplification.

7. Data Operation

In the section on product operation, we said: There is no perfect product, only products that are constantly iterating. So how to find the direction of iteration? This requires us to do a good job in data operations.

Data operations in Internet operations require multiple operational processes such as data planning, data burial, data collection, data analysis and visual presentation. Our data operations here do not need to be so complicated, but only require us to have data thinking and collect user feedback.

Whether it is product operation, event operation, content operation or channel operation, it is actually inseparable from data. In terms of content operation, what style of content we post, the user's 24-hour opening rate is relatively high; what interactive method do we use to forward users more frequently, etc. All of these require us to constantly try, discover rules and make continuous improvements during the operation process.

The creation of a personal brand is a long-term and continuous output process. The longer you persist, the greater the potential of your brand; a personal brand is a lifelong thing, and I hope everyone will continue to operate and leave a brilliant intangible asset.

Recommendations for using WeChat ID: WeChat is the most commonly used social tool at present. Here I will briefly share with you the skills of using WeChat personal accounts. You can refer to the following and refer to the following to optimize workplace social tools such as Maimai and Rentong. We analyze the skills and taboos when using them from nine functional sections: nickname, avatar, WeChat ID, personal signature, cover picture, circle of friends, tags, private chat and video account.

1) Nickname

The nickname is our name in the online world. It must be consistent with your personal positioning, so that users can feel that you are also a real "person".

• The nickname can be either your real name or a flower name;
• Use a flower name to suit your positioning. The commonly used form is career + flower name or company + flower name. You can also integrate your career with a flower name. For example, there is a badminton coach nickname on Douyin: "Wang Xiaoyu"; there is also an internet celebrity hero nickname "Senior Sister Yan Yan";
• Our standard for using nicknames is to enable your users to find you as soon as possible when they want to find you. Therefore, we do not add various emojis to our nicknames, and do not let users not find you when they want to find you. Of course, if your positioning is naughty, cute and cute, you can use such a nickname;
• Many people will add an A before their nicknames in order to rank high in their address book. This is a technique provided by the micro-business training a few years ago, which is already outdated. This will make people feel that you are eager for quick success, so it is best to remove A. Of course, if your nickname is in English and happens to start with A, it is a different matter;
• Do not add mobile phone numbers in your nickname: Adding mobile phone numbers in your nickname will make people feel that you are eager for quick success and instant benefits. The more you have a status, the less you will not easily give your contact information to others.

2) Avatar

Avatars are symbols for us in the online world, and we must also make people feel your real existence:

• It is best to use avatars with real-person photos, which can be your work scene or take a professional professional outfit photo;
• Friends who have the conditions can also hand-draw or make a comic with an avatar;
• Don’t use scenery or company logos as avatars, as the scenery cannot be recognized, the company logo is too utilitarian.

3) WeChat ID

WeChat ID is also a window to show our personality. Many people are prone to ignore it. Many people’s current WeChat ID is still the default ID when registering. These will reduce points to our personal brand:

• You can use the full spelling of the WeChat ID or the English name;
• Don’t disclose privacy when the WeChat ID is used to create a personal brand. It is best not to have characters such as “xxx520” and “xxx1314” in the WeChat ID;
• The WeChat ID can be modified once a year.

4) Personalized signature

We know that each brand has its own slogan, and a personal signature is equivalent to our personal slogan:

• Personal signatures can be written as your career introduction, and you can write your career, position, honors, titles, etc.;
• Personal signatures can be written as your own motto;
• Don’t show your personality too much or have negative emotions.

5) Cover image

The cover image of the circle of friends is equivalent to our advertising window, and it is also a window to show our personal image. After users add their personal WeChat, they will usually open your circle of friends to read it. The first thing that catches their eyes is the cover image of the circle of friends.

• If your positioning is expert, the cover image can be your personal introduction, usually a professional photo + text display. The content displayed in the text includes: honors, titles, cases, works, etc.
• If you emphasize teamwork in the field, the cover image can be a team photo.

6) Friends circle

The circle of friends is like a TV. Everyone has such a TV, and it is one of the channels. The content you send is the program on the TV. We can refer to the mechanism of the TV station to design our circle of friends.

1. Planning the columns according to personal positioning: Nowadays, many TV stations broadcast different types of columns 24 hours a day, and there are certain proportions. The content of our circle of friends also needs to be planned out different columns and formulated proportions to push according to the time rules of user traffic. We can split the content of our personal life, study and work and display it in a certain proportion. Remember that the circle of friends should not be full of advertisements, as it is easy to be blocked.
2. Refer to the preparatory broadcast mechanism to make content reserves: each TV station will prepare for at least one week of preparatory broadcast materials to avoid outages, and the content in the circle of friends must also be planned in advance.
3. Create a signature column: Each channel has its own signature column, such as If You Are the One, You Are the One, I am a singer, etc. We should also create our own signature column in our circle of friends to become the memory point for users. My habit is to use [] to write the column name in it to deepen the user's impression over and over again.
4. Replay at the right time to deepen your impression: Sometimes after posting on Moments, we do not achieve the expected results. You can post this Moments again, and remember to delete the previous one after posting.
5. Continuous broadcast: Many TV station columns will be released for several seasons, and the content in our circle of friends must also be updated continuously.

7) Tags

Tags are a way for us to manage address books, and can group friends with common attributes. You can easily retrieve it when sending group messages, private chats, and setting permissions on Moments.

Tags can be tagged to users individually or imported from the group; it is best to tag them directly when adding friends and add notes. Tags can be set from the user's source channel, user's needs and other dimensions.

8) Private chat

Private chat is the interaction we mentioned earlier. If you add many friends without any interaction, then these friends are really a number.

When communicating with users, we can learn from SPIN consultant sales skills, namely: background issues, situation inquiry; difficult issues, problem inquiry; connotation issues, suggestive inquiry; reward issues, confirmation inquiry.

9) Video number

At present, the video account has been developed and registered, and it is still a window period. If you have specialties in video production, the video account is also a must-fight for. Because the video account is a content that needs systematic explanation, I will not expand it here. I will give you a special article for explanation in the future.

The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago, followed by now. Many people may not have the awareness of building personal brands a long time ago, so let’s start from now on.

Author: Houchang College

Source: Houchang College (semlianmeng)