8 Key Steps to Successfully Build Your Personal Brand Online

Create a personal branding action plan to help you stand out in the job market and achieve your goals—whatever your career path

With the return to routine at this time of year, you may be considering new opportunities for professional growth—or even reinventing your career path. As you find yourself energized and motivated at the beginning of a new phase, now is the ideal time to unleash your creativity and explore ways to stand out in a highly competitive and ever-changing job market.

If these words resonate with you, identifying and building your personal brand will be key to helping you open doors—whatever your professional objectives. In this article, we share expert tips to successfully develop your personal branding action plan from scratch.

What is personal branding, and what are the main objectives?

A brand strategy and professional positioning specialist, Andrés Pérez Ortega is one of the most influential authors in personal branding. Having published multiple books on the subject, the Madrid-based expert defines the concept as follows:

"Personal Branding consists of leaving a concrete and memorable mark by discovering who you are, providing unique value to a specific group of people, generating trust and harmony through efficient communication."

According to Ortega, developing a personal brand involves identifying and communicating the qualities that help you stand out, remain relevant, and be visible in a homogenous, competitive, and ever-changing environment.

Personal branding action plan: 8 key steps to build your brand

Whether you are creative coming from freelance, entrepreneurial, or corporate worlds—or if you're a student looking for your first work experience—read on to discover eight important steps to successfully build your personal brand online from scratch.

1. Start with self-knowledge

The first step to creating your personal brand is to identify your personal purpose. Knowing what you like, what drives you, and what you are passionate about is essential. It will help you define the unique attributes that make you stand out from the crowd and more competitive in the job market.

In their Domestika course on Personal Branding for Artists, graphic design and art direction experts Jumping Lomo (@jumping_lomo) share a good exercise to achieve this goal: identify your skills and analyze your strengths and weaknesses. Exploring them openly and honestly will give you an objective overview of your current abilities, and allow you to find opportunities for growth.

2. Define your mission and vision

Next, it's the time to define the mission and vision of your personal brand. Although they might seem similar on the surface, these two core concepts of personal branding are different.

Communication consultant and social media strategist Núria Mañé (@nuriacomunica) explains the differences in her Domestika course, LinkedIn: Build Your Personal Brand.

- Your brand mission refers to the "now", and answers questions like: "What do I do?" and "Who do I help?”

- Your brand vision is related to your future goals (mid and long-term) and answers questions like: "Where do I want to go?", "What is my contribution to society?", and "What impact would I like to leave in this world?" This concept is more inspirational and motivational, designed to help you define the roadmap of your personal brand.

3. Identify your values

Your personal brand must be true to your values. This is very important since it is a representation of who you are. According to Núria, values are the principles, qualities, and virtues that determine our actions. Values such as creativity, honesty, perseverance, and authenticity—among many others—are what drive us and are central to our identity.

In her course, Núria recommends an interesting exercise to identify the values that represent you most meaningfully:

- Choose between seven and ten key values
- Order them from most to least important
- Highlight the three that are essential to you

These are the values you should focus on to create your personal brand.

4. Define your value proposition

At this stage, you are ready to define the market positioning of your personal brand. Núria emphasizes that positioning is crucial: it is the perception you want users to have of your brand, or the promise you make to them with your brand.

Positioning involves finding your own space that is aligned with your ethos, relevant to your potential clients, and has distinctive features which set you apart from your competitors. You need to position your personal brand in that sweet spot.

5. Identify your ideal client

Now it is time to focus on one of the fundamental elements of creating your personal brand: determining who you want to target. This is known as your ideal client or target audience, and there are several ways to establish who they are.

As Argentinian strategy and market research consultant Carolina Zakrajsek (@carozakra) explains in her Domestika course, Strategy and Research for Brands and Personal Projects, there are two types of variables to take into account when thinking about your ideal client:

- Demographic variables: age, gender, location, socioeconomic status, etc.

- Psychographic variables: these go beyond the above variables, exploring values, attitudes, and interests.

To learn more about your ideal customer, it will be necessary to carry out initial research. This does not have to be too complex; it can be qualitative and/or quantitative. When you have this information, you will be ready to define your product, service, or project and your marketing communication based on what your ideal customer is looking for.

6. Define your goals

The objectives you set out to achieve when creating your personal brand are another key part of this process. If you are not clear about your main goals, it will be very difficult to accomplish them.

In her course, Carolina suggests starting with one or two basic objectives to make the process easier—and more effective. As your personal brand evolves, so will the goals you set over time.

If you want to go one step further when thinking about your goals, follow the SMART approach: every goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

Some questions to yourself to determine your personal branding goals include:

- What career goals do I want to achieve?
- Would I like to reinvent my career in another sector?
- Do I want to get a new job or create my own brand and get clients?
- Where do I see myself professionally in the next three years?

7. Build a visual identity

Knowing how to position yourself in the digital world is equally fascinating and complex. However, creating a visual identity will help you see all the elements of your personal brand and analyze their relevance and consistency.

In this step, you will learn how to translate your personal brand to the physical world through a visual identity consistent with your values and goals.

As Brazilian brand identity design expert Amanda Louisi (@amandalouisi) explains, your visual identity is a set of visual resources that can be used to tell your story, on a website or social media, for example.

Some fundamental elements of your visual identity include the logo, colors, typography, photography, illustrations or icons, and composition. These components will help you communicate your brand in a coherent way across different platforms.

Developing mind maps and mood boards will also help you understand how to present the main features of your brand using visual resources. Learn more in Amanda's Domestika course, Visual Identity Design for Personal Brands.

8. Develop your brand identity

Brand identity should be consistent, authentic, and effective in all communications. And so messaging and tone of voice are also essential components of your brand identity. These factors will help you communicate authentically with your audience.

In her Domestika course, Copywriting: Define the Tone of Your Personal Brand, copywriting specialist Carla González (@carlagoon) explains that what brands say and how they say it, just like people, is part of the image they convey.

In her course, Carla recommends the following four steps to establish your brand voice:

a) Find your "verbal universe": identify the words that your brand identifies with most.

b) Define the tone: this is how your brand communicates with its audience, and where your personality influences language (for example, colloquial vs. formal).

c) Embellish your voice: learn how to enhance what you want to say. For example, one way to do this is by using literary devices such as puns or metaphors.

d) Build sentences: combine your brand concepts, verbal universe, and what you want to convey. This step can also be helpful in naming your brand.

Society, culture, and people evolve over time. Your personal brand should do the same to connect more authentically with your target audience!

How do you think creating your personal brand can help you? Leave your thoughts in the comments at the end of the article.

English version by@acesarato.

Further reading on personal branding

1. Make the most of your talent and build a strategic vision with help from the experts by exploring these top courses to discover and build your personal brand in 2022.

2. Do you know what ikigai is and how you can apply it to your creative career? Learn about this Japanese concept that helps you discover your purpose in life and discover steps to achieve it.

3. Learn how to define the tone of voice that's right for your brand with expert guidelines and best examples.