Nobody said freelance
was easy. You have to have clients while you continue to enhance and improve your personal brand . Your strategy aims to have a better personal brand , which strengthens your online reputation and allows you to generate customers in the future. As an example , I’m going to give you my case. Let’s go with some tips to improve your personal brand as a freelancer.
Thus, the key ideas also serve to project oneself as a professional within a Digital Marketing agency, which is beneficial for oneself and for the agency of which the professional is part.
Improve your personal brand: strategy and tips
What is personal branding
According to the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, (RAE), a mark is the “signal that is made or put on someone or something, or to denote quality or belonging.”
Therefore, there is also a personal brand, which is recognizable and denotes quality, that is to say, that due to its characteristics and qualities it is easily differentiated from the others.
Thus, the key to improving your personal brand is to achieve this:
* Be recognizable and recognized .
* Have characteristics that differentiate it from the others .
* Quality .
What is personal branding for?
Having a personal brand is creating it in the first step, and then developing it and maintaining it over time.
If a Digital Marketing professional has a personal brand, he will be recognized in his sector as a valuable person who adds value, who with his knowledge helps others to improve and be better at their thing.
And all that accumulated experience gives the professional who has a good personal brand an online reputation with notoriety, being invited in various forums, conferences and classes to share their experience, which is considered valuable.
Strategies to improve your personal brand
Your personal brand, to grow and develop, needs to have a clear focus.
Thus, you must develop your personal brand strategy from scratch , see what you want to achieve, and how you are going to achieve it.
1- How is your personal brand today
Thus, like any brand that is studied at first, you have to prepare a Social Media Audit of your personal brand, to see how it is and what the current competition is. If other similar professionals are better or worse than you.
2- Tell your story
A professional has his story, as a brand, of how he has managed to get to where he is from the beginning.
Think about the most important milestones that have made the professional you are now, and be grateful to the people and public and private institutions that have helped you.
Your whole personal brand story ultimately determines your purpose as a brand , where you want to go or what you want to achieve.
3- Personal brand objectives
Now, it is the turn to determine what goals as a personal brand you want to achieve.
The objectives , within the personal brand strategies, can be short-term objectives (whose fulfillment takes you to the final objective) and long-term objectives, which will make you a recognized and appreciated professional in the long term, and will make you the professional of the future you want to be.
4- Your target audience
Like any brand on the Internet, you have to know what your target audience is .
A fundamental key is to monitor social networks to know the audience you want to target, in which networks they are present, how they behave, what they think, etc.
5- Presence in social networks and blog
How are you going to spread your message on Social Media?
A solid personal branding strategy is based on a regular dynamization of the professional’s blog , with monthly posts that direct the eyes from social networks or by the positioning of the articles in Google, towards other sections of the web such as the one about me or the services offered.
In addition, another strategy is to have an active presence in social networks as a personal brand, in those that are worthwhile to achieve the proposed objectives, and in which your target audience is.
Think about where that audience is, the current one, and the potential, and distribute the efforts proportionally in each of the social networks.
6- Differentiation
Thus, your post on social networks and your personal blog have to be recognizable.
If you do, as a personal brand, the same as the rest, no one will recognize you as different, you will be one more.
Therefore, try to differentiate yourself and have a differentiated and personalized personal brand.
Tips to improve your personal brand as a freelancer
1- Advertise your professional side
Every day, every week of the year, you will be giving a class, attending a congress, preparing a new post, etc. Why don’t you tell
You have to tell on social networks what you are doing as a professional day by day, according to your personal brand strategy and your editorial calendar .
Others will see that you are a dynamic person , who is always doing things in your professional field.
2- Show your most personal side
In addition to advertising what you do as a professional, it is good that from time to time you publish content that humanizes you, that shows your more human side and closer to your audience .
At the end of the day, before being a professional you are a person, and that will recognize you as a professional with certain qualities different from the rest.
3- Always do your best
Thus, in each class, in each congress, in each post, in everything, try to do your best at all times .
Professionals there are many and very good, but they will remember you for your personal brand because you caused something different in them, you made them think, you turned their personal imagination upside down.
4- Pamper your personal and professional image
Your personal brand must have a professional website, where it is explained who you are, what you do and what your professional development has been these years.
May your image and the values you reflect be the same in all the social networks in which you are present.
5- Boost your personality
For example, if my last name is “Onion,” why not make an icebreaker joke in front of your audience at the beginning of a new lecture or class?
Your personal brand reflects who you are. Sometimes the difference for a client to decide is that you have caught their attention for something, and the rest have not.
6- Network
The contacts from experience are essential to a personal brand.
Life gives you the opportunity to meet many people, but few are with whom you empathize and you will be able to generate a long-term relationship.
For example, in my case, from my origins in Zaragoza Activa , through my relationship with the great Wanatop agency and Experts Academy , to the generous relationship with my friend Miguel Florido and the School of Marketing and Web .
Now personal contacts in physical spaces are more dispersed due to the pandemic, but they will always be online as long as you have an Internet connection at home and at work.
7- Attract customers with your personal brand
Finally, you have to eat, pay bills with your work, support the family with your partner or by yourself.
To attract potential clients, you have to add value in every action you take as a professional.
Year after year, you will leave a residue that will be another brick to build your online reputation.
But keep in mind, you can’t be liked by everyone.
So be yourself, think about which brands you want to work with, and always enhance your personal brand with strategy and objectives.
Conclusion
The personal brand is created and destroyed if you do it wrong. But what it always does is that the personal brand is transformed .
Improve your personal brand in every moment of your life . Conditions change, but keep your essence as a professional.
