As a freelancer, it is vital to offer high-quality service to your customers. It can seem challenging to grow your customer base when you are just getting started as a freelancer if you don't have a good strategy in place. You may wonder how to get your business noticed and if personal branding is needed. There is no doubt that personal branding can drastically influence business presence and success, but is it necessary? Should freelancers worry about building a personal brand even if they don't want their name and face plastered everywhere? The answer is yes, and no. You can create a successful brand persona without having to make it personal. Read on to discover how you can succeed online without personal branding.
Develop a Brand Persona
Although you don't need personal branding to succeed online, you need a recognizable brand identifier that sets your business apart. Developing a brand persona can help you achieve this. You can apply personal branding principles to your brand persona. The brand persona should tell a story, appeal to your target audience, and represent your business's values and target market. A brand persona should be consistent across all platforms and social media. Having a strong understanding of your brand's unique story and persona is crucial to growing a successful business. It would be best to have a robust sense of your target audience, what they expect, and what makes them tick. Everything about your brand persona should align with what your target audience expects from you. If you are a freelance content writer specializing in SEO content marketing, your brand persona needs to demonstrate that. Knowing your brand persona and your target audience will help you avoid irrelevant traffic and help you generate meaningful leads, resulting in a better lead conversion rate.
Develop a Social Media Presence and Strategy
Whether you utilize personal branding or a brand persona, you need to ensure consistency with everything your brand is associated with; this means having a consistent presentation of job title, services provided, logo, slogan, headshots, and images. If you use headshots on your website or social media accounts, ensure that they are professional. It is a good idea to remember that everything you share publicly should reflect your business persona. You don't want to confuse your target audience, so make sure that you have a strong understanding of your business persona and what your target audience expects from your company. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram are all viable social media platforms that will help you reach your current leads and expand your reach to new leads.
It's a good idea to double-check your personal social media accounts as well, even if they are private. Your job title and description should be consistent with your professional job title. Ensure that your bio reflects your job title and describes a bit about what you do.
Become an Industry Expert
Your brand persona needs to become recognized as an expert in the industry to gain your target audience's attention and respect. Your target audience needs to recognize your brand and associate it with knowledge, quality, and trust. Blogging is a simple and effective way to build your brand's online presence while establishing your brand as a thought leader in the industry. Study other industry-leading experts in your field, identify what strategies are most effective, and try to figure out why specific methods work best for your trade. Take the time to research information about your trade, target audience, and marketing techniques. Stay current on the latest trends and developments in your industry. Keep your knowledge, certifications, and licenses up to date.
Offer opportunities for your clients to provide feedback. Provide excellent customer service and consider customer concerns and suggestions. If you are aware of a common problem plaguing your target audience, offer relevant knowledge and advice on how to resolve the issue. Maintaining accuracy is incredibly important. If your target audience views your brand as knowledgeable, experienced, and trustworthy, they will be more likely to recommend your business to others.
Share Your Knowledge
This tip goes hand-in-hand with the above suggestion on becoming an industry expert. Your target audience should view your brand as an industry expert. It is equally as important to share some of that knowledge with your audience. It is essential to give back to your audience by sharing advice, support, and helpful information. Utilize the web platforms you have and social media to acknowledge other industry experts and unique innovations. Presenting your brand persona as a thought leader and industry expert and sharing your expertise with your target audience will help grow your client base. Look for opportunities to share your knowledge with others; this could be in the form of writing guest blogs for other industry-related websites, sharing advice via podcast or webinar, or even creating relevant video blogs. It is essential to try to find opportunities to share your expertise and advice with your target audience. Communicating with and marketing to your target audience is the best way to help your target audience while growing your business.
Having a good content marketing strategy that utilizes your website, social media accounts, and blogs will generate leads. Your target audience should feel connected to your company, and they should feel like they benefit from what your business persona offers. Ensure that your website content, blogs, social media posts, email newsletters, and any other brand content is relevant to your target audience and aligns with your brand persona.
As a freelancer, you need to plan short term and long term goals. Decide if you want to utilize personal branding or not. If you decide to forgo personal branding, that is okay; make sure you have a strong understanding of your business persona to maintain your marketing approach's consistency. Having a brand persona, whether personal or not, will help customers quickly identify and connect with your business. Your business will steadily grow if you share your story with your audience, offer trustworthy advice, strategically utilize social media, and provide quality service.
