The personal brand is actual point for doctors, teachers, trainers, writers, blogger, so, for everyone. What does it necessary for and what should we do with this? Let’s discuss.
What do you need your personal brand for?
Very person has their own reasons of working over their personal brands, but I can highlight 4 reasons, which are valuable to my opinion. Sure, there is a one among them, which will inspire you to reconsider your content and development strategy.
Distinguishing from competitors
Competition is a headache of Instagram users, who wants to promote their accounts. If you are not the single professional in your field and do not offer a unique product or service, you will have to generate creative ideas constantly to show the difference between you and your competitors. Why constantly? Because as soon as you create something worth, it will be copied. And, you will have to generate something new again.
But, if you have your personal brand, things come different a bit. The personal brand is yourselves. It is you popularity, recognizability, how people comprehend you and what they think about you. It is very difficult to copy, because all of us are different and cause different emotions and associations.
You may be a wedding photographer “as the next one”, but clients will chose you not only for photos (which can be get anywhere), but for work with your and to get the photos from you. In this case you distinguish from your competitors not with your product but with yourselves.
Service appreciation
All of us work to earn money. Sure, it would be perfect if your work is a favorite one. But, you cannot do your favorite work for free, thought for that you need to eat something. And, I bet most of us have the dream: to work less and to earn more. How to reach for this? Just appreciate you service or product.
How do you think, why the price for the same tee at Ali Express is 2$, and at D&G the price is 160$? It is so because D&G is a brand. If you are a brand, you may easy dare to increase your price, because clients pay not only for product or service but also for prestige.
Important notice: this doesn’t work with “fake” brands. You have to work over yourselves and your brand to make it worth. Your product or serve should be at least at the same level with competitors’. It is more favorable if they are better.
Increasing of quantity of clients
A brand supposes popularity among some people. If you are not just a professional, but also a professional with a personal brand, you will be known of more people, than your competitor is.
If you are the proud owner of strong personal brand, when a potential client will look for product or service, offered by you, you will be the first who they will found. So, you get a chance to receive more conversions than your competitors.
Moreover, personal brand consists of experience, expertise and recommendations from influencers, and many other. All this have credibility of potential clients. It is more reliable to turn to professional with recommendations from opinion leaders, than to some specialist, who is absolutely unknown.
In this way, popular personal brand can make influence to increasing of quantity of clients.
Ambitions
Sometimes people are faced with a strong wish to be in the center of attention, to be popular and to be discussed. It can be connected with professional activity, or iy can be just wish for likes and other “social strokes”.
Some popular bloggers promote their personal brands on Instagram exactly on the base of self-admiration. They are very easy to be recognized: the most quantity of photos in such accounts are selfies in different forms (face, lips, body, legs and other). There is nothing bad in this; it’s just a style and such a goal. Such bloggers can earn pretty well by pushing of cosmetics, clothes or beauty care services.
Models, whose necessary professional attributes are personal appearance and recognizability can also relate to this category.
Personal brand on Instagram: positives and negatives
Like everything, build of personal brand on Instagram has positive and negative points. They could be different for each of us, but i would like to describe the most important for the first.
Positives:
- It is cheap. When using Instagram, you need to pay for Internet only. But, if you accommodate in McDonald's with free Wi-Fi connection, or at hospitable friend, you even will be able to save money. By the way, you also don’t need to pay for website hosting.
- Independence. You may not to involve designers and SEO-specialists. You can do everything by yourselves, spending minimum money.
- Quick response. You smartphone is always in your hands. You can publish your post from your bed in the early morning, from underground and a crowd. If you have already prepared it, it will take you a few minutes to publish it.
- Cooperation. Here are all the opinion leaders. You are open to write and get acquainted with them, as well as to cooperate. No secret databases. You are also popular, and can receive interesting offers.
Negatives:
- Emotional posts. Build of personal brand supposes its thinking over. Your every post should match the public image, which you try to transfer to your audience. The smartphone is always in your hands, and emotions are to exciting sometimes. It causes indiscreet posts, and you full of sorrow but cannot fix anything.
- Internet remembers everything. Even if you deleted your “failed” post, somebody could be in time and make a screenshot to save these compromising pictures. Or, you could share your post on Instagram to Twitter or Facebook. Then, you deleted it from Instagram, but forgot to do it with other social media - here it is again. Sometimes, search results can show something deeply forgotten and not very pleasant. Some countries has a law about the right for oblivion. According to this law, some unfavorable links can be deleted from search engine. However, court proceedings about this issue cause the opposite effect - those links, which have been forgotten deeply, become very interesting to everyone. Additionally, this law doesn’t share to inner social media search.
- Limits for a text. Volume of text in Instagram post can be no longer, than 2000 symbols with Emoji. It is not so much, and usually, it is not enough to discuss a serious professional subject in details.
- Haters. Your personal website allows you to pre-moderate of comments and delete unfavorable comments before they can be seen by anyone. Instagram doesn’t has such feature (for the moment of article writing), and it is simply impossible to check all the comments if they quantity counts hundreds or thousands. That is why some expert opinions as “Stupid one!”, “Trout!” or “Kill yourself against the wall!” appear in popular accounts very regular.
Nothing can be perfect, but Internet is full of people which cannot hide their opinions. If you are going to launch jacking of your personal account, be warned that you will get more attention, but it won’t be pleasant in full scope.
What to start with when building your personal brand on Instagram
Building your personal brand is a long process. If you just getting started in this field, the main question is: what to start with? So, start with the graphic design of your account.
The profile photo is obligatory. And, it should match the public image, which you try to transfer to your audience. If you are a doctor, a photo with you in white lab coat will be good. If you are a mom-blogger or breast feeding consultant, the best choice will be a photo with kids.
I do not know why many users ignore Name line, and either write nothing there or duplicate their nickname. However, you may have almost any nickname, but you Name is a lettering at the label of your brand. In case you have a popular name, add your surname to be remembered.
In other words, you live in Russia, and your name is Esmeralda or Padme, you rather will be remembered without a surname - because your name is too rare. However, if you are Lena or Masha, you are not alone for sure. And, the main point is that your colleagues have same names. So, you have to add your surname to show what it is about. You may also use your pseudonym, but with the condition that it is totally your and is known in your professional community.
Celebrities, choosing for their brand a surname, which brought them the popularity, often use this tack. For example, Olga Buzova, getting married with Dmitry Tarasov, changed her surname to husband’s, but she remained Buzova for the wide public. It is the name for her Instagram account, clothes bramd and website. Because it was “Olga Buzova”, written at her label of the personal brand.
And, the main is published content. The graphic design can be developed once and for a long haul, but your content is updated regularly. Every post should be thought over and match your public image. At that, it relates not only to your professional or personal posts, but also to advertising.
Having a popular personal brand you have a certain influence to your audience. People trust you. Every your recommendation is proven by your “face” and reputation, that is why it is very important to check carefully all your recommendations to your followers.
