20 Minutes a Day to Enhance your Personal Brand
You’re a cattle farmer in the 1500s with hundreds of cows on your farm. Your cows are your single source of livelihood — providing you with gallons of milk every day to sell to the village.
But sometimes, your cows wander off to the neighboring farms to meet their cow-friends, and you can’t differentiate between your cows and your neighbor’s cows. So what do you do?
You uniquely brand them so you don’t mix up your cows for your neighbor’s.
Now, of course, you’re not a cow, but the same principles apply -
By uniquely branding yourself, you set yourself apart from the rest of the crowd. You give yourself an identity that anyone can easily recognize.
Let’s step away from cows for a minute.
Why is personal branding a necessity for you in 2022? If you’re an entrepreneur or CEO, the reasons are quite clear — your company is likely to be built on your expertise and the network that you build. Personal branding leads you there. Plain & simple.
But if you’re an employee, is personal branding important? The answer — yes, for these reasons:
- You are a representation of your org
Online, everyone is part of a bigger picture. When you see a piece of content that stands out, the first thing you do is check out the author’s profile, which is likely to mention the company they represent.
Building a strong personal brand boosts your credibility. It in turn boosts the credibility of the company you’re working at, which in turn boosts the credibility of employees working there.
Notice the loop?
- It’s all about who you know
When you advance in your career, who you know becomes increasingly important — whether for exploring new opportunities, venturing out on your own, raising capital, etc.
A strong personal brand demonstrates value & enables you to build a network of peers who are invested in your journey.
- Building authority & expertise
No matter your role, there’s always a way to illustrate that you know your sh*t. A great way to communicate this is by posting content about what you’re working on, your insights, achievements, milestones, and so on.
Today, especially in the web3 space, the concept of ‘online resumes’ is increasingly used. An online resume is basically everything you have publicly posted through your social account.
Recruiters don’t have the time or patience to sift through 100s of resumes. Instead, if you pop up on their Twitter or LinkedIn feed because of something you created, you not only put yourself in front of their eyes, but you also just won their attention.
Isn’t this much better than being 1 out of 100 random resumes?
Now that you’re convinced of the importance of personal branding, how do you get started? Alternatively, if you’ve already started but aren’t able to get your content into the flow state, how do you propel it? We’ve come up with a simple 5-step guide to kick off your brand.
1) Choose your platforms
Choose 1–2 platforms that are relevant to you & your goals.
For example, if you’re a CEO, you should be active on Twitter & LinkedIn, because that’s where investors, other CEOs, potential hires, and industry experts hang out.
If you’re a web3 designer, apart from having your portfolio on Dribbble or Behance, you should create content on Instagram & Youtube Shorts, because that’s where the beauty of your craft can truly be appreciated.
Once you choose your platforms, spend a little bit of time understanding how the platform works — content formats, limitations, optimal posting times, ideal weekly frequency, etc.
2) Deciding the content you want to create
This is the hard part, or is it? When deciding the content you want to make, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one content bucket. Mix it up & expose your personality to the world.
Once you understand who you’re writing for & what they relate to, planning content becomes a breeze.
For example, if you’re a web3 content writer, your target audience could be web3 enthusiasts, web3 builders, and perhaps fellow writers. This is what your content buckets might look like:
- Personal — about your life, your experiences, your personal growth
- Industry — insights, updates, trends, and your opinions on it
- Company — some exciting projects that you’re working on, what you’ve learned, milestones
3) Choose a scheduling tool
Surprisingly, this is one of the most important aspects of your personal brand.
The reason why most fail when trying to create content is that they attempt to create & publish content every day. That’s a heavy cognitive load that even most full-time creators can’t handle, let alone someone who is just creating content for personal branding purposes.
This is why a handy dandy scheduling tool comes in, well, handy. Plan all your content at least 2–4 weeks ahead of time and schedule it using your chosen tool.
With content, consistency is key, and scheduling tools are catalysts for consistency.
A few good tools — Buffer, Later, and Typefully (for Twitter threads)
Always remember — things look very fancy from the outside, but at the backend, it is always structured. That’s how systemic growth happens. Nothing happens in randomness.
4) Creating your content
Now’s the time to actually create your content.
If you took the time and effort to follow steps 1–3, then you only need to spend ~20 minutes a day to consistently create content.
How?
Because you already know the topics you’re going to post; and when more ideas come to you throughout the day, just make a note of it to revisit during your 20 minutes.
Soon enough, you will have a library of content ready at your disposal. All you have to do is pick & choose, and then create & schedule.
A useful tip — use the power of storytelling to break down any concept into a relatable form. The most advanced of concepts can be converted into a digestible form just by harnessing the power of storytelling.
5) Improve
Content creation is an experiment when you start. The only way you’ll perfect it is by consistently creating and analyzing.
It’s good to be data-driven when you’re growing your personal brand. See how people react to your content, and identify the posts that performed the best — this is what your followers want more of, and this is what you need to create to grow your following.
That’s it. With just 20 minutes a day, you can build your personal brand and represent your organization better, build authority in your space, network with powerful individuals, and do just about anything else you plan to achieve.
Remember, at the end of the day, you are your brand. So always have fun while building it. If you’re not enjoying creating content, then you’re not doing it right.
