What Is A Personal Brand

What is the difference between a personal brand & branding?

A personal brand is rooted in the minds of people in the market. Personal branding is the effort to communicate and present your value to the world.

A true personal brand revolves around what other people say about you. Personal branding revolves around what you say about yourself.

We live in a time where everyone is overly focused on their branding, and not focused enough on their brand. Branding is surface level, where a brand is an emotional connection.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is famously quoted as saying, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Why should I create a personal brand for my ecommerce store?

There are millions of products, ecommerce stores, and digital marketing strategies on the market today. It seems like everyone is chasing the next big thing. But standing out online takes more than just a unique product or service. If you want to stand out online, you MUST have a personal brand .

Personal branding is one way to separate yourself from the pack. Business owners and entrepreneurs need to differentiate themselves from the competition that’s out there. Personal branding is a way of positioning yourself as an expert, authority or leader in your market segment. And if you create a personal brand, people will remember you.

How to build your personal brand on your ecommerce site?

Let's chat about how you can personalize your brand and your eCommerce store.

1. Be Transparent

Don't be afraid to show how your business works. The more you show, the more people will trust you. If you are scared to be 'open', or available, you don't trust your customer and they won't trust you. No business is perfect, and showing that you have nothing to hide is better than showing nothing.

Here are a few things you can add to your store:

• Business Address
• Telephone number
• Email address - preferably not a personal email.
• Behind the Scenes video & images
• Images and Videos of you and your staff.

2. Add Personality into your brand

A personal brand is more than just colors and a logo.

When a visitor pops onto your site, what is the first impression they get?

Neil Patel's says that "According to one academic study, 94% of the time someone’s first impression is based on design, and it only takes 50 milliseconds for that split-second decision to get made."

Don't just use free stock images and bland descriptions.

Be different and invest in paid images or a good photographer will make a huge difference.

Be human because humans are reading your descriptions, your story, and your reason for being in business.

• Use colors you like and make sure they are in the same tone of color.
• Don't be too bland on your page, add character to your page.
• Use your voice on your page - for instance, personalize your descriptions to your voice. Your descriptions have to speak to your customers.

Try to have a consistent color and voice across your website and social media so your customers will recognize you wherever you pop up.

3. Your Story is Relevant

The real power of brands, though, is in telling a story, and that's what we need to do with our own personal brand. Craft a story that tells people who you are and how you can help them.

Try to be personal and personable on your about page and please talk about your business - why you are doing it and what your passions are e.g. reading, swimming, traveling - anything that your customers will identify with you and relate to your actions and lifestyle.

• Why you are doing it and what your motivation was.
• What your passions are e.g. reading, swimming, traveling....anything that your customers will identify with you.
• Personal information is important because it is again identifying with your customer.

We want to give our customers a nice warm fuzzy feeling of knowing us.

'People buy from people they trust.'

4. Get visible to the right people

In more ways than just images and video, which is important as well.

Remember I mentioned the relating and identifying customer? A photo or even better, a video of you would be an amazing addition to your page and is probably one of the most important things you can add to your page. We are in the social visual age....it is all about images and videos!

Think of your environment - where you work and what it looks like? Videos are excellent options. Show your customers a 'behind the scene' video or images. If you are transparent about what and how you are doing, customers will trust you more.

But to be consistently in front of your audience - GOLDEN.

5. Make a list of your unique selling propositions

You work very hard to get the pat on the back of what we have accomplished. You are allowed to brag a bit. Okay well more than a bit. Shout it out there and add everything to your page. If you are in or contributing to blogs, if you are mentioned in magazines, and all the other bits and pieces like accolades, associations and groups you belong to.

Self-promotion is a very important part of owning your own business. Just see what famous people do!

How do you stand out? Be unique by helping and educating your customers when they land on your website/store. Ask yourself this question - what do you do if you shop online and there is not enough information or the website/store is very impersonal?

That's it for now, stay tuned as we ramp up for the next season!

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