Developing a successful business is all about image.  Building your brand is just smart business. After your brand takes off this will make all your marketing so much easier because your audience will already "Get You". Their first impression is based on how you present yourself as well as what others say about you. Therefore, the obvious thing to do is to give your audience the image you want them to see right at the beginning.

In this article you will learn how to build your brand by identifying what your brand means, what it stands for, and promises to your customer.

First steps in building your brand

Market yourself and your career as a brand by self-packaging your self image. What do you want your name and your self image to be associated with when people see you? What do you stand for?

1. Profile Yourself: Research your own personality and write down all your skills, strengths and unique traits. Create several brand personality traits and write a fictional bio for each one. Catherine Kaputa, www.selfbrand.com talks about creating brand persona's based on your personality traits. By defining each trait you establish a clearer picture of how to portray yourself.
2. Create a Brand Persona: Identify the personality of your Brand itself based on your own personality. Your brand could be Corporate, Decisive, High Tech & Accessible. Or it could be Fun, Enthusiastic, Insightful and High End. In other words, are you a presenting a Hershey Bar or Godiva Chocolates to the customer you want to attract? Both are good brands but both have different customers with different expectations.
3. Define your ideal customer, not just those customers who buy your product or service. Think of people you have worked with in the past that you identified was a "dream" client. This identifies a personality structure you work well with. Write up a personality profile based on those traits and address what their "needs" are, spoken and unspoken. Determine what their impression of you will be in relation to what it is you're offering.
4. Build a strong visual identity: Create a visual reference with pictures, sketches, collages, based on your brand personality traits. This way you and your marketing team can clearly visualize each persona. Think about how makes your customers feel. If you're a healer is the

Develop your brand image by creating a complete portfolio

Once you have identified your strong visual identity. Plan all the settings, the mood, the props and symbols that communicate something unique about you. Also, the clothes you'll wear when you're photographed and all the colors that showcase your unique personality. You want to look polished and professional so hire an experienced photographer to capture you properly and completely. This means they can produce a comprehensive portfolio of images you can use in many different ways from a profile photo to your website or blog. It is always a good idea to determine this ahead of time so you don't have to do more photographs later. See more on Personally Branding a Website

Final steps once your brand is captured

Now that you have loads of images and probably 10 to 20 absolute favorite portraits of yourself start by creating a map of how to tell your story online. Develop clean and dynamic graphics and a responsive website that conveys your desired brand identity. Dress your website with your images in multiple places. Put your name and face on professional and social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Always utilize your social media with the goal of sending your connections back to your website. Be consistent with your brand message on everything you put it on.

Building your brand online successfully will instantly instill your message the moment your face or your name is seen. On a final note, once you build your brand really envision yourself as that brand and dream Big.

HOW WERE YOU BRANDED? Tell us your thoughts on how you built your brand by commenting below. We always want to know more and learn from others.

Need help building your brand?

If you're currently "winging it" in your marketing, eventually, your audience will create your brand identity for you. Hopefully not from poor quality photos, copy or bad reviews.

If you would like more information on self branding email me at info@ginicistudios.com, give me a call (805) 440-3655 or sign up for a Free 30 minute marketing consultation.