Branding is important not only for products and companies but also for individuals. It doesn’t matter if you’re working for a company or you’re self-employed as a consultant, lobbyist, designer, contractor, developer or some other profession, as everyone can use content marketing to build their personal brand. Here are some quick tips.
- Determine what information is important to your target audiences (e.g. prospective clients/customers, potential employers, investors, partners, referral sources, etc.). What information would help them do their jobs? How can you solve their challenges or make their lives easier? What is something of which they need to be made aware?
- Once you figure out the topics, develop a content calendar. Strive for weekly content, but no less than twice per month. Tie your content calendar into other things going on, like a legislative day or National [whatever] Day.
- Determine the format for the content. You can create blog articles, listicles, videos, whitepapers, infographics, case studies, podcasts, presentations and other variations.
- Create the content. Sometimes it can be tough to find the time to write. If that’s the case, then dictate your thoughts into Microsoft Word or OneNote, both of which have text-to-speech features (you can speak 250 words in two min.). Videos can easily be recorded on your phone. Infographics can be made using free tools such as Piktochart and Canva. Presentations and case studies can be made in PowerPoint and then converted into a PDF. Above all else, make sure your content provides value to the intended audience and that it is not an ad in disguise.
- Publish the content, preferably on your website where you can also get SEO benefits. If you don’t have a website, you can use a channel or channels such as LinkedIn, Medium and/or YouTube to exclusively publish your content.
- Distribute your content. If you are housing the content on your website, then you can distribute it in channels such as LinkedIn Groups, newsletter, trade publications, Twitter and many others.