This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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How can you build a personal brand that is both authentic and impactful? Welcome to Side Hustle School, it's Chris Guillebeau here, your host. Yesterday we talked about building a remote team or beginning to hire people from different locations to work on your side hustle or your growing small business. Today we've got a listener in Asheville, North Carolina, who has heard that building a personal brand is crucial. Well, that's true for some businesses at least.
It's not true for every business. I think sometimes people overestimate, like every business doesn't have to be on social media. Every business doesn't have to have like an origin story or a great narrative. If you have just a great service or product, that works too, right? Nevertheless, if you're trying to build a following based on your personality, you're just based on an individual as opposed to a business product or service.
Well, then that is true. You need to build a personal brand. What does that look like? How do you do it effectively and stay authentic in the process? Let's see what we can do with this in just a few short minutes.
Always want to give you an action-packed episode, respect your time, but also leave you with something that's inspiring or motivational for your day. Let's dive into the question after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hey Chris, I'm Zara from Asheville, North Carolina. I keep hearing that building a personal brand is crucial, but I'm not sure where to start. Can you break down what building a personal brand really means and how to do it effectively?
Practical tips for using social media and other platforms would be awesome. I'd love to create something memorable and impactful. Also, how can I stay authentic while promoting myself? I hate selling. Hey Zara, this is one of those things people talk about from different approaches.
And I think that's probably the best place to start. There's lots of ways to build your own brand and communicate, build followers, recruit people, share a message and so on. And really being authentic is just kind of being honest, being yourself, but also being consistent. A personal brand really is just your reputation, how you choose to present yourself to the world, the archetype that you share. It's about your unique skills, experiences, your values.
Just think of it as a story that you want to tell about yourself. And there could be a number of different stories. It all depends again on what your goals are. Why are you trying to attract followers? Why are you trying to build this brand?
What do you hope to do with it? If you have people that are following you, say you have X number of followers, your goal is to grow the account to whatever that number is. Imagine that you have that number of followers, what then? Do you hope to develop products or services? Do you hope to do something else?
Do you just want influence and impact? Whatever it is, I think it's important to keep that goal in mind. And then just some practical steps. You want to create a content calendar, plan out your content in advance. That way you can be consistent, helps you stay organized.
In case you get busy, you still have something to post. Like you try to think week by week, maybe even month by month, if you're able to plan that far ahead, what do you want to share over the course of the next X days? Use a mix of text, images and videos. Keep your content varied and interesting and see what people respond to. It's good to just kind of double down on what people are responding to.
If you keep trying something over and over and it's not working, you really need to decide for yourself, do I want to keep making that? Do I want to keep doing it that way because I believe that's the best use of my time and that is the message that I want to share? Or is there a way you can adjust to something that is more palatable? And usually there's a way to continue to be authentic, to be your true self while also making something and sharing something that people are interested in and value. So that's what you want to look for and I don't think you need to overthink it.
There's lots of different ways to do it. Don't do things the same way everybody else does. How about that? Do something that feels well authentic to yourself and that's ultimately what it comes down to, the people who are successful doing this in their own way. Listeners, if you have a question or some feedback or your experience, sidehustleschool.com, wishing you well as always.
New episode every day. Everything is completely free. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
