Personal branding can be thought of as the process in which a person creates and develops a presence in the eyes of other individuals, which can include their readers and customers, etc.
Content, especially in this “online” era in which we find ourselves, plays a big role in personal branding. In fact, it would be safe to say that content plays most of the role in personal branding rather than a big part of it.
For the purpose of personal branding, content can be used in different places and situations. It can be used on personal websites, blogs, social media, and the list goes on.
In this post, we are going to look at just how content plays a role in personal branding and why it is important for you to utilize it.
How Content Plays a Role in Personal Branding
- Content Can Identify You to Your Readers
The very first thing in personal branding is to tell your audience who you are and what you are. This is known as the identification phase. (Identification phase is not an actual thing…we’re calling the process that for now.)
Content lets you identify yourself to your audience. You can use content as a medium to describe yourself in the form of website bios and social media posts.
An excellent thing about using content for personal branding is that it can be used quite diversely. For example, in some places, you can use content briefly to identify yourself and tell people about who you are and what you do. And in other places, you can let loose with some heavy details.
For example, if we navigate to this blog post on Ahrefs, we can find a small description given by Joshua Hardwick in the author bio section:
In the most technical of senses, that is personal branding right there. Although Mr. Hardwick is writing this content on behalf of Ahrefs, he has successfully done some personal branding. Even if someone reads this one post and nothing else related to him, they’ll know who Joshua Hardwick is and what he does (or did at some point.)
In this particular example, the content was quite sparse and sparing. But if we look up their detailed bio on Ahrefs, this is what we get:
Although we centered our discussion around a particular example in this case, we think it’s clear just how content can be used for this part of personal branding.
- Content Describes Your Professionalism
Suppose a person takes to the internet and creates a blog. On that blog, they start to publish high-quality posts that contain highly valuable information and no errors. It also contains some heavily-curated visuals, and it generally looks like something a billion-dollar company would put out.
In this case, the person would get a boost in their popularity. They would look like an expert, and their content would make it clear that they know what they’re talking about.
This is how they’ll be able to build themselves as a brand. They will be able to work on their online image and reputation and create a heavy following in the process.
In the example that we gave above, we looked at an Ahrefs blog and a particular expert who happened to be in the employ of Ahrefs. In this sort of setting, some degree of personal branding still takes place in favor of the employed folk, but it’s not the same as what happens to a lone individual in the same place.
Confusing? Let’s clarify.
You’ve probably heard of Neil Patel at some point or the other.
Now, although Neil Patel is the name of the brand itself (and quite a popular one at that), the actual person Neil features himself as an individual in the blog posts. For example, in this blog post, the reference is made to Neil in the first person, which makes it look like he’s the one writing the content (which could be the case, by all means).
In this sort of scenario, the image and perception that form in the minds of the reader after reading the post is not as much associated with the website/brand as with the person. And this is what happens with Neil Patel. People know his name, and even the folk who use Ubersuggest seldom think of it to be a brand on its own. They associate it with Neil himself.
So, the crux of this whole example above is that when content is written and published on behalf of an individual rather than an organization, it can boost the popularity of the former quite a lot.
- Content Can Help You Gain Distinction in the Competition
Creating a personal brand using content is not that difficult. But, maintaining the popularity and integrity of that brand, as well as making it stand out in the competition, can be somewhat difficult.
Once again, content is something that can help you in this process.
It has to be remembered that simply creating content is not something that can help you in this regard. Everyone creates content nowadays, and doing something ubiquitous can hardly set you apart.
Instead of creating content, you have to focus on creating awesome content. Although awesome content has a wide definition, it can be summarily described as content that is valuable, unique, engaging, error-free, and visually appealing.
Let’s come back to the point at hand.
When you write content that fits in the somewhat loose criteria of awesomeness described above, you will be able to not only create a personal brand for yourself but also make it stand out from the multitudes of other similar ones.
While we’re on the topic, here are some things that you can do to create such content:
- Maintain grammatical perfection with proper proofreading and editing
- Add visuals with the help of graphic designing tools like Canva
- Doing proper theoretical and keyword research
- Optimizing content quality with paraphrasing tools such as Paraphraser
Conclusion
Although there are other things that play a role in personal branding, nowadays, the main one is played by content. In this era of the internet, where people consume content day in and day out, utilizing the latter for building a brand can be a smart and effective choice.