How to Create Your Online Brand

If you have social media, you have an online brand whether you like it or not. Use it to your advantage by marketing yourself as a business professional or start your own online business with these five simple steps.

1.     Create a Business Plan

Tell me what you’re going to sell. Will you be an online marketer, content creator, or influencer? Discover what it is you’re skilled at and apply that to your business. Make sure it’s something you have fun doing as your business will require long, hard hours to start out.

Once you select your type of business, it’s time to complete a bit of market research so you understand who you’re selling to. Who’s your ideal client? Make it niche – who do you actually want to spend time working with?

You should know what your clients’ pain points are, what makes them tick, and what they love to see scrolling through social media. You should also know how long it takes them to buy and how much they want to feel connected to a brand they invest in.

2.     Choose Your Name

You really have two options here: A) Go with a personal brand by using your real name or B) Create a business name.

 A pro of going with your own name is that it really helps with social growth. Your friends, family, and acquaintances will instantly recognize and likely follow you.

If you have a name that’s difficult to remember or spell, you may want to create a unique business name instead. While you may start at square one in terms of social growth, it will benefit you in the long run if your clients don’t have to spell a last name like Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff.

3.     Build Your Offers

 There are four types of offerings you can provide online: A) Services B) Physical Products C) Courses and 4) Brand Deals.

Services are one of the easiest ways to get started with your online brand. Create a solution you’re good at creating for a common concern your audience faces. Now, you’ll need authority to sell services, so make sure to collect testimonials from friends and family who order from you. Alternatively, start off on a service-provide app like Fiverr to collect reviews.

If you’re passionate about creating products, then physical products are a perfect venue for you. If not, choose something else. Physical products require the largest up-front investment of the four categories, but are also much easier to market given their tangibility. If you’re thinking of adding merchandise just for the heck of it, hold back until your clients specifically request it of you.

Courses are the passive income every online seller strives for. You create a course, sell it, and you can make money while sipping a cocktail on the beach, right?  True, but you need a LOT of online credibility in order to sell courses. Make sure your testimonials are solid and you’ve built a client base that trusts you prior to launching a course.

If you’re a wannabe influencer looking to get their start, base your brand off of what you have available for interested brands. Research your competition for fair pricing based on your audience. Spend the majority of your time building trust with your fanbase through relatable, vulnerable content where you make awesome recommendations (preferably through an affiliate program like Heartbeat).

4.     Develop a Brand Identity

 I recommend creating a brand identity that is true to your personality. Take the self-assessments available in my free Marketing YOU Roadmap to get started.

Once you have an idea of the type of presence you want online, create a Pinterest board with designs and graphics that speak to that presence. You’ll soon notice a theme within the images you select, allowing you to pick common colors, fonts, and patterns that you can incorporate into your own brand.

Form these pieces into logos and graphics that revolve around your personal branding.

5.     Create Content

The majority of your content should be organic. In other words, your content can’t be all sales, all the time. Instead, 1/5 of your content should sell, while the rest of it should be about showing off your vulnerable, relatable side.

For me, that means pumping my feed with poetry, queer discussion, and feminism when I’m not marketing my services. These topics should all be brand adjacent, but since the brand is YOU, it can be anything you’re truly passionate about.

I recommend posting as much as you can in order to keep your audience engaged. For me, that means blogging weekly and posting on social 3x a week.

Congrats on the new business strategy! If you need a little more help getting started, check out my Start-Up Essentials bundle here.

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