Why Do You Need to Build a Personal Brand and How?

Before we go into why we need to build our personal brand, you must know that every one regardless of who your are, what you do and whether you are running a business or not, already have a personal brand. Because personal brand is just what people think of you, how they perceive you, how people feel about you,  the kind of impression you give out in every one of your interactions with others, including your actions, spoken or unspoken words,
your tones, your expression, your vibes….

“If you’re not branding yourself, you can be sure others do it for you.”

— unknown

We all heard many times that people don’t just buy the goods and services, they buy the person behind the business.  We all prefer to buy from someone we know, like and trust. If you are running a business, whatever business it is, growing your personal brand helps you to build relationship with your prospective client. Your goal is to let your prospective clients know you and like you as their good friend and trust you as their go-to expert whenever they need your superpower to solve their problems.

So how do we establish and grow a personal brand?  With the presence of
social media platforms, growing and communicating your personal brand has never been easier. The world is your only limit!

Here are the 7 things to think about when starting to build and grow your personal brand:

1. Identify your niche.  What is your superpower? Who is it for? How’s it done? 
   

2. Know your whys?   Why are you doing what you do? Why you?
   

3. Show up as you, be authentic. Because everyone of us are unique, being you is your differentiating factor.  
   

4. Be intentional. Every one of your interaction with your audience creates an impression and can influence your audiences’ perception about you. That is the exact reason why having a strategic social media marketing plan is crucial.
   

5. Give and keep giving values. Personal brand is not all about self-promoting. Create and provide valuable content for your audience build credibility.
   

6. Be Social. Engagement is the key.  Mere posting but not engaging with your audience won’t help you growing your personal brand. It’s the number of engagement that counts, not the number of followers.
   

7. Last but not least, growing your personal brand just like your business, it’s a long-term game. It doesn’t happen overnight. It requires consistency and persistency.

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The Power of Colours

In the previous post about storytelling images, I’ve mentioned about communicating emotions are not restricted by facial expression. The use of colours in a photos can also trigger emotional responses.  If you are already in business, or are planning to start one, you would’ve gone through or thinking about selecting your brand colour along with your font and logo, all the aesthetic stuff. And there’s a whole lot of theory about the relationship between colour psychology and sales and conversion rate.

But here in this post, we are focusing on the use of colours in photos to capture viewer’s attention and evoke a feeling. It’s very obvious that a black and white image typically (not always) gives you somber mood more than a colourful image.  On a grey and rainy day, my mood lifts when I’m looking at a picture of the blue sky.  Different colours evoke different emotions. Using colours in a photo intentionally can help draw viewer’s attention to your subject and create an overall mood.  

One way we can use to create a visually strong  image with colour is the use of complementary colours. The complementary colours are the colours opposite of each other on the colour wheel.

Colour Wheel

Green subject against a red background for example makes a visually strong image.

Beware of mixing colours too much within an image. Less is often more when we are playing with colours . A single splash of colour is often visually stronger than a mix of too many colours.

Similarly images with a dominant colour/tone are generally more successful in evoking the emotions of the viewers, such as a simple picture of the blue sea or a sunset scene with a dominat orange/red tone.

We can incorporate colours in an image by way of one’s outfit and accessories, the background, furniture, decorations and any props you are using .  A picture with a bright and colourful background certainly make one feel more uplifted than a grey background.

Last but not least, think outside the box and incorporate unexpected colours in photos. We all have expectation that certain subject is associated with a certain colour like we expect the sea to be blue and sunflowers to be yellow. When we have something not quite we expected in front of our eyes, it immediately evoke a reaction.

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How to tell stories using images?

If you run a personal brand business, you know how important is being visible online. The very first impression your audience , especially cold audience have about you, would likely be an image or photo you post on social media platforms. A good quality image can catch people attention in a split of a second. It determines whether your message/copy is being read or not.

We all heard of the power of storytelling when it comes to creating that know, like and trust factor. But do you how you can tell stories without words?

A good story had some if not all of elements such as tension, entertainment, inspiration, emotions etc. It’s similar in telling stories visually. An image that gets the viewer thinking, sparks imagination, creates mystery and stirs emotions is an image with a story to tell. It is the emotional response when viewing the image that creates the connection between you and your viewer, making them likely to respond to your call to action.

If you want to have a go to create your own storytelling images, here are 3 things you can try:

Playing with Focus
A very common way to tell story visually is to create that mysterious factor leaving the viewer wondering what the image is all about.  It invites the viewer to bridge the gap or search for the missing piece of the puzzles with their own imagination. There are different way to achieve this. For example focus on detailed. You can move closer and fill the frame with only part not all of the subject/scene. Another way is to shift the focus to something other than the main subject. For example, blurr out the main subject to an extent where the audience can just about to figure out what the blurred out subject is but not enough to be 100% sure what’s going on. The use of reflection and shadows in photos can also add mystery and create curiosity.

Capture a Scene
Less is more?! An image with a plain/uncluttered background brings viewer's attention and focus to a subject is undoubtly striking. But equally, an image containing a scene with lot’s of things happening although busy visually, if carefully planned and framed can really speak a thousand words. The background, location or any subjects/objects/props appear in a photo tells a lot about what’s happening at that very moment when the shutter was pressed. A scene gives the viewer the context of where, when, who and how. But because it’s a still image, it still left plenty of room for viewers to fill the gap as to what happened right before and right after the image was taken.

Incorporate Emotions
Don’t be afraid to show emotions.
Emotions create empathy and connect you with your audience.
You don’t always need to show emotions with facial expressions though.   It can be conveyed by ways of body language, gestures, lightings, colours and the scene/setting of your photo. I’ll be sharing with you more about how you can use body language and colours in the coming post. Subscribed to our news and updates to get notified when our next blog post is up.