After receiving a ton of requests on “How do I create a story?” and “How do I create a brand?” I decided to give a sneak peek at some of the information I teach my students in my six-week Persuade to Profit program. Branding is what makes people relate to you. And a killer online brand also helps you get a whole lot of media attention. We’re living in a time where business owners need to add a human element to their brand in order to succeed. But, there is a lot of confusion about what branding actually is. So here are my 5 steps for creating a killer online brand.
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Know Your Purpose
Step one in building a killer online brand is purpose. You need to know what the end goal of your story is. You need to know what you want people doing as a result of your story. For example, I’m pretty clear on my story. The short version is that I graduated in 2010, went six months without a job, started freelance writing, and one of the assignments was on personal finance. I took the assignment to teach myself money.
Fast-forward to now and I have a six-figure business as a personal finance expert, influencer, and business consultant. What I want people to get out of my story is that you can be dealt a really shitty hand but you can still be successful. It’s also a very aspirational story. Aspiration is very important when it comes to marketing and branding. You need to give people something to aspire to and that’s what my particular story does.
When creating your own killer online brand, your first step is to get crystal clear on what the purpose of your story is and what you want people to do as a result. How do you want them to feel? How do you want them to think? What do you want them to do?
Relate To Your Audience
Step number two in building a killer online brand is creating your story to relate to your audience. Find what your audience wants from you. Market research isn’t sexy, so many people avoid doing it, but it really helps make a difference for you, your business, and your brand. Market research IS important.
To do this, you need to set up interviews with members of your market and your audience. You want to test a hypothesis, and the first step is to create your hypothesis. You may already have your theory on what your audience is struggling with and how you can help them, so now it’s time to test it. It’s also important to continually test your theories and ask your market what they want and need. It will help give you a clear idea of how people are relating to you, how they see you, and what parts of your story that they like.
Find The Patterns
This is another important step to building a killer online brand. As you’re conducting your market research, you need to find certain patterns among all the people that you’re speaking to. What are their common struggles? What are the common themes? What were the common questions that your market had for you? What language did they use? What kinds of words are they using to express their needs? These are four questions and these are four patterns that you need to pay extra close attention to while you are doing this market research.
Create Your Persona
Step four in building your killer online brand is creating your persona as it relates to your audience. At this point you know what the purpose is, you’ve done the work to start relating to your audience, and you’ve already done the work to start finding the patterns within your audience. This is when things start coming together. So what are the parts of your story that relate to what your audience is going through? What are the parts of your story that your audience wants to aspire to? What are your triumphs, your challenges, and the pieces of your life that you can share with your audience?
Marketing
Step five in creating your killer online brand is your story and marketing. This is the step where you put everything together. You need to figure out how you can use your story to help your audience with their struggles. The most common story that a lot of people use, or the most common formula, is that of the hero’s journey. There’s some sort of a challenge, or a dark time, or some sort of an issue that the hero finds a solution to. When you start combining these things, this is when you have maximum impact.
You use this story when you’re pitching media. You use this story on your podcast. You use it if you’re doing a free challenge to build lists. You use this on blog posts. You use this in your email marketing. You use this story everywhere you can.
Once you got that, you start using that story everywhere. You want to give people something to aspire to. If you’re paying attention to the things that are going on in your market and if you’re paying attention to the things that are going on in your life, you’re going to be able to find stories that you can use in your marketing that will help you get the word out about your business.
This is an easy to follow and basic guide to creating a killer online brand. Once you have your story you can use it everywhere in your marketing.