With the huge influx of new solo or small group entrepreneurs into the world, the realm of branding has shifted. Where “personal branding” used to refer to the act of dressing up your personality, packaging yourself as a commodity in order to climb the corporate ladder, it now means something very, very different. Now personal branding refers to bloggers, solo photographers, freelancers, and all kinds of entrepreneurs and how they market themselves and their products or services. Furthermore, as these talented and capable people begin to brand themselves, a trend of DIY personal branding has taken over the blogosphere and social media marketing genres.

There is nothing wrong with DIY branding, particularly in the creative sector. After all, branding is something many creatives learn by trade and doing it in-house can save a lot of upfront cash for a new or small business. However, there is an unfortunate downside to the the DIY approach, especially in today’s post Pinterest world. Too often creatives, bloggers, and infopreneurs build a brand from shallow trends in their niche. Driven by the time stresses of the #sidehustle, or the ever-present comparison game, they abandon the core concept of authenticity and originality in branding and clamor to make something, anything so that they can launch their endeavors and build their businesses.

Have you ever had an email subscriber hop on your list … just to grab the freebie and peace out once you send a weekly newsletter?  

Yup, it happens to us all. Which stinks, because you’re just burning the midnight oil to build your list for your upcoming pitch or offer, and it just stays static at a plateau.  

What if I told you there was a little hack to getting those folks to stick around AND fall more in love with you and what you have to teach in the process? 

Building a brand that’s authentic and that you love could be the difference between having a successful business and one that’s not. Why? Because having a brand that’s authentic means being more in tune with who you are and where your passions lie as well as the needs of your audience. When I started my business as a branding strategist and designer 10 years ago, I wasn’t authentic at all. I did what I thought I needed to do. I offered a limitless amount of services, I talked about everything that I did, and I left “me” out of the equation. As I progressed in my career, I came to realize that I was making a huge mistake that was basically limiting my success.

So, I made a shift in the way I communicated with my audience and with myself, understanding my passions and being unapologetic about doing what I love. Here are the five steps you should follow in order to build an authentic brand that you love.

Marketing can do pretty amazing stuff for your business. But the one part of it that's not that cool is customer profiles. And that's especially true if you're starting a brand new blog from scratch.

What's a customer profile anyways?

Customer profiles are semi-fictional representations of the people you want to reach. These profiles, also known as buyer personas, include details such as:

• Who you want to reach
• What they do for a living
• How old they are
• Problems that they face daily that might impact their decision to buy things.

The day I discovered Kiwi for Gmail was the day I realized there really was actually a better way. If you are anything like me, you are constantly switching between different Gmail accounts, trying to figure out where you saved your last Google doc and just wishing that, for the love of all things bacon flavored, it would stop logging you out when you didn’t ask it to. Kiwi for Gmail is a simple application that allows people to utilize Gmail + the G-Suite right on their desktop… sweet, seriously.

YouTube can seem like a pretty scary obstacle to tackle. Not only is it video (eeek, your face is now out there for the world to see!), but how do you create a video strategy that’s manageable for you?! What is a video strategy? What you do know is, if you are going to take on a new platform you want to have a strategic plan and have a measurable ROI from your new endeavor!

I feel ya! I am a mom to 2 little ones under 3 and I’m not going to take on a new platform that will suck up more of my time (I’m looking at you Facebook), let alone a platform where I need to get showered and dolled up every week just to film videos!  

This is exactly why having a plan will not only save you time BUT will allow your videos to convert at a much higher rate. I plan out my videos ahead of time and film as many as possible in one day thanks to my video strategy. This allows me to stay consistent with my video content.

Way back in 2015, we shared our secrets on how we increased our Pin impressions by 53,285.71% in just two weeks! That is bananas. Since we get asked all the time to share our Pinterest strategy, we’d like to walk you through the tactics we used back then to make it all happen.

You might be aware that we now use Tailwind to make this process even easier, but for those of you on a shoestring budget, this can get you big results for f-r-e-e.

Today, we’re covering the secret daily formula that took us from 3% Pinterest Referral Traffic, to 32.39% without decreasing other traffic sources. We’re also giving you a nice peek at Pinterest Analytics so you can begin to see how your own account is shaping up.
 

Back when we were just using the daily Pinterest formula (so no Tailwind yet), our Pinterest profile was being seen on average 7,175 times daily. Pins that linked back directly to our website increased by 100% and we began to see average daily impressions in the tens of thousands. How can you make this happen?

Google processes over 40,000 searches every second, which is 3.5 billion searches a day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.

My guess is that you can’t go very long without asking Google for an answer. Well guess what, neither can your clients. They are searching for your business right now, but the real question is, can they find you?  

If you have ever tried to search for your business by what you do, e.g. wedding photographer or what you want to be known for, e.g. natural light wedding photographer Boston, Massachusetts, and have been disappointed as to where your business ranks on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP), then you are probably in the market to hire an SEO consultant.

SEO consultants research and analyze the trends and best practices online to develop a strategy to improve search engine rankings.

Do you dream of having your own shop? Do you have visions of customers oohing and aahing over your latest creations while sipping a cup of tea or free-trade coffee? There are several options for showcasing your product-based business, from a rented committed storefront, to fairs and festivals, to a booth in a co-op or antique mall.

As a bookshop owner who has pivoted through a few of these business models, let me share some pros and cons and lessons learned along the way.