4 pillars of community building for your ‘Personal Brand’
A personal brand is building a community around ‘one’ belief
Personal branding is the future of Digital Marketing in 2021 & beyond. Personal branding is a solution is to a lot of hurdles that a startup, organization & individuals face.
Good marketing focuses on building a stream of income, Good branding focuses on building a culture, ritual, aura, mindset & belief.
One of many reasons why building a personal brand is difficult is the fact that people are not used to thinking these days. Building a personal brand requires you to
The internet is becoming decentralized & information is becoming saturated. Everyone has information to share & consume, but there’s a huge gap between information & education.
Since information is available at our disposal, it becomes extremely rare to find people with practical experience who educate others with what they know.
Hence, a personal brand is a key to grow & make a difference. Here are four ways I think you can build a community around your personal brand.
Note: Your personal brand is built around things/skills you want to be known for. Hence a community you’d build for your personal brand will also be around the things/skills you want to be known for.
#1 Treat your follower like family
People buy from people. We of all generations have realized this. We don’t need more brands, we need people we can talk to. We need people we can connect with before buying anything, we need faces we can relate to & trust.
That begins with showing up in front of the people you want to impact, addressing their concerns & keep in touch with them every single day. The first step of treating your audience like your family is when you share all relevant details that you would share with a closest friend or family member in your life.
It can be a happy moment you had at your cousin’s wedding, it can be a life lesson you learned while on a trekking trip, or an achievement you had because of their presence.
You have to be mindful of such details & keep sharing with them as & when needed.
#2 Be confident (not fake it till you make it)
The fake it till you make attitude might work for some on very few occasions. But when it comes to establishing relationships based on trust with your audience, you can’t fake. People can clearly see through your content & sometimes through your eyes.
It’s okay if you can’t figure out ways to care for your audience, let it take its natural course. But don’t fake that you care for your audience. Your actions will speak a lot when it comes down to all this.
You will need to genuinely get involved in the process only then you will be able to passively think about what your audience needs & that’s what will give you confidence.
#3 Nurture common belief of the community
The whole point of building a personal brand is building a community of people around one common belief. For example, I am building a community of like-minded people who believe in the blogging & want to grow a career as a blogger.
Now, it becomes my responsibility to nurture this belief & provide them with everything in power to keep building the community of more and more people.
Nurturing the audience involves:
- Cultivating values of helping each other
- Engaging with the fellow community mates to build a relationship & exchanging value
- Getting together regularly to keep up the energies high. A disengaged community is the last thing you can afford to have.
- Group activities to keep practicing concepts of your niche
- Creating a growth environment where everybody grows together
#4 Train the community to serve a common ideology
I’m aware of an NGO in Banglore, India where people collectively clean dirty places across the Tech & startup Hub of India.
All the activities & announcements happen via a Facebook group, nobody knows each other personally, but every single member of the NGO work for one single ideology — Cleanliness.
Apply that same logic to your personal brand’s community. A community is formed when a group of people with the same mindset & belief come together. Your job is to find that belief & nurture the whole community with your thoughts, experience & mindset in form of content you produce.
This pillar is the most important one if you’re just starting out as a brand it is important to find a community with the same belief as yours. Before that, you will need to figure out a belief to live by.
It’s a lengthy process & it takes years to figure that out especially if you’ve never been a self-introspective person. But that’s a discussion for a different story.
Conclusion
Building a personal brand is a must if you’re marketing any product/service online. To build a personal brand, a closely knit community is a must. Use these pillars to grow a community along with your brand.
I have started a newsletter where I share my experience in condensed form straight to your inbox. In case you have any queries, you can find me on Twitter, LinkedIn & Instagram.
