A few years ago, I had no network and zero followers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I spent the past several years consistently posting on social media, and today, I have over a million followers across several social platforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More importantly, I\u2019ve generated millions of dollars from my social audience, and I\u2019ve helped dozens of clients achieve similar results.<\/p>\n
I say this not to brag, but to prove that anyone can build a personal brand from scratch.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t need any special skills. You just need to execute the strategy I will lay out below and stay consistent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve spent years perfecting this strategy and have tested it across dozens of clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I know that you won\u2019t receive results overnight, but if you keep at it, this is the blueprint to help you build a personal brand.<\/p>\n
#1: Niche Selection<\/h2>\n
The difference between a personal brand and a typical social media account is that a personal brand establishes you as an expert on a topic rather than a generally popular person.<\/p>\n
Monetizing your following will be much easier if you\u2019re considered an expert in a particular subject. It\u2019s also easier to earn followers if you specialize in a niche, because they\u2019ll be attracted to you due to a similar interest.<\/p>\n
There are three key points to consider when selecting a niche:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Earning potential<\/li>\n
- Interest<\/li>\n
- Expertise<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Earning Potential<\/h4>\n
A higher follower count doesn\u2019t necessarily correlate with more revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For example, one of my clients built a following of about 500,000 people around the topic of emo music. The only problem is that most of these followers were high school students with no money to spend. Despite the size of this audience, it wasn\u2019t very profitable.<\/p>\n
In contrast, if you can solve a problem for a small group of people who have the desire and means to spend a lot of money to solve that problem, you can generate plenty of revenue with just a few thousand followers.<\/p>\n
To determine the earning potential of a particular niche, ask yourself two questions:<\/p>\n
- \n
- What\u2019s the problem I\u2019m solving?<\/li>\n
- Who am I solving this problem for?<\/li>\n
- How much is it worth it to this audience to solve that problem?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
My niche is personal branding, and here\u2019s how I answer each of those three questions:<\/p>\n
- \n
- What\u2019s the problem I\u2019m solving<\/strong>: Building a monetizable audience.<\/li>\n
- Who I\u2019m serving<\/strong>: High net worth entrepreneurs.<\/li>\n
- How much is it worth for high net worth entrepreneurs to build a personal brand?<\/strong> In many cases, millions of dollars because they can use their personal brand for customer acquisition for their businesses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
By answering these questions, you\u2019ll also identify your unique angle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every good niche has some competition, so the key to standing out is niching down to solve one specific problem for a specific person.<\/p>\n
My unique angle is building personal brands for high net worth entrepreneurs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By establishing myself as an expert for those particular people, I\u2019m a much more attractive option to them than a generic personal branding expert.<\/p>\n
Interest<\/h4>\n
You\u2019ll likely give up if you aren\u2019t passionate about the niche you select. Remember that this niche is a topic you\u2019ll write about almost daily, and your product or service will also be tied to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I love marketing, so it was a no-brainer for me to build a personal brand around marketing.<\/p>\n
Expertise<\/h4>\n
Expertise can help, though take this with a grain of salt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t need to have years of experience in the niche. Even if you spend three months learning about the topic, you\u2019ll probably know more than most people.<\/p>\n
Additionally, some of the best content is explaining experiments you\u2019re running, and you don\u2019t need any prior expertise to talk about what you\u2019re currently learning.<\/p>\n
#2: Create a Professional Brand Identity<\/h2>\n
A messy professional profile cheapens your credibility, and a prospect who originally resonated with your content may be skeptical if they see mismatched colors and fonts across your website and social media profiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You need to pay thousands of dollars for someone to build a beautiful branded profile, but you should do two basic things:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Use consistent fonts<\/li>\n
- Use consistent branded colors<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
For example, if you look at my LinkedIn profile, you\u2019ll see that I use the same red and black color scheme and consistent font styles:<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
The same is true for my website:<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
The good news is that this is pretty simple. You can use a free tool like Canva to create your branded LinkedIn banner:<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
I also recommend getting a high quality headshot of yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Again, you don\u2019t need to spend a lot of money designing your profile \u2013 it just needs to be professional enough that it doesn\u2019t turn away interested prospects.<\/p>\n
After designing your profile, write a bio that accomplishes two goals:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Communicate what you do<\/li>\n
- Communicate who you serve<\/li>\n
- Builds trust (ideally using proof like case studies)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Here\u2019s my bio:<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonal brand builder. 1M followers gained and $10 million made for CEO clients. Now I\u2019m helping regular people do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
One of the mistakes I often see people make is getting too fancy with their bios. If potential clients don\u2019t immediately understand what you offer or the type of content you create, you\u2019re missing out on the opportunity to earn followers and potential customers.<\/p>\n
#3: Content Creation<\/h2>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter how well you execute the other steps of the personal branding process if your content doesn\u2019t resonate with your audience.<\/p>\n
Frameworks are a simple solution to efficiently create content that has already proven to perform well on social media platforms.<\/p>\n
Frameworks also prevent writer\u2019s block. In fact, I only spend about 10 minutes per day on content creation.<\/p>\n
First, any post that I create should fulfill at least one of two objectives:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Evokes an emotional response<\/li>\n
- Obviously and immediately useful<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Some excellent frameworks that fall under the emotional response category include:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Personal failure story (a failure your clients probably experience)<\/li>\n
- Personal experience (I did X and here\u2019s what happened)<\/li>\n
- Contrarian take (Most people say X. I believe Y because of Z)<\/li>\n
- Past vs Present (Here\u2019s what it used to be like. Here\u2019s what it\u2019s like now. You\u2019ll get there)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Here are a few frameworks that fall under the obviously and immediately useful category:<\/p>\n
- \n
- A list of tools you use to do X (X being the thing your clients want)<\/li>\n
- How I achieved X results<\/li>\n
- X Tips to Achieve Y (Y being the result your clients want)<\/li>\n
- X Mistakes That Cost Me Y<\/li>\n
- X Examples of (Success)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
These frameworks can help you start creating content. In the beginning, expect that your content will be semi-generic.<\/p>\n
As you gain experience, develop your own perspectives. Your fresh viewpoints will make your content more interesting and help you gain more followers.<\/p>\n
Even if you\u2019re just starting out, injecting your personal experiences and lessons learned will help you develop that unique voice.<\/p>\n
#4: Content Publishing\/Repurposing<\/h2>\n
I used to agree with the traditional advice of choosing just one social platform and focusing entirely on it before moving to another platform.<\/p>\n
However, it takes a long time to grow on each platform. In my experience, clients have a much faster overall growth trajectory if they repurpose content from Day 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The good news is that content repurposing is quite simple.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I only spend about 10 minutes per day creating content and then a few extra minutes publishing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what my content repurposing system looks like:<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Here are some more details on the process:<\/p>\n
Step 1: Create a Tweet<\/h4>\n
I prefer to start on X as it helps me stage my content.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t focused very heavily on X, as the algorithmic changes have made it less appealing than LinkedIn.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s still a great place for me to get my thoughts down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Step 2: Repurpose Across Other Social Platforms<\/h4>\n
I use a tool called Tweetpic<\/a> to take a screenshot of my X post and then repurpose it across Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, and LinkedIn.<\/p>\n
Long form Tweets are turned into carousels on LinkedIn and Instagram.<\/p>\n
I also follow best practices for publishing on each platform. Here are just a few best practices:<\/p>\n
- \n
- LinkedIn<\/strong>: Write a catchy hook and unique copy to accompany the Tweetpic. Here\u2019s an example of a post where I wrote unique copy to go along with the Tweet:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
- \n
- Instagram: <\/strong>I treat Instagram similarly to LinkedIn \u2013\u00a0I write unique copy to go along with the Tweet and use relevant hashtags.<\/li>\n
- Pinterest<\/strong>: I don\u2019t do keyword research per se, but I intuitively guess the best keyword for my post and then include that in the title. If there\u2019s a blog post that goes along with my Pin, I\u2019ll also link to the blog post.<\/li>\n
- Threads<\/strong>: I just copy and paste my Tweets directly to threads without any modifications.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Finally, I pick one long form, educational Tweet per week and turn it into a blog post on my website.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I never turn emotion-evoking Tweets into blog posts because people searching Google are looking for educational content.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you turn long form emotional content into a blog post, it probably won\u2019t match a frequently searched keyword.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, if the blog post doesn\u2019t align with a frequently searched keyword, Google won\u2019t show it as a result to searchers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, regardless of how interesting your blog post is, it won\u2019t appear in Google search results and, therefore, won\u2019t attract new visitors and aid follower growth.<\/p>\n
We have a separate resource on SEO<\/a> (search engine optimization), so I won\u2019t get into too many details here, but the most important thing is identifying a specific keyword to target and including it in the title of your post and several times throughout the article.<\/p>\n
Here are just a few of the blog posts I\u2019ve written, and you can see that each one aligns with a keyword, like:<\/p>\n
- \n
- \u201cChatGPT prompts\u201d<\/li>\n
- \u201cContent ideas\u201d<\/li>\n
- \u201cContent creation tools\u201d<\/li>\n
- \u201cHooks for social media\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
I use a tool called Keywords Everywhere<\/a> to find keywords. It\u2019s a relatively cheap Chrome extension, and it will give you the SEO difficulty estimate for any given keyword. For example, \u201ccontent ideas for social media\u201d has a difficulty score of 67\/100, which is relatively high.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
To get an estimate of how much traffic you could earn for ranking first for that keyword, you can look at the total traffic of the top ranking posts for that keyword.<\/p>\n
For example, the search traffic for these top three posts ranges from about 500 to 2800 monthly searches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Therefore, it\u2019s a good indicator that if you can rank for this keyword, you\u2019ll likely earn somewhere between that much traffic.<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
However, some of these keywords are very difficult to rank for because the current top ranking websites have high authority. Ideally, you want to target keywords where other smaller websites are ranking.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, most high volume keywords are dominated by larger brands, so look at the long tail keywords that typically earn less search volume. Many bigger brands feel these long tail keywords aren\u2019t worth their time or effort to target and are therefore better candidates for newer websites.<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Over time, you can build your website\u2019s authority by earning backlinks, but link building is something you can work on later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For now, just focus on writing quality content. Each blog post should be about 1500 words or more, and you can look at the other top ranking posts for inspiration on content format and topics to discuss in your blog post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From Google\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s risky to show content that\u2019s very different from the top ranking content that users have already validated that they like.<\/p>\n
#5: Content Distribution<\/h2>\n
One of the biggest challenges with growing a following on social media is getting initial traction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even if you\u2019re publishing great content, it won\u2019t gain traction if you don\u2019t have any followers.<\/p>\n
Algorithms want to show engaging content to users so that users stay on the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for new creators, the easiest way for algorithms to determine content users will like is by showing more of the content that has already performed well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This cycle makes it hard for new users to gain traction.<\/p>\n
First, I recommend that you first get good at creating content. Master your copywriting skills and keep practicing, even if you aren\u2019t getting any engagement.<\/p>\n
Once you\u2019re creating quality content, getting engagement from other relevant influencers is the best way to expand your reach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are two ways you can get engagement from influencers:\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Engage with other accounts<\/strong>: If you engage with other accounts and build relationships with other social media influencers, they may engage with your content. Building relationships takes time, so I recommend choosing just one platform and a handful of creators to engage with consistently. As you\u2019re choosing creators, look at those who frequently engage with other accounts. If you notice they routinely repost and comment on other people\u2019s content, they will likely engage with you as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LinkedIn even allows you to sort by comments if you click on someone\u2019s profile, so this is a very helpful tool to see how frequently a person engages with other content and the type of content they engage with.<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
2. Pay for reach<\/strong>: I realize this isn\u2019t possible for everyone, but you can pay other larger creators on these social media platforms for shares and comments. This is probably the easiest way to grow on social media, and if you have some extra cash, it\u2019s what I would do.<\/p>\n
Once you have a few thousand followers on a particular platform, you can create a small engagement group with other people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll like, comment, and share one another\u2019s posts, which will help everyone grow together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To start a group like this, reach out to others in your industry with similar follower counts and ask if they\u2019d consider joining an engagement pod with you. Before you reach out, genuinely engage with their content so that it\u2019s not a completely cold outreach.<\/p>\n
#6: Create an Offer and Simple Funnel<\/h2>\n
The point of building a personal brand is to build a following that you can then sell something to.<\/p>\n
The mistake I made was launching a course after building a small following.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was an ebook on freelancing, and I sold a grand total of zero copies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I tried again when I had about 5,000 followers and sold exactly 14 copies.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll have to sell high volume to make substantial profit from a product, and this isn\u2019t realistic if you only have a few thousand followers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, I recommend selling a recurring service. Even if your service is only $1,000 per month, you\u2019ll earn $12,000 annually from a single sale. And $1,000 per month is quite low for most service offerings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In my experience working with clients, selling a single service for $3,000 to $5,000 per month to a handful of people is realistic \u2013 even with just a few thousand followers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So start with a service offering and later expand to products once you have a larger following.<\/p>\n
The most profitable services are premium, done-for-you services. For example, my service is a premium, done-for-you personal branding service.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re unsure what done-for-you service to offer, look at some other content creators in your niche. For example, if you\u2019re creating a personal brand around design, you\u2019ll see that Brett From Design Joy offers a done-for-you agency service:<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
You can offer the same service, and in time, you\u2019ll establish key differentiators that make your design services unique.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t try to overcomplicate it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pick a service with proven demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s working for one person, it will probably work for you too.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t even need a website to create an offer for your service. Start with a simple Typeform, Google Form, or Calendly page.<\/p>\n
Even today, mine is still just a simple Typeform:<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
As you design your page, have a screenshot with proof of your services and some client testimonials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you currently don\u2019t have client testimonials or proof, offer to do some work for free.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another benefit of doing free work is that you can then create content about your experience executing the work. I\u2019ve found that content discussing real execution is much more interesting than preaching best practices without any proof.<\/p>\n
Once you have your service offering, link to it in your bio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For example, the CTA in my LinkedIn profile is the free course (for more top of funnel visitors) and the Typeform for my LinkedIn services.<\/p>\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
#7: Stay Consistent<\/h2>\n
Once you have thousands of loyal followers in a high value niche and a service offering that works, you\u2019ll never have to worry about demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So why doesn\u2019t everyone have a personal brand?<\/p>\n
The truth?<\/p>\n
It takes time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most people aren\u2019t patient and won\u2019t put in the daily work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sure, it only takes about 10 minutes per day, but it does require consistency. Those first few months when you aren\u2019t getting any engagement can be discouraging. You\u2019ll want to give up and quit.<\/p>\n
But after you gain traction, you\u2019ll see that the work is worth it.<\/p>\n
Stay consistent, engage with other people\u2019s accounts, and continue to hone your craft as a content creator.<\/p>\n
Everyone has different hacks to stay consistent, but I\u2019ve found that it really comes down to carving out time in my daily schedule for content creation.<\/p>\n
Consider making it a habit of dedicating the first 30 minutes of your work day to creating content and engaging with others. You can also have accountability buddies to help you stay accountable.<\/p>\n
In fact, a key reason we built Copyblogger Academy<\/a> is that building a business can be lonely and difficult. Today, Copyblogger Academy is more than just a course \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s also a community where we hold accountability meetings and you can reach out to others in the group for support.<\/p>\n
- Pinterest<\/strong>: I don\u2019t do keyword research per se, but I intuitively guess the best keyword for my post and then include that in the title. If there\u2019s a blog post that goes along with my Pin, I\u2019ll also link to the blog post.<\/li>\n
- Instagram: <\/strong>I treat Instagram similarly to LinkedIn \u2013\u00a0I write unique copy to go along with the Tweet and use relevant hashtags.<\/li>\n
- LinkedIn<\/strong>: Write a catchy hook and unique copy to accompany the Tweetpic. Here\u2019s an example of a post where I wrote unique copy to go along with the Tweet:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Who I\u2019m serving<\/strong>: High net worth entrepreneurs.<\/li>\n
- What\u2019s the problem I\u2019m solving<\/strong>: Building a monetizable audience.<\/li>\n