Personal Branding Tips for Freelancers

A strong identifiable personal brand can work wonders for you and your career. It allows you to take charge of your message, develop a clear vision, and attract lucrative opportunities. Since businesses are largely conducted online today, and almost 80% of potential employers seek out candidates online to gain insight into their personal and professional persona, personal branding has become more imperative than ever.

However, for those just starting out, there is a challenging road ahead. Personal branding requires a carefully planned strategy that needs to be tested and optimized over time to produce the best results. 

Here are some personal branding tips for freelancers on how they can promote their products or services for a successful professional outcome. 

5 Personal Branding Tips to Promote Your Services

1. Know who your audience is

Defining your audience is the first step to ensuring that your marketing efforts will be appropriately focused. Knowing who you are selling to, which age demographics they belong to, and what their likes, dislikes and interests are, will help you understand your customers better and drive immense career growth. 

 

In this manner, you will also save time, cut down unnecessary costs, and divert your energies and resources on an audience that values your offerings and resonates with your vision. The more knowledge you gain, the better you will be able to optimize your products or services. 

2. Work on first impressions

As potential employees or customers discover you and your services, it is important that they receive a clear and loud message regarding your brand identity and values. 

A professional headshot used across platforms, websites, or pages helps set the right tone. Apart from this, giving insight into your process, your vision, values, and personal story, is instrumental in setting up a professional front. In this manner, people can connect with you, and develop lasting relationships. 

3. Develop a social media media presence

There is an appropriate social platform for every business line. If your work requires visual demonstration, for instance, if you are a graphic designer, Instagram can be an excellent platform to showcase your portfolio. Similarly, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can help you attract worthwhile opportunities without necessarily having to run paid advertisements. 

Building associations is key to building a personal brand. Talk about your passion, experiences, and work-related interests so your audience can resonate with your thoughts, and identify you as a strong impressionable figure.

4. Build an email list

Besides being an effective marketing strategy to drive course sales, emails also help you connect with your audience and develop lasting relations. It is estimated that there will be 4.3 billion email users globally in 2023. Therefore, regardless of the size of your business, you should use email marketing to increase brand awareness and provide valuable solutions to audiences by addressing their pain points. 49% of consumers say they are happy to hear from their favourite brands via email on a weekly basis. 

If you are a beginner and have a limited budget, you can leverage the cost-effectiveness of email marketing to reach out to new customers and nurture profitable relations with existing customers. They help you keep customers informed and provide a customized experience.

5. Share your knowledge and skills

An effective strategy to build a personal brand is to assume an authoritative position in your field by sharing your knowledge and skills. To do so, you can create online courses which can help you attract referrals and inquiries from a wide range of people. 

Online courses position you as experts on a certain subject matter. Providing relevant and valuable knowledge increases your credibility since people now perceive you as a trusted source of information. This also helps in retaining customers and increasing brand loyalty. You can earn scalable revenue through an online course and drive business growth.

Online courses are an excellent self-promotion technique and can help you achieve higher engagement and customer satisfaction. 

As Elise Asanias of Thinkific puts it, “For anyone looking to succeed in this digital marketplace, you need a strong brand and online presence to stand out from the increased competition. A great way to differentiate yourself and connect with new audiences is by offering education that positions you as an expert. Many consultants and businesses have realized this and are actively creating online courses to share their expertise, build their brand, and drive revenue.”

You can increase brand visibility, generate leads, and attract new clients. A free shareable course that addresses pain points of the target audience can produce actionable results. For instance, if you are a nutritionist, you can share a few dietary tips for free so prospective clients can get insight into your paid services. Eventually, you can build an interactive community or a membership site to further your interests.

How to create a successful online course? 

Here is how you can build a successful course:

1. Your course material should include a combination of content formats from live sessions, video tutorials, video tutorials to webinars, downloadable PDFs and other learning content. This will ensure that students complete your course. 
2. Create engaging course material to increase interaction with learners using quizzes, Q&A sessions, polls, rewards, etc. 
3. Keep channels of communication open so that students can reach out to as needed. This could be through doubt resolution live sessions, an online community, through emails, or a membership site.

Successful branding is largely hinged on authenticity, originality, and consistency. Allow your vision, mission, and values to guide you in your ventures and influence your decision-making. This will ensure sustainability of your brand and help you capitalize your full potential to achieve your goals. 

With time, a strong personal brand can help gain a competitive edge and allow you to charge premium rates. You can also expand your area of expertise, and branch into newer fields with support and loyalty from your consumers. 

Abhishek Kumar: Interested in deep tech and growth strategy, Abhishek helps brands Crafting water-tight growth strategies at ContentNinja.