Check out 8 great strategies that successful people never told you about personal branding:

1. They Own Their Name Online

When you start becoming successful you will face people who will be jealous of your accomplishments. Some of them might write inaccurate things about you in an attempt to bring you down. Your name is your reputation and you should grab your own domain name immediately, whether you plan to use it or not. You should never risk letting someone getting your domain name and hurt your reputation! Never! You can buy domain names economically from sites like namecheap for just 10$. It’s very important to buy a .com domain name because this is the default ending almost everybody knows. If you have a very common name like Garry Jones and you can’t find a garryjones.com domain you could buy the inverted version: JonesGarry.com or you could buy a domain adding your profession in the link. For instance, if you are a personal trainer you could buy the domain Garryjonesfitness.com A great example of a successful man who owns his online name is Neil Patel.

2. They Help Other People a Lot

The best strategy you can use if you want to grow your personal brand is to genuinely help people. Those who are successful in personal branding like to help others without any selfish motives. This not only makes them feel great but their generosity returns back from multiple sources. You should try to help people even if there is nothing in there for you. Most people remember who helped them and they will stand by your side in the future if you ever need them. Sure, many people are selfish, care only about themselves and they won’t help you even if you help them. But some of them will appreciate your generosity and will eventually return it back either by helping you in something else or by talking to other people about how great you are. This creates buzz around your name which is essential for your brand’s growth.

3. They Give Importance in Social Media

Twitter is a good network in connecting people especially if you can intrigue users with your mentions. But you shouldn’t stay only in twitter. Build profiles in Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Stumbleupon and Instagram. Set up your profile in every social media and be sure to link to each other. After registering you don’t have to develop one hundred social media accounts simultaneously. Focusing on too many things is a recipe for failure. Pick 1-2 social media that you prefer depending on your niche and focus on them. Having profiles on the other social media won’t harm you at all and it will help to dominate the search results with your name. Bow you might be thinking that managing a lot of social media profiles can be a exhausting and time-consuming. That’s why you could use a tool like HootSuite that helps you schedule your tweets, facebook posts etc and check your updates in all your profiles simultaneously.

4. They Use Smiling Photos in Their Social Media Profiles

Smiling costs nothing, it’s easy to implement and creates an emotional connection with your audience.  People buy from people that they know and trust.Smiling can make you look more friendly and speed up the emotional connection between you and your fans, readers or potential customers. Have you ever thought why being around children who smile makes you smile too? Because smile is contagious and this applies even to strangers. A research from British researchers has found that smiling can be as stimulating as 2000 chocolate bars or 25.000$ in cash. That’s how powerful a simple smile is.

5. They Are Living Their Brands

Your brand is more than just what you say about yourself. It’s a symbol, a feeling, sound, tonality and much more. It’s the emotion you create to your customers. People who have built successful personal brands are the ones who totally believe in what they teach. They not only talk the talk but also walk the walk showing the example to their followers. Your fans can sense when you are inauthentic and in the first hint of fraud they will walk away.

6. They Leverage Content Marketing

Nowadays, in an age of technology and internet expansion it is essential to create and distribute your knowledge and expertise online. Internet is one of the best ways to build your brand and gain publicity. Of course, you should care about helping people (look number 2) and providing useful advice. If you do this you will be considered trustworthy and you will start building an audience. This audience will help in spreading your content and boost your brand’s growth. A good idea is to start your own blog, which you must have done already (look number 1) and update it at least 2-3 times per week. However writing content only for your blog when you are new and nobody knows you is like talking in an empty classroom. That’s why you should try guest blogging to build your reputation and gain traffic from bigger blogs.

7. They Use Guest Blogging to Build Their Brand

Jon Morrow from Boostblogtraffic has said that the only thing he would focus on to build his personal brand if he was starting from the scratch is guest blogging. Guest blogging is one of the best ways to gain exposure to new audiences that you couldn’t reach normally. It also improves your brand recognition and makes your name more trustworthy. According to Jon, it’s also a great way to gain experience as a writer and improve your writing skills.

8. They Build Relationships With Influencers

Networking is one of the most important aspects of personal branding. You should constantly try to come in contact with influencers and well-known people in your niche. However you should be careful and don’t become annoying. Influencers are extremely busy and helping someone they don’t know isn’t in their priority list. They constantly receive a ton of pitches from people like you who want exposure and advice. In my experience, if you want to build relationships with them you should:

  1. Have high quality content that offers value to people. Without that you will never get the influencers share your work.
  2. Help the influencers. If you are wondering about how you can help the influencers I have some ideas for you:

Point out broken links. You can do that with the Check My Links Google Chrome extension. Check out their blog and find something like a bug, a problem in navigation or something that needs improvement. Some weeks ago I messaged an influencer in the fitness niche and told him that his mailing list button didn’t work. Some days after, he linked to my content without even asking him. Most readers don’t really care to point out something like that because they are bored to contact the influencers. Taking the time to help and give them value can separate you from the rest who just want to take without giving.

3.Leave insightful comments on their blogs and share their best work in your social media profiles daily so you can get into their radars. 4. Link to their articles from your blog. Of course you should not overdo it and link only if they have written something relevant which is also extremely useful. 5. Interact with them on social media. For instance, if they ask a question take some time to answer and tell them your opinion.

Conclusion

You should have in mind that building your personal brand takes time. How much? It takes as long as it takes. It’s a continuous process and not an one-night-stand. Though overnight success doesn’t exist, investing to your personal branding and reputation is one of the best investments you could ever make. Do you have any other ideas that can help in building your personal brand? I would love to hear your opinions or even your personal branding stories in the comments below. Featured photo credit: Steve Jurvetson via flickr.com