How can you truly create a POWERFUL personal brand that stands out against the millions of people online?

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I’ve worked with three different branding experts over the years, so I want to teach you the DIY way to develop your own personal brand without needing to hire someone else.

To teach this, I’m going to walk you through the exact process my team and I used to develop our updated branding for my new course, The BSP Model.

What is a Personal Brand?

To develop a strong and powerful personal brand, it’s helpful to know what a personal brand is. Let’s go over that.

There are a few definitions out there like:

“The process of defining and promoting what you stand for as an individual.”

“The process of creating an identity for yourself as an individual or business.”

But the definition that I think explains it the best is from Wikipedia!

“Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, widen their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.”

SO GOOD! Let’s break it down a bit because that’s kind of a mouthful.

“Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual…”

Branding is more than just pretty colors and what you want to be known for.

While those are part of it, what it comes down to, is your intention of what you want to be known for in alignment with the public’s perception of you or your brand.

If you can get your personal branding to communicate exactly what you want to be perceived as then…

“… you position yourself as an authority in your industry, elevating your credibility, and differentiating yourself from the competition…”

There are multiple ways and reasons to establish a personal brand, but by aligning your intention with your public perception to establish your authority and credibility, you can…

“… ultimately advance your career, widen your circle of influence, and have a larger impact.”

How to Establish Your Personal Brand

So HOW do you do this?

I created the 5-step DIY method to help you develop your personal brand in one day! The 5 steps we’ll go over are:

• Values
• Vibes
• Visuals
• Voice
• Content

(I tried to make them all start with ‘V’ but I couldn’t think of anything else for “content”… so that’s what you get. Sorry.)

Anyway, Values, Vibes and Visuals will be part of your creation process in developing your brand.

Whereas Voice and Content will be part of the implementation process.

Let’s go over each one.

Values

Jumping straight into your Brand Values.

Brand Values are the key values that guide how you operate and make decisions as an individual or in your business.

While this could be a whole post itself, I’ll keep this short. To find those key values, pick 3-5 words that are truly the most important to you. Start by asking yourself, “How do you want to run your business? What do you want your brand to communicate?”

This was the first thing I did when finding how I wanted to position The BSP Model. I set values for it.

The four Brand Values I chose for it were:

• Professional
• Generous
• Simple
• Transparent

I felt those were the most important values for me to communicate with the new course bundle.

My course, the BSP Model, stands for “Build. Scale. Profit.” It’s a tell-all bundle of courses that go over how to build an online brand to become a full-time creator.

I want it to come across as professional, generous with information at the lowest price possible, simple to understand and transparent (hence the “tell-all”).

Now, what about you? What are your Brand Values?

If you need a nudge in the right direction, here’s a list of 200 Brand Value examples. Pick a few that stand out and speak to you!

Vibes

Let’s set the VIBES for your brand.

This was one of my favorite parts when creating the branding for ItsModernMillie. And I carried the same concept over to The BSP Model.

To start, ask yourself, “How do I want my brand to feel to other people?”

Do you want your brand to feel exciting and fun? Warm and inviting? Professional? Empowering?

If your brand was a location, what would it look like?

Would it look like a coffee shop? The beaches in Hawaii? A modern-style mansion?

Visualize it. Try to get the feels and then create a Pinterest Board with those vibes.

That’s what I did for ItsModernMillie. I wanted the vibes to be warm and fun. So, along with saving pictures to my Pinterest Board that matched my vibe, I also saved textures, color palettes and I liked or even logos from other brands to use as inspiration.

Here’s a snippet of what that board looked like:

I used the same process for my BSP course.

Do the same for your brand! It’s a step I know you’ll have fun with.

Visuals

After creating your Pinterest Board, we’re going to narrow it down even further.

These visuals you’ll work on are your:

• Color palette
• Brand Photos
• Font(s)
• Logo(s)
• etc.

Color Palette

Setting up a color palette is another one of my favorite parts of establishing my brand.

To come up with your color palette, take a screenshot of a section of your Pinterest Board that just screams your name and your vibe.

From here, you have two options.

Option 1:

Go to html-color-codes.info, upload that screenshot and use their tool to select specific colors that will become part of your color palette.

Option 2:

Go to coolors.co and select “Create palette from photo” (the camera icon).

Or you can follow Coolors’s tutorial to select your own color palette based on the “vibes” you get when seeing them. Coolors makes it pretty fun!

Brand Photos

If you are part of your personal brand, brand photos will be very important for you.

What do I mean by that?

Your image, your likeness, your identity. If you want your face to be part of your brand, as opposed to “faceless” Creators. So, if you’re wanting to be “faceless,” you can skip this part.

If not, you will need brand photos.

These photos will be a part of just about anything you create: courses, freebies, sales pages, emails, etc.

And why did we pick brand colors first? In these photos, you’ll want to include your brand colors.

For more information on how I did this, watch this part of my personal brand video here.

Fonts and Logos

I don’t personally have a lot to say on picking fonts and logos.

Yes, I used inspiration from my Pinterest Board from fonts and logos I saved, but ultimately, I got my advice from other sources like HubSpot.

So, I’ll leave the advice to them!

For more info on fonts and logos, download their free Brand Style Guide. They will help you with creating your personal brand, especially with fonts and logos more than I could in this post.

Voice

Your Voice is a combination of several things like:

• Who are you talking to?
• What do you sound like to them?
• What’s your tone?
• What words are you saying (and not saying!)
• What emojis are you using (and not using!)
• What’s the message you’re trying to send?

Answer all of these questions for yourself. And these answers might change depending on what you have to offer to your audience. But no matter what, it’s always going to reflect you and your Values.

For example, the Voice for my Instagram Course, The Modern Influencer, is inspirational, fun and girl-boss-forward using words like, “chase your dreams,” and “let’s get it, girlies!”

The Voice for my BSP Model is strong, professional and overall more serious with wording like, “establish your brand and build a sustainable presence that builds consistent income.”

Whatever Voice and tone you choose for your brand and products, use it consistently everywhere online! Use that Voice in your social bios, on your website, in your videos.

Be as clear as possible with the phrasing and emojis you use and don’t use!

When creating my courses, I made a list of phrases to never use. I never wanted to use the phrase “girl boss” or any swear words. I also stuck with emojis that fit my brands and stayed away from emojis that didn’t… you know which ones I’m talking about…👀

Content

Now it’s time to go over Content! This is the good stuff you’re creating and putting out into the world!

To come up with what Content to put out, I use Content Pillars.

These are 3-5 subtopics you rotate talking about across your social media. This strategy will establish you as an authority in your industry and especially in those subtopics.

When I was starting out, my focus was Instagram.

My Content Pillars (or subtopics) I rotated talking about was:

1. How to take photos
2. How to pose in photos
3. How to grow on Instagram
4. How to increase engagement
5. How to land brand collaborations

So, what about you? What industry are you in? Fitness, food, travel? What subtopics can you discuss and become an authority in?

Get Your Brand Started!

The faster you can come up with your Values, Vibes and Visuals, the faster you can implement them with your Voice and Content.

The quicker I did that, the quicker my audience and the public at large started to see me in a very specific way.

If you can show up consistently within your brand parameters and your audience can start perceiving you the way you want them to, that means your intention and your audience’s perception will start to come into alignment.

And that’s when your brand will really start to grow. I cannot wait to see that!

Follow your joy!