3 Tips on How to Create a 'PER'sonal Brand

Passion for the long game. Expertise in the field. Respect for the Medium.

Great, now that you know why everyone needs their own personal brand in the digital age, I'd love to address how you can go about creating one for yourself. The acronym for this is PER:

1. Passion: Have Passion for the Long Term

Your personal brand must revolve around something you love. I cringe whenever I see those Instagram captions like 'Do it with Passion or not at all' or 'Purpose fuels Passion'. Personally, being passionate about something is just pragmatic. The overnight success and multi billion dollar app companies are rare and few in between. You need to assume whatever industry and job you want to be investing your time and talent into has to be worthwhile for your long term game so it should be something you love. Whether you're obsessed with baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie, digital strategy and sales for property developers or filming makeup tutorials on Youtube, build your personal brand around your passion around the subject.

2. Expert: Become the Boss of Your Field

What comes to mind when I say the word 'expert'? Someone with a lengthy resumé who has prestigious companies like 'Google' or 'AirBnB' under their belt? Most people don't feel like they have anything to say because they don't believe they're the most knowledgeable or most experienced in their field. However it's not about 'being' the expert, it's about 'becoming' one. My blog- in the grand scale of metrics- did not do comparatively as well as many of the fashion blogs you saw back in the hey days. My Instagram of 102k followers is tiny COMPARED to the Song of Styles with their 1-15 million followers. However through these past 8 years of dabbling in social media, content creation and influencer marketing I've learned a lot- not just on how to be 'influential' but how to take good photos, the best times to post, how to engage with an audience, how to create a niche and even how to negotiate rates with clients. I'm not the best but having experienced all the above, I understand how these social channels work more than those who simply scroll on Instagram over their lunch break.

3. Respect the Medium

Now that you've identified what you're passionate about, create content based on the platform you're on.

For me that was when I started a Wordpress blog Sam is Home which was very story-driven and consisted of pictures and text expressing my passions for fashion and flatlays. When Instagram became the monster, I stepped up my photography game and slashed my blogger narratives into short 2 sentence captions. When Instagram tried to become Snapchat, I created short, unfiltered videos for those who wanted to see more of the behind-the-scenes than just pretty pictures. For potential clients and PR agencies that wanted a traditional portfolio format to show their bosses, I created a professional website, SIH Studios, with an easy client interface to showcase my best work and brand collaborations. And now with the advent of video, I've started a Youtube channel doing long form video derived from Instagram Stories because it's been difficult to explain a lot of my work in 15 second bursts. For LinkedIn, you will see more long-form 'tutorials' and articles revolving around the industry, social media marketing and digital content creation based on all my experiences from the above as a blogger-Instagrammer-influencer-fledgling Youtuber.

To summarize: develop content that is suitable for the channel, market and consumption.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and hit me up on my Instagram if this helped you!