This is a guest post by Jan Koch. He’s a Restart Strategist, helping people to build businesses on the side while being employed. Jan has rebranded his blog massively and shares the process he went through and his experiences in this post.
Personal branding becomes more and more important nowadays, especially for entrepreneurs. That shouldn’t be new to you. But it’s hard to put personal branding into action.
I’m happy that Navid gave me the opportunity to share the evolution of my personal brand as a case study, a process he was involved in as consultant and helped me to work on a big rebranding for 2014.
What happened was that I redefined how I see myself and more importantly how I want to be seen by my audience and potential clients. As my knowledge and business experience grew, there was no way I could continue being known for niche sites, blogging and seo. It wasn’t just what I was doing anymore.
But let me explain how I initially developed my personal brand.
How I Started With Personal Branding
I launched my first blog in March 2013 and to that time I had absolutely no idea about personal branding. I was learning about online business and entrepreneurship and I got started before I felt ready – a mantra that still is important to me.
I only knew that a blog needs visitors, so I did keyword research and found the term „great online business“ to be a good url. As I was blogging about how I was building my online business, it was a good fit and thus I started a blog.
Of course I wrote my content with my personal voice, put a picture of me in the sidebar and put a contact form on the site. But that was it with personal branding for the first two months.
As I was experimenting with niche site creation and blogging about it, I soon thought that I want to become known for niche site creation, seo optimization and blogging. What a big mistake that was. I didn’t go through the exercises I’ll share with you later, which allowed me to find the real purpose of what I’m doing Internet business. In the beginning I just wanted to earn passive income, as I was still employed and had limited time to work on my business.
Soon after the blog launch I recognized that I should have social media profiles. So I created profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, having no idea how to use them correctly.
Being a little bit of an introvert, I engaged with only a few followers on social media. After 9 months I had less than 100 Facebook likes and less than 200 Twitter fans. The reason was that I didn’t knew who my audience was and that I was hesitant to spend time on social media.
Over the last 9 months I was learning new things everyday, being involved in two great training programs and several mastermind groups.
As you can see in my income reports, I switched from passive income to active income in November 2013, designing websites.
To that time I realized that my knew much more than beginning entrepreneurs who were getting in touch with me occasionally. So I launched my coaching program, targeting those entrepreneurs.
And nothing happened. It took me some time to accept that I grew my knowledge and experience, but my personal brand still was representing me as a beginning entrepreneur.
Time to rebrand for 2014!
Rebranding Big Time
I told Navid in the beginning of November 2013 that I was going to rebrand myself for 2014. It would be a massive change and I asked for his opinion and thus we discussed the process every now and then.
In 2013 I didn’t sell any coaching program but I was creating websites successfully. That should change for 2014, the goal is to get more coaching clients than website design projects, because the positive impact starting a new business has on peoples lives is probably the most rewarding feeling I ever experienced.
After analyzing the reasons why my brand didn’t represent my level of expertise, it came clear that I had to combine my two blogs mygreatonlinebusiness.com and jkoch.me into one platform. That platform would be the central hub for my personal brand and had to look and function as professional as my level of expertise required.
Also I needed to get clear of what I wanted to be known for. I found the following exercise to be very helpful for this purpose:
Talk to a friend of family member and explain what you are doing in simple words. That person should have no connection to Internet business but you need to make him or her understand exactly, what you are offering for your clients and what their main benefit is from working with you.
I did this together with my parents. It was that one conversion who made me realize, that I’m in fact helping people to start online businesses on the side to safely transition from employment to entrepreneurship. Niche sites, blogging, SEO, and all other business topics where just related to this concept of restarting your life.
Being in a unsatisfying job for several years myself, I want nobody to be in a similar situation. And when I was able to build an online business from scratch while being employed, I could help others to do the same.
After that conversation I started to call myself „Restart Strategist“. And that became my brand.
Together with Navid we refined that term and worked on a tag line and a description to clarify it. That was the first time I ever had an elevator pitch for myself.
Now that I knew what I wanted to be known for, I immediately knew who my target audience was. That’s why I’m increasing my engagement on Twitter and Facebook drastically and got 40 new Twitter followers in 3 days. Nothing big for some of you, but keep in mind that I got less than 200 followers in 9 months.
The Results
I’m sure you can see where this is heading. The massive rebranding with my new platform, the defined target audience and increased engagement on social media made my personal brand stand out way bigger than before.
I’m receiving 300% more emails through my new website, from potential clients, potential business partners and persons just thanking me for my content.
My following on social media is growing and I’m also seeing more interaction on my blog.
The new platform is getting positive feedback from all places over the world, regardless whether it’s from friends or business partners.
But for sure the biggest impact was the psychological change. I feel more energized than ever to start new projects and take my online business to the next level. I launched a new coaching program, I’m working on my dropshipping business and I’m more productive than ever.
You need to make sure that your personal brand always represents who you are and what you’re doing. If you don’t work on your personal brand regularly, you’ll feel as frustrated and demotivated as I did and you won’t see the results you’re expecting.
If you’re not clear on your personal brand yet, I suggest that you go through the exercise I explained above and do the first step. Don’t wait until you feel ready for this, just do it. It doesn’t hurt nor will it negatively affect your business. Only your comfort zone might try to hold you back executing this exercise – and that’s no reason for entrepreneurs not to do something.
What are your experiences with branding? Did you already recreate your brand or is it still as it was in the beginning? You can learn more about branding by joining Navid’s great mailing list, where he shares actionable advice that will help you establish a brand to be proud of.
If you have a friend who needs to recreate her brand, be a good friend and share this post with her so that she can learn from the experiences shared.
Thank you Jan for this guest post! If you want to learn more about him, you can go to his blog, his Facebook page or follow @iamjankoch.
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