Personal Branding for Freelancers: Everything You Need to Know
Personal branding for freelancers – is it necessary? We think the answer is yes! Whatever your freelance business may be, you’ll benefit from personal branding. This might be a daunting prospect – brand yourself? – but it is achievable, need not cost a lot, and will repay your investment.
In this post we’ll take you through what personal branding is, its benefits for you as a freelancer, and how to build your own personal brand. We’ll include some real-life examples, too, in case you’re in need of inspiration.
What Is Personal Branding?
Personal branding, as you’ll see from an earlier article, goes hand in hand with branding for your freelance business. Unlike corporate branding, which focuses on a business, personal branding is about you – the person behind the work. It involves presenting a clear and consistent picture of who you are, what you do, and why you’re the best at it.
Benefits of Personal Branding for Freelancers
We said in the introduction that your freelance business will benefit from personal branding, and here’s how:
- Attracts ideal clients: A clear and authentic personal brand will appeal to the people who share your values and work style. This will reduce the chances of you working with clients who aren’t a good fit.
- Sets you apart from the competition: With so many freelancers vying for the same jobs, having a personal brand – which, by definition, is unique – will help you stand out. Highlighting your strengths and niche will make it easier for clients to remember and choose you over others.
- Establishes credibility and trust: We’re more likely to hire someone, or buy something, we trust. A well-developed personal brand that showcases your skills, values, and experience will help you build the credibility needed for your audience to trust you.
- Enables higher pricing: We’ve probably all paid more for something because we recognized the brand. When your clients recognize and trust you (see the point above), they’ll be more willing to pay that bit extra for your services.
How to Build a Personal Brand
The good news is that you don’t need to invest a lot of money in building your personal brand. It will, however, take time and effort. As you’ll have seen above, however, that’s a rewarding investment.
Follow these steps:
1. Take a Look at Yourself
This is a personal brand, so it needs to be… personal. You might be tempted to create a whole new persona for your brand, but that would involve a lot more work to sustain than if you stuck with what comes naturally but with some added polish.
Think about your values as well as your style. And don’t forget that, as you are the brand, your prospective customers will want to take a look at you too. A professional-looking headshot photo will help.
2. Identify Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
Having looked at yourself, you now need to look at what you have to offer. Your UVP is what sets you apart from other freelancers. It answers the question “Why should anyone hire you over someone else?”
To identify your UVP, consider your strengths, skills, experiences, and what you enjoy most about your work.
3. Define Your Target Audience
It’s now time to consider who will benefit from what you have to offer. Knowing who you want to work with is essential to shaping your personal brand.
Just as you took a look at yourself, you’ll need to identify and understand your target audience. Are your ideal clients small business owners, startups, large corporations, or individuals? What are they like? What do they like, and where do they come from?
4. Use Your Voice and Visuals
Understanding your target audience as well as yourself (at step one) will help you establish how your personal brand looks and sounds. Because we’re talking about a personal brand, the visuals and tone you use – your brand voice – need to reflect you.
5. Be Consistent
Now that you’ve established what your personal brand looks and sounds like, you need to use it consistently and in everything.
Your online presence is the first place potential clients will look to learn more about you. You should use the same logo, color scheme, and tone of voice, and keep to the values you identified as important to establish and maintain your personal brand.
6. Showcase Your Expertise Through Content
One of the best ways to demonstrate your UVP (which you identified at step two) is by writing content. This could include blogging, guest posts, tutorials, webinars, or even social media posts that show your audience why they should trust you enough to hire you.
7. Network and Build Relationships
Personal branding is all about you, and what better way is there for people to get to know you than by actually meeting you?
Attend industry events, join online forums, and connect with other professionals in your field. Building relationships can lead to new clients, collaborations, and referral opportunities.
8. Gather and Showcase Testimonials
Telling the world how great you are may not come naturally to you, so get others to do that for you. And even if you have no problem with answering the question posed at step two (“Why should anyone hire you over someone else?”), positive testimonials will reassure prospective clients that you’re reliable and skilled.
After completing a project, ask satisfied clients for feedback that you can showcase on your website and social media.
Personal Branding Examples
To show how all of this works in practice and to provide you with some inspiration, let’s explore how three freelancers have successfully built strong personal brands. They make great use of all the steps we set out above, but we’ll highlight different ones for each. Follow the links and see if you can find the rest.
- Louise Harnby – Fiction Editor
The homepage of Louise Harnby’s website makes it clear that you are dealing with a person. Her photograph is one of the first things you see, her content is written in the first person and in a conversational style, and she has this clear declaration:
- Marie Poulin – Digital Strategist
Marie Poulin’s website makes her UVP instantly clear with a heading style and bold font. She goes on to succinctly set out her experience, backing that up with a collection of testimonials, which also show that she’s applied her personal brand across her social media.
- Angela Lyons – Graphic Designer
If you’re a graphic designer, it’s particularly important that your personal branding comes across in your graphics and color scheme. Angela Lyons does a great job of this on her site, with her photographs and gifs using the same color palette as her graphics. She also sets out her personal values and how those are incorporated into her business:
Becoming A Freelancer
By following our tips and studying the examples set by successful freelancers, like the ones we’ve highlighted, you’ll be well on your way to creating a personal brand that will benefit your own business.
For more guidance on setting up your freelance career, why not take our Becoming A Freelancer course? If you’re not sure if it’s for you, you can try two lessons free of charge.
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