The Side Benefit of Tuning Your Personal Brand
Growing online requires you to tune your brand constantly. That isn’t easy, but it is worth the effort, not just for the brand.
Finding what you are passionate about and your actual value can take time. Some can do it before producing content, while others refine their brand as they progress.
Either way, at some point, you must choose your dominant platforms and make a few difficult decisions about your path — picking a niche and maybe niching it down, finding your unique voice, targeting the relevant audience, and learning from the stats as you create content.
Experimenting with my content was a significant part of such a self-discovery process. It helped me to see what kind of content catches more eyeballs and evaluate my value.
Finding a niche, unique facet, voice, or style is critical to establishing your footprint in the highly competitive creator market. The sooner, the better.
You’ll be just another fish in a giant aquarium without tuning your brand and finding your unique angle. No one would read you. The algorithm will neglect you.
If you are here reading these words, I bet you are already coping with that challenge, whether you write on Medium, your blog, upload videos to your channel, or maybe all these things combined, as I do.
In this story, I want to motivate you to refine your personal brand, even when it gets overwhelming and disheartening. My brand and I were upgraded when I finally saw a breakthrough, which impacted me immensely.
Read on to see how exactly.
What Is a Personal Brand?
If you aren’t familiar with the term, I’ll briefly overview it.
A personal brand is how others perceive you, particularly on the internet and social media.
The brand is your experiences, skills, values, story, life circumstances, and what makes you unique. Whether as a freelance writer or video editor who starts a gig on Upwork or Fiverr or a content creator who builds his presence on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or Medium.
In today’s digital age, not only companies and big businesses run brands but even more so individuals. Employees who start a side hustle, or those like me who reinvented themselves as creators out of an existential crisis.
Personal brands are freelancers, creators, and solopreneurs who place themselves at the forefront, usually with their faces in the logo. Their unique opinions, style, or advice attract the target audience to follow and support them.
A good personal brand is outstanding in the market, with a clear, helpful value or an enticing story that resonates with the audience.
I’m still on the go in building my brand here on Medium, in my blog, and on YouTube. Nonetheless, I have some exciting things that happened recently to share with you.
The Process of Tuning Your Brand
Marketing, branding, and content creation are highly connected to psychology, not only to your target audience but to your psyche as a creator.
My recent story will showcase to you just that, as I was surprised by the positive effect of upgrading the brand on my well-being.
When I started with my channel, I presumed that reaching original insights is my work energy, which I called “discoveries,” whether presented through chess tutorials or sharing my self-discovery journey.
Today, I updated the bio of my YouTube channel and changed the brand name from “Shachar’s Discoveries” to “Shachar Makes Sense.” The other day, in a moment of clearance, I realized that the latter name better represents my value.
After one year of experimenting with what I like to create and where I can be most helpful, I finally reached that significant “aha” moment. I’ve understood that my primary mission is to make sense of the overwhelming options for becoming a creator, which many beginners struggle with.
My updated value is to make sense of which platform and content style fit you better and help you navigate the conflicting advice out there. I like doing that and have walked through a lot of mess, so I have many insights and actionable tips.
The best part is that this aha moment led me to plan five new videos to relaunch my channel more powerfully and authentically. That’s super exciting!
Moreover, I soon realized that this branding breakthrough is not just about content strategy but also a better understanding of myself. That’s even more meaningful for me after all I went through in the last few years.
Tune Your Brand, Clear-up Yourself
I’ve been struggling with finding myself and my added value for the past four years, and even before that, to be honest. Each job I filled felt either bland or exhausting, and only in the past year could I manifest my right path as a creator.
I am still honing my craft and structuring my lane, yet I’m in a far better place now.
I create content on Medium, WordPress, and YouTube to help those who feel lost before and as they become creators. I do so by focusing on the early stage of finding your thing, picking a platform and niche, and developing a content strategy.
Tons of gurus teach you on all these platforms and business advice on how to be successful based on their success on a particular platform and niche, but a bit less tackle the challenge of choosing a creator path that fits your personality.
When I become clear to my audience, I’m clear to myself. I feel better after this process. My overall well-being has improved as a side benefit. Well, maybe this is the main benefit for a guy who felt lost for so long.
Coming up with a personal brand is so widespread today as a side or main hustle. It’s a great way to express yourself and share your life lessons or favorite hobbies with the hope of monetizing them later.
Personal branding is a challenging yet empowering endeavor. Don’t give up if you feel stuck and unfocused in the early stages. Things get into place at some point. Just keep creating and constantly refining your brand and yourself.
