Personal Branding Masterclass: The Complete Branding Course

A positive first impression will make our break you.

I don’t even need to know your industry to know that it’s fiercely competitive. You have the Internet to thank for that—it has democratized many industries and skills. Even if you studied at university to become an expert, you're still up against someone who’s self-taught, and built an audience in the process.

In this first video, I share three brands that won me over with a positive first impression and I explain why. You'll start to think critically about how to identity brands that are doing this right, which we can learn from.

When you can stay top of mind, you increase the likelihood that people will buy your product instead of someone else’s.

It’s not a matter of simply investing lots of in Facebook Ads or other forms of marketing—we need to first think critically about what you have that people need, and are willing to pay money for. Otherwise, money spent on marketing might be a waste if it doesn’t lead them to invest in something they need.

I’m often quick to distinguish the difference between a “need” and a “want” because we all have the power to satisfy a need, like every good business does.

Don’t let it daunt you—we as humans define “need” fairly loosely. Did you need that vacation last month? Or that designer purse or wristwatch? Probably not, but in our minds we convince ourselves that it’s worth displacing money for the reward.

I’ll use myself as an example:

Why did I need bedding from Parachute?

First: function. I spend more time in my bed than anywhere else, so it would make sense to invest in high quality bedding because I’d sleep better. If I sleep better, I’ll be happier and more productive. Easy to justify, right?

Second: status. Their marketing and visual branding spoke to my ego. I thought, “I surely need this bedding in my apartment because it will not only look cool, but it will make me feel fancy.” Their product photography is aspirational—meaning, this product fits with the lifestyle I’m striving for. Buying it gets me one step closer to achieving it.

Now it’s your turn. Note: it’s easier to answer these questions with someone specific in mind. That someone could be you, a recent customer, or even one of your most loyal clients.

1. Why do people need you/your product?

2. How is that different from just something people want?

Nowadays attention spans are short. That's why you need a quick and clear value proposition.

You have to grab people's attention before they become distracted by a viral kitty video on YouTube. It's a challenge to get people to pay attention to you, but being clear and concise with your value proposition is a necessary starting point.

In this lecture, I describe how the toothbrush company Quip does an amazing job of conveying their value proposition quickly.
From design to price point or consideration for health and the environment, they've really figured it out.

I'll leave you with an important question to consider: how does your product or service make your customer's life better? For example, is it helping them save time, resources, money, or mental energy? Think about this question. The answer will help you clarify your value.

The two golden rules of growing your personal brand: engage and be consistent.

I've discovered these through interviews with influencers that I've done for my podcast—all different brands and backgrounds, but always the same rules.

For the purpose of this lecture, we'll focus on being consistent. What makes a brand stick? A lot of it comes down to a reliable experience.

Think about some of the social media accounts or influencers that you follow. There's a very good chance the post regularly and you come to expect a certain look and feel that's familiar. They do this for brand recognition and to stay on your radar.

Bri Emergy of DesignLoveFest is the queen of consistency in my opinion. She's built a reputation for consistent aesthetics, which is something we'll discuss in more detail in an upcoming lecture.

Now think about you for a second—think about your value proposition. How can you be consistent? Look at your brand through this lens. Start to create parameters and rules that you can create and exist within. Parameters are your friend. Ideally I could look at a post from you and cover up your name and still know it's yours.

A goal is what you're trying to achieve, an action is how you're going to make it happen. There are a lot from goals to chose from, but if we have too many, it often results in us not taking action at all.

For example, your goal is not to make a website. Your goal instead would be to make it easy for people to understand your services. The action would be to make a website. Your goals should also be related to who your audience is. Before you start selling or creating, the very first thing you need to know is who it is you're trying to appeal to. That way you market yourself to a group of people that actually care.

For example, if you're marketing to a group of millennials, that's going to be a very different approach than how you'd market yourself to a group of retirees.

Give some thought to exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish and remember the more specific, the better.

Start to classify your audience based on emotion because now traditional demographics matter less than ever before.

Traditional marketers think in terms of "segments." This would include gender, age, and other general demographics. The Internet is moving at the speed of light, and so now our reference points are larger than ever before. Than ever in history. So my advice to you is don't make assumptions about interests by metrics like age and gender. Instead, we want to create audience groups based on emotion.

Let me give you an example of emotion: Let's say a bagel store was opening up a store that only uses organic ingredients. If we're using traditional segments, you might limit yourself to men from 45 and up, but that's not your audience. Instead, your audience is people who want greater control over what goes in their bodies. See the difference?

Use the formula I give you in this lecture to start thinking about your service or product can appeal to your customer's emotion.

Goals should be specific and realistic if you're going to take action on them.

You can't have a roadmap if you don't have an end destination. I always add a note of detail to my goal so that I avoid being too general to actually make it happen.

For example, let's say your an author who wants to make the New York Times bestseller's list. That's great, but it's not overly useful information. Everyone wants to become a bestseller! I want to know how you're different. How will something like that actually become tangible and something you can achieve?

A more specific goal would be: "I want to become a New York Times bestselling author by January 2019 by ________" (doing something specific). Maybe it's sell 1 million books. Maybe it's by getting a spot on a national TV show. Make your goal concrete. That makes all the difference because you can actually plan little steps to get you there.

Sit down with a piece of paper and do a free writing exercise. Write down all of your goals. Then take a 15 minute break, come back to it, and I want you to attach a specific ending to those goals. A specific detail allows you to start working backwards and understand how you can arrive at those goals through steps of action.

In this lecture, I ask you an important question that everyone knows the answers to.

Before you build a personal brand, you need to make sure it's inspired by something. What are your passions? Maybe you don't know your brand yet in one sentence, but you might know the answer to this: if you won the lottery tomorrow and money was no object, what is it you would spend your time doing?

Remember, your brand can be whatever you want it to be, but if you've done some homework, you know that it's not only something you love to do, but something others need.

Once we figure that out, then the fun part. You bring the gift, then we get to wrap it. That's developing your aesthetic. Developing a look and feel that feels appropriate for what it is you've created.

What's your aesthetic? What kind of colors do you like or textures? I myself am not a color guy, but I love rust and metal and wood. What brands are you drawn to and why? When it comes to designing everything to show for your brand, so your resume, your cover letter, icons, your website, business cards, social media platforms. What excites you? Don't forget to answer the question below.

If you won the lottery tomorrow, what is it you would do for the rest of your life?

I've got a formula to follow to help you communicate your brand in one sentence.

This will get you started, and I encourage you to customize it however you see fit. In this lecture we'll complete the variables of the formula together.

When describing yourself, we often assign roles—primary, so maybe you're a chef or an entrepreneur—and secondary, which should be unrelated to the first. For example, you might be a chef that also does public speaking, or an entrepreneur that's also an extreme biker. This secondary role could have something to do with your interests.

The third one could be an aspirational. So if you're dabbling in writing, but haven't fully committed yet, put down that you are a writer. And don't use the word aspiring—say that you are that now. Much of building a personal brand is not just taking inventory of who you are today, but who you want to become.

For a long time before I started really speaking often as a keynote speaker, I included that I was a speaker in my brand sentence. I've included it in important places like my LinkedIn profile, and I've had people find me and discover me and hire me for speaking engagements because I started to communicate that.

So think back to a previous lecture where we talked about the problem your brand solves. List that here. For example, I might describe my brand sentence as: "I am a brand strategist, a keynote speaker, and an author who creates first impressions." And now it's your turn to complete the variables.

It's important to be able to quantitatively and qualitatively describe your brand's look and feel.

I've developed a way to help articulate your brand's aesthetic by pinpointing it within a set of ratios. Is your brand young or mature? Luxurious or economical? This week's worksheet will help you describe your taste, and we walk through it together in this video.

When I'm working on a visual brand, I get the most inspiration from Behance.

In this lecture, I show you how to navigate this community where the top artists and designers and industry professionals share their work. You can begin to start gathering visual examples to compile a mood board.

Our mood board becomes our guiding light when it comes to determining what's visually on brand (and what isn't).

That's why we need to plan it carefully now that we've identified descriptive language to help put our aesthetic into words, and we've done the groundwork to research other brands we'll be strongly inspired by.

In this lecture, we'll use the worksheet you already completed and find the highest ranked adjectives used to describe your aesthetic. What's skewing farthest left or right on the worksheet? Choose three and use those terms in the search function on Behance and Pinterest. I recommend using the Pinterest extension for Google Chrome to "pin" good visuals that you like.

Consider organizing your photos in a "secret" Pinterest board, meaning only you can see it (when you're logged in). Once we've gathered all of the visual inspiration we need, we'll compile the mood board in the next lecture.

Now it's time for the magic—compiling your mood board to help you make every visual decision moving forward.

Start by looking at all of the images that you've gathered in your secret Pinterest board (or in a folder on your computer) and start to think how all of these images work together. We call this process "editing", and it's likely that you won't use every image that you've found.

In this lecture's example, I'll build a brand board for my friend and client Lisa. The mood board is really like the rudder for the rest of the project. Everything comes down to decisions that are made by how these images work together in unison, and so we start with strong sources of inspiration.

Some things to think about: you want to edit what you've pinned, so don't include everything. You also want to follow your intuition and edit or remove what doesn't "fit". Don't focus too much on one single photo either. You want to let your eyes glaze over what you've selected, and then you want to look at what you've pinned loosely and then figure out what sections work. 

Spend some time on this. Maybe take a little break if you've been staring at it for a while. Come back to it and you will, if you follow your intuition and start to edit what you've got, start to put something together, and you'll be able to see how it all works in unison.

Even if you're at the top of your game, there's still someone that's a few steps ahead of you and that's totally OK. 

We're not going to be jealous—we're going to be inspired by everything they're doing right, and everything they might be doing wrong. I call these people your brand heroes.

Your brand heroes are in the same industry as you, they might be bigger, they might be fancier, but the fact is they spend a lot more money to make decisions that are almost always public facing. For example, the navigation on their website, the fonts they use, their Pinterest, their Instagram, their Twitter feed.

We can all go look at it and not copy anything, but we can be strongly inspired by what they're doing well. You get to go find all your favorite brand heroes and spend some time researching.

This isn't hard hitting research. This is simply just consuming the content they create and the way they've set up their brand online. Specifically make note of what you like, take screenshots and put them into a folder, or better yet compile them on a secret Pinterest board. After a few hours spent doing this, you're going to notice similarities, consistencies between what you've pinned or compiled among your very favorite brands.

Those similarities are what should inspire your brand moving forward. Again, we're not copying anything, but we can be strongly inspired by what others are doing well.

Now it’s time to play detective and have a look at what your competitors are doing.

The role that you’ll play is part detective and part mechanic—you're looking quite literally at the mechanics of what your competitors do.

In this lecture, I'll give you some questions to get started researching what your competitors are doing online. Don't stop here—merely let these prompt you to do more investigative research to better understand their strategy.

How many website pages does your competitor have? Is their website full of all different options and directions to go in like 20 or 30 pages or is it very simple, five, six, seven pages for a basic portfolio website?

What do they name their website pages, right? Do they have a blog? Is it called blog or is it called something more creative like journal? Is there a contact page, you know, contact, or is it something more creative?

How do they order the website pages? Usually, the "About" page is somewhere at the beginning, and "Contact" is somewhere at the end when you're looking at the navigation for website.

I also want you to be looking at their social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and any other platform relevant to your industry. What platforms are they most active on? What platforms are they least active on?

How often do they post? How often do they post? Is it once a week? Is it once a day? What are they using for captions? When are they posting? What are they posting their captions? Do they use emojis? You see how one question spawns all kinds of others to consider and analyze.

There's a good chance your competitors also have e-mail lists. Well, you should definitely signup for them and see how often are they sending e-mails. What is the length of each e-mail? You can even start to look at the content.

As I said, these are questions that I just want you to get started with, but certainly don’t end here. You can put all the information and findings that you have into a spreadsheet so that you can see it in one consolidated place. I'm excited to see where you end up.

Branding should be done in stages. This isn't a free-for-all. 

I have a set process that I know I follow when I brand anyone in any industry, in any country around the world.

It is a process whereby one step builds on the other. For example, we can't promote it if it's not built properly. We can't sell a house that doesn't have a solid foundation, or some good staging, furniture layouts to show it in the right light. Furthermore, we can't have any success if we're not positioned properly, if our brand is not something we love to do, paired with something others need, and they're willing to pay for it.

Let's reverse that order real quick. First, position your brand. What is it you love to do? That's the formula. Something you love to do paired with something others need. That is the positioning formula to ensure that you're successful. Once positioned, let's build something to show for it. We want to look at photography. Should inspire your brand identity. Your brand identity should include your logo, your font, your color, your sub-brands, as well as your print and web collateral, business cards, email signatures, podcast artwork, to name a few.

Once we've positioned and we've built the house, we are ready to take it to market. Let's be strategic about how we get your brand in front of people without spending a lot of money, because we don't need to. Chances are, we don't have it. Content creation, prioritizing your social media platforms, editorial placements, speaking engagements, getting in front of the media, starting conversations with people, using social media as a tool for conversation. There are a lot of ways that we can promote the brand. Remember, if we take it to market without a roof, we'll get a fraction of the value we deserve.

We've done it! Here I am with my final thoughts on personal branding as we wrap this course.

I've designed this course for you to get your feet wet all of these tips and strategies that I get to work on with my clients every single day. I think it's fair to say we've accomplished a lot in the course of 18 lectures. From having control over your first impression to prioritizing and figuring out the actionable steps you'll take to build something to show for your brand, to understanding your audience—not only your audience, your competitors—and starting to build visuals, pair visuals to get inspiration and structure, and creating parameters around the idea of creating a visual brand.

A lot of experts define the term personal branding differently. My definition is this: The best online brand recreates the in-person experience. All we're doing is taking inventory of who you are in real life and figuring how we can convey that in a truthful way online.

I hope you've enjoyed this course on personal branding, browse my other courses if you want to go more in depth on any of these topics. I'm launching new courses every month on uDemy, so be sure to check back often.

If you want to keep in touch with me, you can do so on social media. I'm very active on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. I'd love to connect with you.

You can also go to my website (http://philpallen.co) and sign up for my email newsletter, where I share useful tips as you continue positioning, building and promoting your brand. Thank you so much for being a part of this course. I look forward to keeping in touch and to working with you again!