On to Part Three of Your Personal Branding Journey!
Hi, again! Glad to see you back. Today we’ll be going over content creation.
I hope this series has been helpful so far. I feel like creating a personal brand is one of those things that seem really complicated until you break it down. Then you realize it’s actually fairly simple. You just have to know where to start. And take it step by step. That’s why I’m writing this little blog series (and my forthcoming book called Find Your Superpower, due out later this year).
Content is King
We already talked about social media presence and networking, but a major part of building and maintaining your personal brand is by creating content. Not just for your social media, but preferably for another source like a blog. Good content builds your audience’s trust and keeps them coming back. This content should be shared on your social media, ideally, to link back to your blog and/or website. If you need help with developing a system for your content creation, I’ve got you covered. Here’s a tip! Use social media management tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to save time and keep your content sharing consistent.
How Can I Create Content?
The best way to create content is by blogging. You can also share quality, relevant content from third-party sources.
How do I start a blog?
Well, first, choose something to write about. What is it that really motivates and inspires you? Think of topics you just naturally tend to have an interest in or opinion on. Now relate that to your specific industry. Make a list of potential topics and research them. Once you have some ideas for topics and themes, and of course a blog title, you can start looking for a site on which to share your words of wisdom. Just remember, you need to write well. Edit your posts and use quality images! You can find out more about high quality rights-free images here. And Wikimedia Commons is a great source too!
Here’s a guide to some of the best options for your blog site.
What kind of Third-party Content Should I Share?
Not everyone is a prolific writer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t share content regularly to help establish your brand.
When sharing on your social media you can choose to share directly from pages you follow on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. You can retweet or share the posts with good links or content so easily. As a bonus, these ways of sharing get you noticed by others in your tribe. This of course means you should get out there and follow people and pages that share your interests, are in your industry, or influencers in your realm!
You can also go out and search for good content and then share those links, but a time saving way to find good content is to spend your time researching who to follow, as I mentioned.
- Follow magazines and other sites on your social media that share topics of interest to you
- Set a google alert for your topics
- Sign up for emails and newsletters of the sites you love
I Have Some Suggestions…
Medium is a great one to join (and create your blog on) because they tailor their content suggestions to suit your interests and engagement level. It’s a good deal for $5 a month!
The New York Times is another trusted source for quality content. When you subscribe they send you daily and weekly briefings, so you don’t have to spend the time searching. They always have deals on online subscriptions too.
Flipboard is another great place to find fresh content and stay abreast of what’s happening (and fodder for your own articles). There are many others totally worth checking into too! Get out there and see what the world wide web has to offer! Plus, seeing and reading good content motivates you to create good content.
It’s a win, win!
When you’re ready to dive into content creation on a serious level, you may find this post I wrote about using SEO to your best advantage useful!
