Your Guide to Packaging Your Expertise and Building a Brand Strategy
When I was working a corporate job, I felt the call to do something more with my life. It wasn’t that the jobs were terrible, I actually liked it was making a comfortable living, but every day in the cubicle I felt that my creativity was slowly dying. The side hustle was no longer enough. The knowledge and strategies I’d mastered were bubbling up and with every client that I got results for, the more the office walls began to close in on me.
I wanted to help more people achieve their brand goals on a full-time basis. To transition from corporate America to owning and running my own personal brand for profit, though, I had to learn how to build a brand strategy for selling my skills. Before you can plan a brand strategy, you need to decide what skills you possess that you can package outside of your workplace that won’t be a conflict of interest. Here are 3 of the most common side hustles that take a limited time to transition to.
Content Writing and Management
Did you know that content writers are in high demand? It’s not hard to see why so many are businesses finally embracing digital marketing and eCommerce platforms during the Covid-19 lockdown. Businesses will always be in need of content that is valuable, engaging and high-converting for website sales and copy, blog posts, email newsletters, and social media captions and engagement. To be successful of course you must write well, but you must have a solid understanding of personal branding, direct marketing, and your particular niche.
Professional Event Hosting
Hosting is a skill you can leverage for industry events, virtual meetups, and membership groups for like-minded professionals. It’s a win-win because it helps you network and grow your personal brand while increasing your industry knowledge which will benefit your organization. In addition, expanding your opportunities outside of the workplace will give you negotiation power.
Industry Consulting and Coaching
Leverage your years of workplace success to become an industry consultant. This can be the easiest transition since you’ve achieved success on a day-to-day basis. You’re helping your clients fill their professional gaps, optimize their operations, and grow in their industry, and there’s always a market for that.
If you’re not sure how to leverage your story and skills to build your brand, it’s important to research the industries that are in demand, as well as take an inventory of what you’d love to do, what you’re skilled to do, and what people will pay for.
Building A Brand Strategy
When you understand what skills you’re packaging, you need a branding strategy to share the news. A branding strategy involves getting your name out there, creating an online presence, and showing people who you are and why they should hire you. When I first started marketing myself as a certified résumé writer and career coach, no one knew who I was. I didn’t have a client list, and consequently, I didn’t have any reviews or word-of-mouth buzz.
Once I started building a brand strategy, I was able to slowly but surely make my name known to the small niche industry and potential clients. I then turned those leads into actual clients, and eventually, it grew into a full-time career shift. We like to start with the visuals AKA the fun stuff. We start with the logo, colors, imagery, and typography when we have no idea what our brand voice is, the mission, or the values that our brand stands for. Whichever way you choose to organize or build your branding strategy, one of the best places to start is to find your brand archetype.
You’ve heard and taken personality tests before, right? But have you ever taken a personality test for your brand? This free quiz helps you find your brand’s archetype so you can improve the quality of your content and messaging, as well as customize your brand look and its relevance to your clientele. Ultimately, it provides you with a roadmap, so you can reach more people and connect with your target audience.
When you’re ready to build your digital footprint, it’s best to start with the “low hanging fruit” like your community of friends, colleagues, and the industry connections you already have before you focus on expanding to the masses. The most common way for you to expand to the masses is by finding where your target audience is on social media and posting to them consistently, updating your LinkedIn profile and expanding your professional community, and starting a website, to name a few foundational and common methods.
As women, we have a tendency to want to shrink back or ride the middle showing indifference and not disturb the status quo. To become a leader, break out of the pre-suite stage of your career, and build a brand outside of the workplace, you must speak up and have the confidence to express yourself as an industry expert. Each successful client relationship and industry connection will lead to the next, and people will begin to remember you when it’s time to solve their problem. Your confidence will grow as you begin to make progress and perfect your brand story, but you just have to start.
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Looking for career coaching? We can help. At Career Global, we provide high-touch career brand coaching services that guide ambitious professional women through our signature framework to gain clarity, define their niche, get paid for their value (not for time), and increase industry impact in and out of the workplace. Click HERE to learn more.