What exactly is a 'personal brand?'

"The purpose of your brand is to represent your purpose." - Naval Ravikant

When Morgan Housel started writing online, he was just sharing his thoughts on finance in a way he knew would make sense to the average person.

Over time, his consistent writing built a reputation. Readers trusted his insights, and his articles spread; eventually, he landed a book deal.

The Psychology of Money became a global bestseller because he had a personal brand attached to him that people already trusted.

Your personal brand is a combination of your online presence and how others perceive it. You could have your content everywhere, be wildly entertaining, be continuously on the minds of everyone, but if they don’t trust you and connect with you, you’ll struggle to make an impact and sell your products.

That’s why trust sits at the centre of a strong personal brand. Trust emerges when you regularly demonstrate integrity, show relatable human authenticity, authority on a handful of topics, and deliver on your promises.

So, put simply, your personal brand is the distinct identity, reputation, and perception you create through your ideas, writing, and presence. It’s how people recognise, remember, and trust you based on your voice, values, purpose, and the topics you consistently share.

People can be cold, lukewarm or red-hot when they think of you. Your goal is to move towards red-hot as best you can.

Writing is a superb method to build your personal brand because the more you write, the clearer the picture you create that others form of you in their minds.

If you continually demonstrate that you’re the kind of person people can rely on to solve their problems, the stronger a brand you will have.

This is why you can have a large following, but a rather watered-down personal brand. There are many people online with massive audiences, but who don’t really know the person at the helm of the content creation and why they need this person in their lives.

You need to be needed. This is why it’s so crucial to figure out, through plenty of consistent writing and creation, why you are different to everyone else, and why a specific segment of the market would come to rely on you.

So a few things contribute to a strong personal brand:

• Familiarity and likeability through consistency, telling stories, being human, being a bit of a character, showing up and getting your ideas out into the world via various platforms.

• Demonstrating the wider purpose you are on through the content you share. People trust you and are attracted to you when they align with your purpose.

• Build trust by demonstrating your credibility and showing how you solve real problems. These need not be groundbreaking, but rather enough to help a specific type of person.

• Uniqueness by realising and showing your own unique selling points. How can you help in a way no one else can?

A personal brand is not your audience, though your audience is built around your brand. It is what you create to attract that audience, and the degree to which that audience wants to associate itself with you.

Don’t overthink it. A brand grows with you.

There’s only so much you can do to plan out your personal brand. The early stages of your brand should involve plenty of experimentation, adjustment, more experimentation and pursued curiosity.

Let your brand evolve with you. Stay consistent, stay curious, and keep finding ways to matter to the people who need you most.

*The above is an excerpt from my latest book, ‘The Never-Retired Writer: How to Turn Your Ideas Into a Life of Freedom, Income, and Purpose,‘ releasing in a few weeks.

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