How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Personal Brand

Source: Neil Patel

You probably already know what branding is.

It’s the look and feel of a company, like its logo and website, as well what people think of it. In other words, the brand represents the company’s reputation.

A classic example of great corporate branding is Nike. The swoosh logo, the tagline “Just Do It”, and the companies ads that feature real athletes make up the brand.

As soon as you see a Nike ad, you recognize it.

But how can that help you as a person?

It’s the same principle. You are your personal brand.

Who you are online is who you are as a business.

Your content becomes your voice as a company, and your brand is built by how successfully you market that brand to your customers.

A perfect example of content marketing in business is Tim Ferriss.

He’s known for his bestselling book, “The Four Hour Workweek,” as well as his blog and podcast. He’s one of the world’s most popular business strategists.

Guess why he’s so well known?

His book, blog, and podcast all serve one purpose: to build his personal brand and leverage it into successful business ventures.

The core value of his brand is helping others realize their dreams, so everything he writes or says is focused on that.

He posts comprehensive and useful content that truly helps others, and in turn, makes people want to buy from him.

But don’t panic. You don’t have to be a famous author like Tim to develop a solid content marketing strategy for your business.

Anyone can do it!

In this post, I’m going to break down everything you need to know about creating a content marketing strategy for your personal brand.

It’s a really fun process, so let’s dive right in.

Start with authenticity

The most important thing to remember when creating your content marketing strategy is to be authentic.

People can tell if you’re being fake.

Everything you say, do, and write should be consistent with your personality, your values, and what you’re passionate about. If it’s not, the deception will come across in your content.

A strong personal brand creates trust between you and your audience. A recent study found that 50% of buyers buy on belief or their trust in the brand.

And 67% of first-time customers will make a purchase based on your values if those values align with their own.

Your personal brand is all about you, so be yourself.

You know the old saying, “People buy from people they like?” It’s true.

But your personal brand isn’t there to just push sales for you or make you money. It’s the essence of who you are and why you do what you do, and that’s worth more than money.

Your personal brand brings humanity back into a business.

This is true for businesses of all sizes, from a one-man show to a multi-million dollar company with hundreds of employees.

You don’t need to be an expert in your field at first. You can learn as you go like I did with marketing and SEO.

The key is to be authentic to who you are right now. If you’re a beginner, be a beginner.

Document your journey to the top and bring your audience along with you.

Starting small and building over time is a much better strategy than pretending you already have all the answers.

When I first started blogging, I didn’t know half the things I know now. That’s okay! What matters is I remained consistent with my content marketing and learning new things.

Now, this blog brings in over 600,000 visitors per month!

Define your brand goals.

The first step to creating your content marketing strategy is writing down your goals.

Ask yourself how your personal brand could help you.

Will it help you land a better job?

Will it help you sell more products or services for your business?

Will it help you become a thought leader in your industry?

Whatever your big goal is, write it down.

Yes, actually write it down on paper or on your computer!

Your content marketing strategy should be a real document that you, or anyone else creating content for you, can pick up and read.

Only 32% of B2B content marketers have a documented strategy. It’s important to document it so that you, or anyone creating content for you, can easily reference it and ensure every piece of content supports your goals.

Documenting your strategy is proven to yield better results, so don’t skip writing it all down.

Next, you need to set smaller, more specific goals.

How will you get to that big goal of selling more products?

To do that, you’ll need to:

• Increase your brand awareness through quality content
• Drive traffic back to your website
• Get visitors to sign up for your emails so you can market to them
• Convert those leads into sales

Those goals still seem pretty big, right? Break them down even further.

For example, to “increase your brand awareness”, list out what you need to do to make that happen:

• Publish one blog post per week
• Share your content on social media regularly
• Connect with influencers to get them to share your content and build a relationship

Better, right?

Your specific goals will probably change over time, but your overall goal should stay the same.

For example, a few years ago, I published a new blog post at least once a day, sometimes two.

Now, I publish at least three new posts per day!

My overall goal has remained the same though, and always will: I’m here to help you succeed with online marketing.

How I do that might change, but that’s always my goal.

Start a blog

Once you have your goals figured out, it’s time to take action.

Blogging is a huge part of content marketing.

You can choose to market written content through a blog, start a YouTube channel, or launch a podcast… or do all three, like I do.

But if you’re just starting out, a blog is the easiest way to get your content out there and start building your brand.

Businesses that blog get 67% more leads than those that never blog.

But the most important part of blogging isn’t the number of leads you get — it’s the trust factor.

81% of consumers trust the information they read on blogs.

Trust is crucial to your personal brand.

I’ve already covered all the technical details of how to start a blog, so I won’t reiterate all that here.

But there are a few things you need to make sure you document for your content strategy.

Blog consistently.

Write down your publishing schedule and stick to it. This is really important for building your audience.

How many times have you visited a blog, liked it, but returned weeks later to find nothing new?

After a few of those experiences, you’ll probably give up and not bother coming back again.

Content creation is responsible for 85% of your content marketing success, so make sure you’re spending most of your time and energy on publishing fresh content regularly.

You could start with one post per week and go up from there, but the key is to start somewhere and stick with it.

Optimize your blog for social media sharing.

I don’t have to tell you that social media is important for growing your blog.

When your readers share content on their social media networks, those shares put your content in front of new eyes. When this happens on a large scale, it’s called “going viral”.

There are many factors that go into creating viral content.

Infographics are proven to get more shares than other forms of content, with list posts coming in at a close second.

I’ve written extensively on how to generate traffic with infographics and how to create great list posts for your blog.

But there’s one thing all viral posts have in common: Someone shared them to start with.

Your content can be very shareable, but without an easy way to do encourage sharing, your blog readers won’t bother!

Luckily, there are a bunch of free tools that allow you to optimize your blog for social shares.

If you’re using WordPress, I recommend installing the AddThis plugin. It’s free and has a clean, modern look.

Here’s how to add it to your blog.

To download the plugin, click here and then click the blue Download button.

It will download a zip file. Then, log in to your WordPress dashboard and click on Plugins -> Add New from the left menu.

Click on Upload Plugin at the top of the screen and select the zip file you just downloaded. Then click Install Now.

Click on Activate Plugin.

You’ll see this notice to configure the settings for AddThis. Click on Configuration options.

On this screen, you have a few options for how the social sharing buttons will be displayed on your blog. You can set them however you like, but I definitely suggest turning on the mobile toolbar feature.

Just click on the toggle button to activate it.

The mobile toolbar floats on the bottom of the screen so your mobile visitors always have a quick way to share your content.

With mobile traffic now making up over 55% of all website traffic, it’s important to optimize your site for those visitors, including how they share your content.

Now that your blog is set up for content marketing success, let’s continue with creating your strategy.

Figure out who you’re writing for

After you’ve defined your goals and set up your blog, you need to decide who you want to attract.

This will depend on your overall goals, but if you’re selling a product or service, you want your target customers to read your content.

But who is your target customer? What are they looking for?

Having this key information about your customer is called creating a customer persona.

A persona describes your ideal customer. Everything from their age and occupation to their motivations, likes/dislikes, pain points and more should go into a persona.

You should have a persona for each type of customer you want to attract.

For example, your target customers might include middle-aged moms, but you might also target younger childless females. You need to create one persona for each customer.

The middle-aged mom is going to have different needs and motivations than the younger, child-free woman. She’ll have less time and more responsibilities.

The younger woman has a busy life, too, but in a different way.

Accounting for these differences is what makes your customer personas really useful. When writing, refer to them often to ensure all your content is in line with what that target customer needs and wants.

Of companies who achieve their sales goals, 65% have documented customer personas that have been updated in the past six months.

Here’s an example of a detailed customer persona.

Now let’s walk through the process of making your own customer persona.

Start with the basics.

Write down the basic demographic information for your target customer.

Are they male or female? Young, old, or both? Where do they live? What is their approximate household income? What do they do for a living?

It makes it easier to picture who…

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