Personal Branding: How to Go from Zero to Hero in No Time

Source: Neil Patel

Do you remember when only celebrities and major companies had personal brands?

Actors, musicians, Fortune 100 businesses, and athletes got all the attention and dominated the airwaves.

However, all of that’s changed now.

Nearly anyone willing to put in the time, effort, and build their niche can become a ‘thought leader’ who gets all of the traffic (and customers) in their space.

It won’t happen overnight, of course.

You only need to do a quick Google search to see that ordinary people from all over the world are using these new tools to craft personal brands that attract countless people to their websites and social media profiles.

The trick is knowing exactly where to spend your time to get the results you’re after.

There are a lot of strategies and tactics out there that will be a complete waste of time.

But follow the seven simple, proven steps below to become the go-to expert in your space.

Step #1. Start by finding your niche

There’s a saying about SEO traffic that highlights something most people miss.

You can’t create search demand. You can only harvest it.

That means you can’t force people to search for a specific keyword. They either already do or they’re searching for something else.

Your job in SEO is to recognize that and work instead on getting as much traffic you can from words that are already popular on their own.

Personal branding is similar, believe it or not.

For example, being the best CrossFit pug breeder in the world is worthless if there isn’t already a market or niche for that. (Seriously, is there?!)

The niche selection process is really important! You don’t want to spend all the time and energy necessary to link your brand to a niche that’s not growing.

For example, online marketing is my personal niche.

There’s a good reason why!

The number of people around the world using the internet continues to explode.

As a result, advertising dollars continue to shift from offline to online.

For example, there was a 19% increase in online ad revenue (up from $27.5 billion) over just the past year. Then look at how much those numbers have changed in the last ten years!

I’ve personally been doing SEO and online marketing for almost this entire decade now.

I’ve helped companies of all sizes grow their revenue online, and there’s always one problem they keep asking about: Traffic!

That’s because you obviously can’t grow sales without customers. And you can’t get customers online if there’s no traffic.

In other words, the vast majority of people who are interested in online marketing are focused on getting more traffic.

That’s why most of my offers all revolve around this one pain point.

And I get the most joy out of working with business owners or marketers directly. Helping someone grow their site is incredibly gratifying.

That’s why I’m constantly giving away free advice on this site (and my others sites). I want to see people succeed with online marketing.

So where should you start?

That’s a good question because there’s no right answer necessarily.

But here’s where I think you should start.

Pick something specific that you can do better than 90% of the world.

Why is that so specific? Because you can probably do a lot of good things, but that doesn’t mean you’re an expert in every single one of them.

The only way to create a personal brand is by becoming the go-to, recognized authority on a specific topic.

And if you’re not an expert on it, someone else will be. So don’t afraid to go small or narrow to dominate a topic.

The “online marketing” space, for example, is massive, and it’s taken the better part of a decade for me to become a recognized authority.

But take someone like Brian Dean, who decided to go deep on a particular topic instead of biting off more than he could chew.

Notice how he perfectly positions his personal brand. It’s all about backlinks and rankings for SEO.

Then the site’s graphics, design, and testimonials all reinforce those points.

There’s another important ingredient for a successful personal brand, though. One that deals more with your own style and point of view on this topic.

Step #2. Inject personality into your personal brand

The first step (finding your niche) is about your own skills and potential market value.

The second step is about what you personally bring to the table. It’s about your point of view or ‘tone,’ which will help differentiate you from everyone else who talks about those same topics.

For example, I want to be seen as personable and down-to-Earth.

That’s why I often will use slang or say “dude” when writing. We might be talking about a technical topic, but I want to help you understand it in an easy-to-digest format.

A similar example is Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

He works in the personal finance space, which is full of questionable people that give suspicious recommendations.

So Ramit takes the opposite approach, using casual language, inside jokes, and F-bombs to show you that he’s being honest and holding nothing back.

My favorite recent rant is this one on avocado toast, during which he completely debunks terrible “advice” from another personal finance columnist.

Ash Ambridge at The Middle Finger Project also uses strong language and a no-B.S. attitude that gets people to sit up and take notice.

Being polarizing like this might turn some people off, but it can also help you create raving fans who might feel like a politically-correct to the same material comes off as disingenuous.

There’s even a hilarious page on Ash’s site that compares when she was more ‘buttoned down’ almost a decade ago compared to what she’s like now.

Now, contrast that example with someone who talks about similar topics, but in a completely different style and tone: Marie Forleo.

They might both cover similar topics, but Marie’s personality (and therefore, content, design, and other branding elements) are polar opposites.

If Ash sometimes slips between PG-13 and rated R, Marie is firmly rated G.

So what you’re saying is important, yes. But how you’re saying it can be equally so.

Step #3. Create your brand identity

Have you noticed a trend with the past…

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