3 Tips for Making Your Personal Brand’s Website a Success
Every professional needs their own brand. It doesn’t matter if you’re working a nine-to-five and hoping to climb the corporate ladder or an entrepreneur building a business out of your basement. A personal brand sets you apart and allows you to enhance your influence and grow your reach. In a noisy business world, it’s the only way to stand out.
Three Tips for a Better Personal Branding Website
Developing a personal brand takes a lot of time and effort. It’s not something you can create overnight or manage in a controlled environment. A personal brand requires you to commit to a variety of responsibilities. However, out of everything that it takes to grow your brand, your website should be one of your primary focuses.
Here are a few things to consider as you design, develop, and market your personal brand’s website:
1. Don’t Blend In
For most people, it’s much easier to blend in than it is to stand out. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in personal branding. If your website is just another page on the internet for a 32-year-old accountant who lives in New York City, then you aren’t going to see much of a return on your investment. You need to find a way to stand out.
Take Timothy Sykes, for example. He’s a penny stock trader turned reality TV star and trading coach. Much of his success has been based on the fact that people see him as a millionaire douchebag. All you have to do is browse around his website for a few minutes and you’ll see how he propagates this conception. It may not seem like an endearing quality, but it’s what sets his personal brand apart and makes him so successful.
The moral of the story is that you can’t blend in. Find a quality – positive or negative – and go all-in. You’ll gain much more traction than if you were to play it safe.
2. Showcase Your Work
You’ll see a lot of professionals waste their website’s homepage by throwing in a bunch of text, links, and descriptions. While there’s nothing wrong with telling people who you are, the best way to do this is by showcasing your work. Let your work and accomplishments speak for themselves.
Photographer Sarah Muller’s website is the perfect example. She’s a photographer, so it’s a bit easier for her than most other professionals, but the visual nature of her website is powerful and engaging. By looking at the images she uses, you can tell exactly who she is and what she likes. Find a way to showcase your work and your website will be much more engaging.
3. Publish Shareable Content
The key to garnering traffic for your personal brand’s website is to create shareworthy content. While you may see some organic search engine traffic, most will come from social media and backlinks on other websites. The only way to earn shares and backlinks is to create content that adds value to relevant conversations and topics.
Can you conduct a small survey or case study that will produce unique statistics and data points that others will want to reference? Is there an industry figure that you could publish an interview with? It’s much better to publish a few high quality pieces than to commit to blogging once per day and pushing out low quality entries with little value to others.
Make Your Website a Priority
In order to grow a brand, you have to focus on things like social media, portfolios, networking, and more…but don’t forget about your website. Your personal brand’s website is one of the single most important things you can invest in – so do it well!