Yo Yo Yo! What’s yo brand personality??… ok that totally was not my brand personality but you get the point! Your brand personality needs to be consistent, natural, and genuine. When you’re a solopreneur, often you are your brand but you still need to identify how you’re going to present your brand personality to the world so you can have that consistent and build trust with your community.

Tell me, have you ever come across a person online who gives you a Jekyll/Hyde vibe? Like they are all over the place? Or you meet them in persona and you’re like woah… this is not what I expected. I know I’ve met people like that and it is weird.

Why it matters

But I’m a soloprenuer, why does it matter? When you’ve identified your brand personality a couple of really cool things happen. Having your brand personality makes your recognizable in the online world. It helps you develop that consistency in your messaging and experience.

It will also help you define the experience of your brand…or the way people interact with your brand. Your brand personality will help you decide on what colors you want to use, what style graphics are you going to use or avoid in your business. And even helps you outline and develop your client experience.

Your brand personality also aims to help you build long-term relationships with your clients through trust. They know what to expect from you. They trust what you are putting out.

How to identify your brand personality

I say identify here instead of developing, on purpose. You want to focus on what is inherent and not try to invent something. This is a process of discovery, not invention.

Brand personality should grow naturally from the core of who you are. It shouldn’t be something that you need to invent especially as solopreneur. This is why it will be forced it will not be sustainable. It will be keeping you from connecting genuinely.

That’s a really important point. Forcing a personality that is not you will keep you from genuine connection with your people.

A genuine connection is so important in business, so why make it harder on yourself?

As a solopreneur, you have the unique opportunity to develop a brand that has personality for days that is comfortable for YOU. And identifying brand personality as a solopreneur is a lot easier than when you are trying to fit a larger business’ culture and multiple employees to one personality so enjoy the process.

The steps to identifying your brand personality

• Look at the heart and soul of your business. What are your core values & mission?
• What words do you associate with your brand?
• Review your position in the market, what make you unique/different than your competitors?
• What are your strengths/weaknesses?
• Think about the client experience, do you want to it to be structured and corporate feeling? Do you want it to feel friendly and conversational?
• What words do you use regularly?

Now don’t worry if you are sitting there thinking that even as a single person you can cycle through several personality types on any given day. I’m going to be all over the place on my personality??

Your brand personality doesn’t have to be everything, it can be a subset of your personality. It can be one facet of your personality as long as it is actually a part of you, it’s not a made up character. You can even do things like take a part of your personality and over-exaggerate it if you wanted. The problem comes from trying to put on a persona that isn’t natural to you.

Infusing your brand personality on your website, social media, & client communications

Now that you’ve identified what your brand personality is you’ll want to start working it into everything that you create for your business. All of your copy and graphics should be infused with your personality. But how can you do that?

Write like you talk

This is incredibly important for infusing your personality. You can either do one of these or both of these things.

One you can write to your bestest friend. You can even draft the content with their name at the beginning. Like Hey, Suzy! I’ve got this awesome thing to share. And then go back and remove any mention of your best friend. This helps you keep from falling into the stiff I need to sound professional uber professional personality.

Two you can read your content out loud after you’ve written it. Ever cringe when you reread something from the past? Maybe it sounds like a robot version of yourself? I’ll raise my hand because I’m guilty of it. I easily to fall into the robot personality when I write that I have to work hard against it. This is probably because of my psychology degree and the numerous papers I had to write where the tone needed to sound like a detached scientist. But that’s a story for a different day.

Reading your content out loud and then adjusting your stuff based on how it actually comes out of your mouth will help you keep from sounding stiff and like that robot version of yourself.

Colors & Graphics

Another way to infuse your brand personality is through the colors and graphics you choose for your online presence. The color brightness and combinations that you choose to represent your brand visually signal a specific type of personality. This is based on years of stereotyping colors into categories. You’ve got your neons, your bolds, your brights, your pastels, your neutrals… the list goes on and on and each set has a distinct personality that goes along with it.

This also goes for your graphics that you create using your colors in your graphics or finding imagery that has the same kind of personality as your brand will help with cohesiveness, consistency, and recognition. ****It’s important to understand the rules so you can break them. I’ve sprinkled in darker moodier images of Gunnar & I into my Instagram feed even though the rest of the feed is bright and airy. This helps draw attention to the personal posts I’m sharing.

Sharing personal stories and experiences

Sharing stories is a hot topic right now. They help let people in behind the scenes and build the know, like, and trust factor with your brand. And it is another way that you can infuse your brand personality into your online presence. Sprinkle in your stories and experiences as well as personal details around your website, blog posts, and social media content. Just make sure you refer back to the first tip under this section, Write like you talk, when you do this to help keep in alignment with your personality.

Consistency

When it actually comes to implementing and working with your brand personality across you online presence the biggest piece is consistency. You don’t want to confuse the people who come to your site then interact with you and feel like they were talking with two different people.

You want to make sure the words, colors, and graphics you are using are consistent across your entire online presences. Secondly, you want to make sure that your online presence is cohesive and flows. Look for elements that stick out like a sore thumb.

Showcasing your personality vs. going overboard

Live your brand? Is that what you really want to do? You definitely want to create that brand recognition but you don’t have to go to Kardashian levels of brand personality to get the job done. And definitely, don’t try to pretend to be someone you aren’t or force yourself into a certain box that isn’t natural for you. This will make it a LOT easier to go from showcasing to overboard.

The point of using a brand personality is to humanize your brand. This is especially important for an online business owner where most of your customers and potential customers never interact with you in person. So keep it simple and easy but don’t go crazy with it. Think highlighting your personality rather than slathering it on everything.

It’s your turn!

What is your biggest struggle with infusing a consistent brand personality into your online presence? Let me know in the comments!

 

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