Contact Information
There are many aspects that go into building a strong personal brand, both online and offline. Figuring out the essence of who you are and what you want to be known for, are the first few steps. By reflecting on the right questions, one can figure this out. The step at which many falter is – how does one convey these messages to the world, in a consistent and coherent manner?
Creating the right messaging themes and sub-themes, are the building blocks of a strong content and messaging strategy. Content is the fuel that will propel your personal branding messaging engine. However, content creation can be an exhaustive process without the proper approach.
As a result, people tend to give up on their personal branding exercise before it bears fruit.
In this post, we will help you not only create a blueprint for your personal brand content strategy but also help build a simple plan to help with execution.
The Essential Elements of a Personal Brand Content Strategy:
Before you begin with content planning you need to be crystal clear about three things:
- The perception you want to build.
- Your target audience and the social media channels to focus on.
- The niche topic in which you have the expertise, and want to build your brand around.
This is the base on which you will build your content strategy. Having these figured out at the start helps make your content more focused on the audience you want to attract. It also helps keep you focused on specific objectives and themes.
Now let’s see how you can improve the content planning process.
Step 1: Identify the Key Themes.
Break down your niche topic into sub-topics and identify the topics you want to build your content on. You can identify multiple themes/topics at this stage, but you need to be able to give valuable information on these themes. This information can come either from our personal experience or your domain knowledge.
Step 2: Define the Content Outline.
Jot down the ideas that pop into your head for each key theme you chose previously. Have a notebook or mobile phone handy so you can document your content ideas as to when they appear (which is usually in the most inconvenient places or times).
Our in-house personal branding expert recommends having a WhatsApp group with only yourself, which you can use to dump ideas via voice notes or quick texts. Compile these ideas even if they are in rough form.
If you feel that your ideas need to be fine-tuned a bit but don’t know where to start, then this Content theme-style template might help.
Step 3: Create a Monthly Content Calendar.
How many times a week will you post your content and on which platform? Don’t follow the best publishing frequency that third-party platforms recommend. It may not work for you.
Set a pace for yourself. One that you’re sure you can keep up. Once you have done this, you will know the entire content required for a month. Plan and schedule your content ideas in the monthly calendar. You will also be able to get an overview of the entire bulk content that will go out and ensure there is a balance between different topics. You can go back and change it any time.
The calendar is to help you plan your content and lessen the load on content ideation every time you sit to create content. You can also have additional posts that are not part of the schedule and modify the content calendar as per your requirement.
Step 4: Create Content.
Create content at least a week or two in advance. This way you will have a breather in case you miss your deadlines. It will take a lot of pressure off you and improve the quality of the content you create.
In your leisure time, go back to your monthly calendar and create content as per the schedule. Sometimes, you may end up with a post that is wildly different from the content idea/outline you created beforehand, which is okay. You can either rework it fit to the original idea or use it as a separate idea.
This approach to creating content for personal branding will make the whole process less intimidating and enjoyable. But the work is not done here. Do a monthly review of the content you posted and analyse the performance. Understand what worked and why. With time you’ll find insights into what your audience loves to hear from you. Use these insights to update your future content calendars.
Step 5: Repurpose the Content.
Repurposing content is underrated but very powerful and you should use it as part of your content strategy. Repurposing content that has worked well in the past is a smart move. Here are a few ways in which you can repurpose your content:
- A post can become a script for a video.
- A post can turn into an Instagram carousel.
- A couple of posts based on one topic can turn into Twitter threads.
- A LinkedIn article can be turned into a blog.
- A previous post can be reposted with minor tweaks.
So always keep a library of your content either in a drive or google sheet or any other tool so, they come in handy when you wish to repurpose.
Conclusion:
A personal brand takes time to build. A structured and consistent messaging strategy is essential to make it shine through. The steps listed above should help in building a plan that is relevant and easy to execute.
If you need help with your content strategy or execution, get in touch with us for a free 30-minute consultation.