Personal branding for designers
Investing in yourself is the best kind of investment, or so they say.
But what is the return on these investments? Spending time and money on courses, events and all sorts of training sure can make you a better professional. But it will not necessarily increase your income. You need to let others know what you do and why you are good enough to take their money. A great way to start is building your personal brand.
“Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands.” ( — Wikipedia)
Afraid to miss out on something, designers tend to get stuck in tons of links, projects, webinars…
We rarely take a time for self-reflection. All we need to do is invest some more time in discovering who we are, both personally and professionally.
Big tasks are hard to embrace. Building a personal brand is heck of a big task for a designer like myself, as it is time-consuming and very personal. Splitting the process into manageable chunks should make it easier.
1.Define your goal.
What do you want to achieve by building a personal brand? Big goals are great, but I prefer goals that are realistic. Use the SMART goal technique if you are struggling.
Example: I will launch a personal website and double my rates by October 1. (let’s take it as an example for the further steps)
2. Plan.
Define a starting point and build your brand gradually. And by gradually I mean working on it every single day.
I like using Trello for planning, but anything will do. Define all your TODOs for this month and prioritize them. Try to be very specific creating small tasks.
Example: “write a tweet about putting users first; make 5 connections on Linkedin; read 1 article about marketing myself; research designer logos”.
3. Do one small thing every day.
When you have the inspiration, you can jump to creating the identity elements. When the day is hard, write a tweet. Do not be too hard on yourself, do not judge how big of a step you took today. It is still a step towards your goal.
4. Learn.
You will likely change your logo a dozen times. Your first blog post will likely be read by only a few people. Industry influencers will not retweet your brilliant statement. But these pieces will give you the chance to see how your audience responds. Based on this information, your plan will change. And maybe, you will refine your goal on the go also.
And when you learn something, you start over to learn a bit more.
“Building a profitable personal brand online is not a sprint, and something that happens overnight. Don’t aim for perfection early on. Instead allow your brand to evolve naturally over time and focus on providing massive value and over deliver to your target audience. Then you will get more clear over your message and brand as well.” ( — Navid Moazzez)
Tips that everyone is talking about:
- Treat your brand as a product
I like the idea of treating myself as a product that becomes better over time (if it does not get neglected). The same approach works for a designer’s personal brand.
Creating a personal brand is similar to creating a product. The only difference is that you don’t have a team of 20 developers, marketing and social media specialists (…yet). You are a cross-functional team of 1 person. Develop the MVP and roll it out for everyone to see. Get feedback, fail, iterate and change with the market.
- Be clear about who you are
Strong brands are clear about who they are. They are honest. They stay true to their values.
Defining your goals and who you want to be on the market is the biggest part of creating a brand. This is the core that will last and make your brand different from all those small trendy ones that come and go. If you need to refine your values — show them to the audience and get the feedback. Just remember to stay true to the values you’ve created. - Screw trends
Are you planning to be on the market for years? If the answer is “yes”, then you should not be thinking about trends. Think “strategy”, “clients”, “customer experience”, “people” or whatever resonates with you. If your goal is to create something long lasting, you will not have time to change your website every year, adding that fancy bold typeface or removing elements that are so last season. - Define what you want
Designers are always excited to create, be it a state of the art business card or a complex app. Doing a little bit of everything may be good for a while, but if you’ve already defined your true passion — stick to it. If you are a pro at creating presentations — market yourself that way. If you want to only create logos and nothing else — let your clients know. It’s great if you are a T-shaped professional. But having a specific set of services is also OK — it will help you stay focused on your goals. - Do not be afraid
I know designers who are extremely professional but only known in their companies. Normally, when I ask them about personal branding, I something like:
“I just need to take this one course…”
“I am not comfortable opening up to the world online”
“I am not an expert, I only have … years of experience”
Basically, all these come down to fear of disapproval. This is something that’s keeping us from so many wonderful new beginnings. And online, no one knows what your education or your experience is. You are free to tell your own story.
“In essence, a brand is nothing more than the story that users recall when they think of you.” ( — Laura Busche)
Recourses
Building a personal brand is not the easiest thing to do. If you don’t feel like dedicating yourself to such a big project, thats fine. But if you feel like you are ready to share your story — now is the perfect time. You never know, when that state of the art business card will change your life.
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