A personal brand is your reputation. Ed Latimore, former heavyweight boxer and self-improvement guru, built an impressive Twitter presence. In fact, he’s one of the biggest unverified accounts! He shares his wisdom on how to build a successful brand on social media.
Three steps to building a personal brand
- Live t
ransparently - Be interesting
- Share what you learn and experience
- You only need to reach 1% of all English speakers to have a big following.
- You have to sacrifice some of your privacy. This will compel you to be open and honest.
- People want to follow a real person, thus will trust your authority on things more.
- Being open with your own story means you’re open to communication.
- Authenticity is impossible to fake.
- Let people see your flaws, this will prove you’re a real human.
How to be interesting
- You don’t need a tragic story or insane talents.
- Just be dedicated to something.
- Uniqueness + accomplishment + expression = interesting
- Uniqueness – tell your story
- Accomplishment – concrete body of work
- You don’t need to be the best, rather be different.
- People want a hero to look towards.
Share your experiences
- People will hear the same thing from a 1,000 different sources but hearing it from you sounds more believable.
- Document what you learned in some way, whether in a blog, podcast, etc.
- Find what you talk about a lot and have some level of expertise.
Avoid niching
Instead live your life authentically and don’t paint yourself into a corner.- Niching is for businesses.
- Personalities don’t fit neatly into specific niches.
- The more authentic you are, the stronger your personal brand.
How to make money from your personal brand
- Build a brand and a network.
- This takes time.
- Promoting and selling.
- Share your experiences so it doesn’t feel like hard selling.
Other tips
- The worst thing you can do for your personal brand
is be racist, antagonizing, hateful, creepy, just be polite. A lot of accounts during the election gained popularity overnight, but in order to achieve that you’re gonna have to antagonize lots of people and possibly get banned. - People will take screenshots of what you said and take it out of context.
- Be productive and put stuff out there.
- Be careful what you say when sliding into someone’s DMs.