Okay, so you’ve created a personal brand for yourself — congratulations! Now it’s time to spread the word. Personal brand strategy firm Brand Builders Group identifies the fourth and final stage of developing a personal brand as “Brand Maximization,” the time when you pull out all of the stops to spread awareness of your brand. This is when you scale.
In a world where the future of conferences, seminars, live events, and everyday networking are deeply uncertain, you need to know how to leverage tech to your own advantage. Every great personal brand has a whole arsenal of applications and software tools behind it, and here are a few that can help you get started:
1. Google Analytics
First things first: you need to be able to know exactly how quantitatively successful your brand is at any given time. Google Analytics is the leading platform for pulling data from across the internet and getting it to you in a simple, comprehensible format. A strong personal brand will have content across the web in the form of ads, blogs, guest pieces, and more — only with a strong tool such as Google Analytics can you compile data on the success of this content with ease and efficiency.
2. Grammarly
At a time when the future of conferences and networking events is very much up in the air, your web-based content needs to be stronger than ever in order to pick up the slack. Grammarly should be your first line of defense against sloppy writing; not only does it catch spelling and grammatical errors better than typical word processors, it can also iron out clunky phrasings and generally improve the overall quality of your content. Your online presence is often the first way that people come in contact with your personal brand, so you need applications like Grammarly that ensure it’s in tip-top shape.
3. Canva
Unless you’re a graphic designer, crafting the right visuals for your personal brand can be a big challenge. Self-designed sites almost always turn out subpar, and hiring out someone else to do it can lead to creative inconsistencies and big bills when all is said and done. Canva includes hundreds of different prefab designs and templates that can help you create professional-grade materials quickly and with little-to-no experience required. All you need to do is sign up and find a visual palette that works for your brand — all that’s left is to fill it in.
4. Buffer
These days, active social media accounts are the foundation of any strong brand, personal or otherwise. With several different social networks to navigate, coordinating your posts can quickly become tedious and time-consuming. Buffer helps you manage this by allowing you to schedule posts across any number of platforms, allowing you to plan your online activity as far in advance as you’d like — saving you plenty of time in the process.
5. SubjectLine
SubjectLine is a bit different than the other options on this list: it’s extremely niche, it doesn’t need to be downloaded, and it’s entirely free. Any time you’re writing crucial emails or planning some important blog posts, use SubjectLine to evaluate the marketing potential of the title you’re going to use. SubjectLine may seem limited in its usages, but it’s impossible to overstate the importance of titling things appropriately — it’s the first aspect of your content that people see, and you need to be able to catch their attention effectively.
6. Google Alerts
Good branding isn’t just about producing the right content: it’s also about being aware of the content produced by others. Google Alerts is the most reliable way to know who’s publishing what and when — it allows you to get notifications about key content hitting the web sent straight to your inbox, ensuring that you’re always on the bleeding edge of the conversation. If you want your brand to be relevant you have to know what’s out there, and Google Alerts is the best way of guaranteeing that you do.
Tech can help you build a powerful brand for yourself, but only if you use the right tools. By starting with a few of the options on this list, you can fast-track your personal brand to where you want it to be.
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