How To Build An Online Brand without money / minimal resources

-Thread

Whether it’s a business brand or personal brand, we can’t deny that in today’s world having one is essential to aid success in the digital landscape. I’m going to share a few hacks on how to do this with limited resources or no money.

PERSONIFY: Brands only exist in a users mind, they’re defined by individuals and not crowds. If your brand was a person who would it be? If it’s a personal brand what’s its essence? This step is important because people form loyal relationships with people & not products / offer.

To get this right, you can answer these three questions:

• What’s my brands personalty type?
• What’s it’s messaging?
• What’s the tone in which it delivers its messaging?
• How will it relate to my audience / market?

START: Next step is your brands existence, you’ll have to create social accounts for yourself, the content you want to put out and on the platforms you want to put them out on. Namely: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or a website / blog.

STALK: Not literal stalking but now that your accounts are set up, you’ll want to start doing some research on your competitors & personalities that are in the same field or market as you. Call it data collection / observation.

Key Questions — Competitors:

• What are your competitors doing online?
• How are they executing their content?
• What type of this content has the best engagement?
• What are they good at?
• What are they not so good at? (This is your gap and opppurtunity)

Key Questions — Target Audience:

• Who are they? What are their interests?
• What pages / accounts do they follow
• What type of conversations are they engaging in?
• What content are they putting out that you can engage & share?

CONTENT: Now that your accounts are set up & you have an idea of what your brand is, it’s audience and which platforms you need to focus on, it’s time to create content. Good content is anything that is on topic, relavant, engaging and timely to your audience.

This can be created through different mediums such as imagery, copy & videos. You can find post ideas through your research, competitors, podcasts, books social media itself and noteworthy platforms that are of interest to your brand and audience.

COMMUNITY: It’s essential to focus on building a community. A community is formed on ENGAGEMENT more than anything, understanding what your audience wants through your brand and how to better build meaningful and emotional relationships w/ them.

Building a community is a long game, it will require time, effort and crafting quality content over a sustainable and consistent period of time. The benefits however is you’ll be able to leverage your community over partnerships, networks ,opportunities and your own offerings.

COLLABORATE / BARTER: Yes, do it for “exposure” but only if it’s VALUABLE to your brand and aids it with the objectives you’ve set out for yourself. this value will be determined by you and what it brings for your brand & audience.

USE FREE RESOURCES: There are so many online resources, tools and content that give you insight how to better optimize your brand, design an identity and improve your content. Use them.!

REMAIN CONSISTENT: Building anything of value requires a good level of consistency, even more so when it’s an online brand, consistency is not decided by posting 5 times a day but by quality of output & value.

End.