9 Steps to Starting a Successful Personal Brand in 2024 (From Scratch)
Building a personal brand in 2024 is by far one of the most rewarding things you can do for yourself. But the major challenge for many people(including some of those reading this post) is that you are either too afraid to put yourself out there, or you are overthinking the process and you have zero online presence.
However, most of the big personal brands you know today all started from zero. They had the exact same concerns as you do. The difference is that they started anyway, irrespective of the excuses (however legit the excuses are).
This means that building a personal brand from scratch is completely achievable even as a total beginner.
By the end of this article, you will have a full understanding of exactly how to start your brand this year and grow it rapidly.
I will be breaking down the key steps I took on my journey to building a wildly successful personal brand.
My Personal Brand Journey
Let me start by briefly sharing my journey of how I built my brand. This background will provide some useful context for the tips I’ll be sharing later.
I started back in 2017, around the same time influencers like MrBeast and NELK were getting started. At the time, I had a thriving dropshipping business and was documenting my entire process daily on YouTube, attracting almost no views. I ended up deleting the entire channel out of embarrassment.
My real journey kicked off in 2020 after seeing many dropshipping YouTubers gain insane popularity simply by authentically sharing their rags to riches stories. All their videos had horrible audio, weak hooks, and didn’t evoke any emotion. So knew I could create much higher quality content than them.
Having gone through the same journey of building a successful ecommerce business, I had a goldmine of raw, authentic footage to work with. I combed through years of old Snapchat memories capturing my ups and downs. I carefully crafted a captivating video showcasing my transformation that ended up getting over 2 million views!
My first video put me on the map, but I quickly made the mistake of testing out countless content styles instead of doubling down on what worked. I ended up confusing my new followers who were only interested in more dropshipping content.
The key takeaway is that authentic storytelling videos that showcased my business journey gained me the most traction. I eventually funneled my short-form platform into long-form YouTube content as well.
A personal brand allows you to share your message, expertise and passion with the world in a way that was never possible before social media and the internet.
Now let’s get into the step-by-step blueprint for building your personal brand in 2024!
1. Find Someone Achieving The Result You Want
I cannot emphasize this enough, your starting point should be identifying one or two people already doing what you want to achieve and model them (not copy them). Study their frameworks and analyze why they are successful. As the saying goes – “good artists borrow, great artists steal”.
However, while it’s fine to model their hooks, audio, formats etc., you MUST inject your own authentic personality and journey into your content. Viewers will immediately recognize disingenuity and scamminess, which will negatively impact your brand instantly.
Just like with my first viral video, I borrowed a similar hook to existing dropshipping videos but made it 10X better by keeping it real and telling my story. I focused on improving factors like audio quality, editing rhythm, vocal tonality, and authentic storytelling.
2. Develop Your Distinct Style
Once you start posting content, you need to play around with different formats, hooks, and creative angles to determine what resonates best with your audience and aligns with your passions.
I fell into this trap initially. My first video blew up fast. But instead of doubling down on similar personal entrepreneurship stories, I started testing all kinds of random content types. Consequently, my viewership dropped quickly.
People followed me because of a specific video style and topic they connected deeply with. When I deviated too far from that niche content, it violated their expectations.
You certainly want to avoid pigeon-holing yourself creatively. But especially early on, it’s advantageous to focus on developing audience-pleasing signature content and becoming known for that specific style or genre. Once your brand grows, you will have more creative freedom to expand your repertoire.
Testing different creative directions is part of the learning process. But make sure to take notes on what your audience best responds to. Master that style first before branching out too widely.
3. Obsess Over Authenticity
Perhaps the most fundamental yet overlooked component of impactful personal brand building is authenticity. Viewers have an intuitiveness for detecting “real” versus manufactured personalities. That gut feeling of genuine connection or misalignment will translate in their engagement.
Many nascent creators err by overly engineering a persona instead of highlighting their true essence and stories. The most magnetic brands grow through courageously sharing their human journey – vulnerabilities, quirks, passions and all.
My breakout content focused on raw, behind-the-scenes glimpses at my entrepreneurial origin story. I didn’t sugarcoat the struggles and lessons learned in those formative years scraping to build my ecommerce stores. That authenticity enabled viewers to relate to and root for my journey’s progression.
You should tilt more towards showcasing the vibrant dimensions of your personality, interests and experiences.
This can’t be stressed enough. Viewers will immediately recognize when someone is fake, scammy or disingenuous. It kills your brand instantly. Tell real stories from your real life. Speak confidently and openly. Let your passion and personality shine through!
4. Study the Algorithms
The key short-form platforms to master are TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Each has its own unique algorithm you must study everyday.
Set aside an hour a day for “conscious scrolling” on each platform. Consciously analyze videos with over 100k likes and take detailed notes on:
- Hooks: Why did this grab your attention?
- Emotion: What feelings does it evoke?
- Audience: Who is this video’s target audience? Could the concept go viral?
- Shareability: What makes this highly sharable?
Let me break down point #3 with an example…
I once promoted a cupping therapy device that provided various health benefits like relieving back pain, migraines and stimulating muscle recovery.
The product is the cupping device. The audience consists of those interested in these health benefits – back pain sufferers, gym goers, migraine patients etc.
My video acted as the bridge between product and audience, creating the product-audience fit.
There were so many potential audiences that could be targeted by creatively positioning the broad uses of the product. The key though is ensuring your video appeals to a large enough audience to gain traction.
Viral personal brand videos connect products/services with audiences starving for that exact solution. My dropshipping video delivered massive value to an audience of ambitious entrepreneurs.
Consciously studying platform algorithms takes time but is the only way to engineer viral content.
5. Double Down on What Works
As i mentioned earlier, it’s temptingly easy to want to expand your creative repertoire once a specific video format takes off. However, when starting out, playing it safe by replicating your traction-gaining content is wise.
Cultivate an intimate relationship with your audience first through a signature style they know and love you for. Think about top YouTubers like MrBeast who have built their empires on variations of stunt videos. He clearly defined his personal brand before expanding his content formats once his core viewership solidified.
Think of your brand as a bank account. You must make enough viral content “deposits” with your target audience before making any “withdrawals” to experiment with new content angles.
6. Expand into Long-Form YouTube
In other words, funnel your Short-Form Viewers to your Long-Form content.
Once you have a solid short-form audience on TikTok and Instagram, start expanding into long-form YouTube content. Repurpose your best performing short-form videos into longer, richer YouTube videos.
This will prime the YouTube algorithm to promote your content, and provide multiple revenue stream through ad revenue. YouTube also breeds intensely loyal followers that consume endless amounts of your content.
Funneling selects shorts into YouTube compilations or vlogs is a seamless bridge continuing storylines or expanding concepts initially teased in short form. This taps into viewers’ curiosity to learn more about your personal brand.
Additionally, promoting your YouTube channel directly through overlays or captions within viral shorts is tremendously effective. The traffic surge from shorts shares will shoot your long-form viewership and subscribers sky-high right off the bat.
7. Build a Content Team
When your personal brand starts gaining major traction across platforms, it’s time to build a content team, starting with an editor.
While video editing skills help, it’s almost more important that your editor meshes well with your creative style and vision. Be prepared to constantly give feedback and direction to ensure consistency.
Also, resist any urges to cut corners with a subpar editor. Even the slightest of change in video style will be noticed by your hyper-loyal fans. Invest the time and money to build a team that aligned with your brand identity. Don’t rush your hiring process.
Once you start delegating content creation, you will have so much more bandwidth to take your content quality to the next level!
If you are on a budget you can hire virtual assistants/editors on fiverr.
8. Distribution and Scaling
This is when you truly start exploding your personal brand growth.
Compile all your best performing long and short form content onto a massive Google Drive available to an army of content editors and account managers.
Engage your team with the task of repurposing content for distribution across a vast network of connected channels all funneling back to your central accounts.
Top influencers like Andrew Tate, Gary Vee and Alex Hormozi have mastered this distribution model. They film a single podcast then have teams instantly spin endless content variations for deployment across 20+ TikTok, Instagram, YouTube accounts.
Within days, a single podcast appearance can generate millions of views and followers across platforms. This distribution machine is how the biggest personal brands on the internet dominate.
9. Monetize Your Influence
Once you reach scale comes the fun part – monetization! You likely already earn ad revenue from YouTube. Additional options include:
Selling Your Time: Become a consultant charging premium rates for your expertise if you established your brand in a valuable niche.
Selling Knowledge: Create online courses or communities around your specialty.
Sell Products: Partnerships, merchandising and your own products encompasses an infinite monetization potential once you reach millions of loyal followers.
Keep in mind that products should come much later down the road once you’ve truly solidified yourself as an authority. At lower levels, services and digital products are better routes for leveraging your personal expertise.
Yes – it is very easy to view coaching and digital products negatively if you don’t deliver insane value. But, an ethical personal brand with authentic content will attract followers who value your teachings. Simply over-deliver and transform lives!
Conclusion
There you have my complete step-by-step blueprint to launch your personal brand in 2024! I hope my story and lessons learned from my journey to build a massively popular personal brand provide tremendous value in your quest for influence and income online.
