The 5 c's of a Personal Brand -

A personal brand is much more than a logo. You need Robyn Graham’s 5 C’s of personal branding!

Robyn is a Certified Brand Strategist, Personal Branding and Business Coach and host of The Second Phase Podcast. Robyn helps her customers find clarity, confidence, and connection with their brand messaging to build relationships that convert to profits. Her work includes brand marketing strategy, personal brand coaching, branded photography content development, professional headshots, and fine art photography.

Now let’s talk about branding. It’s a term you hear all the time and see online. But what exactly is branding? Well for starters, it’s not your logo. And you to understand that if you are a personal brand, people need to see your face. Why?

That’s what my chat with Robyn is all about!

“I wanted to help women be present in their business, and create images and visual content for them to help them stand out online.” ~ Robyn Graham

What a personal brand IS NOT

A personal brand is not what you say it is. It is what other people think, say and feel about you whether you’re in the room or not in the room. A personal brand is how you differentiate yourself from others in your industry. A personal brand is not your logo, your fonts, your typography or your color palette. That is your brand identity and your brand identity is very important for recognizability.

What exactly is a personal brand?

Your personal brand is your story. It’s how you tell your story so that your audience can connect with you emotionally. Your story is how you can become recognizable and memorable, and then shareable. But also, so that once those things happen, you they you really build that know love and trust factor. And once that happens, your audience becomes more clear on what you do. You can build a business around that and help them understand how you are going to help them. How you will be the hero of their journey. So they can create their story of success.

The Importance of Showing Your Face Online

If you’re not front and center in your business, people don’t know who we are. And our eyes and our smile are the gateway to our soul. That’s our essence! That’s how people are going to build that emotional connection with you. A logo is a great identifier, and people might remember it. But what they’re really going to remember is what you look like and how seeing you made them feel.

You should also have your picture on the homepage of your website. The second someone lands on your website, they see you and they can immediately connect with you. And your about page should have a picture of you as well. A headshot picture is simply a picture of basically your face. It encourages that connection with who you are. Branded photography is more telling your story. It shows the behind the scenes; where you work, how you work, maybe you working with clients, those things about you.

For instance, I love coffee! So photos of me with my coffee cup to show a little bit of my personality besides just the business side. This way people can connect with me as a person as a whole, not just a person, as a business person. These pictures are sprinkled throughout my website and should help me be cohesive across all other platforms.

There should be a picture that shows your eyes and your smile as your profile picture on every single one of your social media platforms. If it’s the same picture as on your homepage, great, because then it makes you super recognizable. Be sure to look straight at your audience. That way whoever is looking at your profile picture can really connect with you. Think of Instagram. You have nine squares of your feed that usually pop up when you first go to someone’s Instagram account. Your picture with your face should be in at least one of those nine squares. It can be an introductory post, or it could be a post that is provides a tip to your audience. Share a little bit about you as a business person so that people can really get to understand who you are, why they should work with you. But also get that feeling of trust, as they as they see you and learn more about you.

The Five C’s of Personal Branding

Clarity ~ When we talk about clarity, clarity is a two way street, it is very, very important for you to have internal clarity with what you do, how you do it, why you do it and who you serve. So we want to talk about your niche, or what it is that you do and then who it is that you serve, you have to be 100% clear on who that person is that you’re going to solve a problem for. Because without having clarity on what you do and who you serve, you can’t effectively communicate your story, you can’t effectively communicate what you do and how you do it. And the problem that you’re going to solve, to help that other person that you’re meant to serve, be the hero of their journey.

Cohesive ~ This is where your brand identity comes in because you want to have a cohesive feel from your website to your social media platforms. So your color palette should be on your website and should be splashed throughout your social media feeds. And use the same pictures that represent you so that people easily recognize you. All of that makes your brand cohesive.

Consistency ~ This is more about that content that you’re putting out. What is the messaging on your website? Does that message feel consistent with what you’re putting out on Instagram? So maybe you’re saying you are a process engineer on your website. But on Instagram, you’re talking about creating social media content? Well, what do you actually do? Figure out how those two things go together. You want to be very consistent in your messaging. And then again, your visual content, your brand aesthetics, your brand identity, all of that should be consistent. You don’t want your website to be , hot pinks and turquoise and then on social media you use browns and navy blue. It doesn’t flow; it doesn’t feel cohesive or consistent.

Content ~ Your content should be cohesive and consistent. That brand message is at the core is who you are and what what you do and who you serve. But you always want it to entertain, educate and enlighten or inspire. Make sure you have some sort of value in that content. To get people’s buy in, to trust you, to show that you are an expert and an authority in your space. Also just to keep them engaged and coming back wanting more, and then obviously building the trust factor.

Community ~ This is important because you can start with the community that you have. So you have family, you have friends, you have you know, your, your kids, sports team, people, you have your kids, the kids from school, you have all these parents, right, that you’ve connected with over the years, or these people you’ve connected with, start with that small community, and then let that grow. It will ultimately grow by itself. Invite people into your journey and tell them about your business! Tell your community what you’re doing. If they want to follow along with your journey they will do so.

Community is also a great place to collaborate. So many times with especially social media, we find ourselves comparing ourselves to other people out there and what they’re doing others in our space, like, oh, gosh, they’re doing that I’m not doing that, maybe I should be doing that. So instead of thinking of it as comparison or competition, think about how you can collaborate with others to not only build yourself up, but help build them up. As you do that, you grow your referral source. And you help yourself become more of an author, authority and expert in your space.

How to DIY Your Brand Photos

If you’re interested in standing out online but can’t afford a professional photographer, you can take your own photos with just a few resources. Lighting is key! If you are doing anything related to photography and representing yourself online via still photography or video, you have to be well lit. And the good news is that through different resources online, you can actually purchase a ring light relatively inexpensively and they come with a tripod. So if you want to stand or you want to be sitting however you want your image to be or your video to be presented, you can do that just using this inexpensive tool.

Robyn has a download on her website, Smartphone Photography for Business. All of the tips shared are also in that ebook. Click here to grab a copy.

To hear all of my chat with Robyn, listen to episode 61 of the podcast. Click below and tune in on your favorite platform.

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