Personal Branding Framework — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] When I started posting about marketing in 2020, I  didn't have a positioning statement and I didn't   have a niche mapped out. I was a secondyear  student sharing what I was learning. Today,   that's grown into 620,000 followers on LinkedIn,  190,000 on Instagram, 20,000 newsletter readers,  

[00:18] and 600 paying members of my marketing community.  All built completely organically without ads. But   to. I built it the way creators do, and that  difference is the whole reason it worked. This  

[00:34] is part one of a four-part series where I break  down exactly how I've built my personal brand. Let's start with the word everybody uses and  almost nobody defines, which is positioning. So,  

[00:50] what does it really mean? Positioning is what  you want to be known for and who you want to   be useful to. It isn't your color palette.  It isn't your bio and it's not your tone of   voice document. It's a decision and you either  make it deliberately or the internet makes it  

[01:07] for you based on whatever you happen to post.  This is where a lot of personal brand advice   gets it backwards. We're told to figure  out exactly who we are. Choose a niche,   write the perfect positioning statement, and  then start publishing. But if you want to win  

[01:23] on the internet, it has to be the other  way around. The audience comes first and   your positioning is the reason they stay. Being  known for one thing is what makes you findable,   recommendable, and worth following.  Here's what we'll go through. First,  

[01:38] the difference between how creators build a brand  versus how marketers approach it. Then, the exact   framework that built my personal brand and changed  my life. And I've turned those four questions into   a worksheet you can use to build yours, too.  You can find it in the link in the description.

[01:57] There are two ways to build a personal brand.  You can plan it all out fast or you can start   moving and figure it out as you go. At uni, I was  taught the fast way and I was taught it strictly.  

[02:10] Marketing was corporate and transactional. You  plan before you're allowed to touch anything. And   the whole point of a personal brand was to land  you a job. I think that's still the version most   people are taught. You think, you define, and then  you execute, planning it on paper before you go  

[02:27] off and do it. The way I built my personal brand  went the other way entirely. I published, watch   what worked, and got clearer about what I should  be known for as I went. There's a name for that  

[02:40] difference, and it comes from Henry Mintbug. It's  called the deliberate versus emergent strategy. A   deliberate strategy is planned up front. You set  the intention in detail and then you execute it as  

[02:53] intended. It's how a campaign works and it's the  right call when you already know the destination.   An e margin strategy is a pattern that forms over  time. One you didn't expressly intend when you  

[03:06] started. You act. You notice what's landing and  the strategy is then shaped by that. Mintberg's   point is that deliberate strategy gives you  direction but emergent strategy is how you learn   what works in practice. Deliberate is writing,  "I'm the go-to person for B2B email marketing  

[03:24] in your notes app in week one, then forcing every  post to fit it." Imagine is posting about email,   social, careers, and copywriting for 3 months,  seeing that the email posts are the ones that  

[03:36] people save and share and only then calling  yourself the email person. A marketer fast   personal brand is deliberate where you think  fast and then do. But a creator fast personal   brand is a margin where you do fast and the  thinking happens live. The moment you start  

[03:53] writing a strategy down, you start defending it.  You stop adjusting because changing course now   means admitting you were wrong. That's a trap of  writing your personal brand document in month one  

[04:06] because you've locked yourself into a version  of you that you invented before a single person   responded to you. Publishing first means every  post becomes a mini testing oneonone. You find   out which idea gets quoted back to you, which one  gets saved, and which one gets turned into a DM.  

[04:22] The positioning that comes out of that describes  something real rather than something you get. So, let's move on to the framework because if  a statement isn't the starting point, what is?  

[04:36] I have four questions for you. Answer them as you  go and by the end of this video you'll be able to   identify your positioning rather than having it  written fast. The first question is around your  

[04:49] subject. What could you talk about repeatedly  without running out of things to say? Look at   your saved folder, your search history, and the  tabs that you've got open. What's the thing that   colleagues come to you about? What is the topic  that you're sending your friends links about at  

[05:06] 11 at night? That is your short list. Could  you write 50 posts on it without repeating   yourself? And can you name the person who'd stop  scrolling for it? If you can't picture them,   the topic is too broad. Because a topic only  becomes positioning once it's a specific  

[05:22] person on the other end of it. For me, that was  marketing. In 2020, I was a secondyear university   student studying marketing, advertising, and  branding. I was job hunting into a pandemic  

[05:34] and the space I wanted to learn in didn't exist  yet. So in June that year, I started an Instagram   page about what I was learning, not about what  I already knew. In January the following year,   I moved it across to LinkedIn as graduation  loomed and the job search got real. That's  

[05:50] the part that gives you permission to start. Now,  you don't need to be qualified enough to publish.   You don't need to be interesting enough to keep  going while nobody's watching because nobody's   watching for a while. My first year got me to  around 40,000 followers on LinkedIn and 25,000 on  

[06:07] Instagram. And that felt huge, but it built slowly  from zero. Now, notice that this is the creator   move, not the marketer one. A marketer would have  researched the niche and written down the plan,   whereas I just started publishing. Question two is  all about your argument. What do you believe about  

[06:25] that subject that a reasonable person would  disagree with? The subject gets you started,   but it doesn't make you distinctive because plenty  of people post about marketing. What makes you   distinctive is the opinion you keep coming back to  without meaning to. It's the argument you'd have  

[06:42] at dinner, in the comments, or in a meeting, and  the one you'd defend if somebody pushed back. It   has to be something a reasonable person could  disagree with. Because if nobody could argue,   then it isn't a position, it's a description. My  opinion is that most of marketing is noise. That  

[06:59] the foundations are the part that matters and that  you should be very critical of nearly everything   you see online. Everything I write, teach, and do  goes through that lens. So, when a trend blows up,  

[07:12] my first question isn't how do I use this? It's  whether it matters at all. And my opinion isn't   my content calendar. I don't make posts about how  most of marketing is noise. I put everything else  

[07:24] through that filter. So, I cover the same platform  updates and campaigns and trends as everyone else,   but it's my angle that's different. Question  number three is, what is your mission? What are  

[07:37] you trying to change or help people do? An opinion  is the thing you believe and it doesn't tell you   what to make, but a mission does. And that is  the version you can build a whole content plan   on top of, which is where we're going in episode  two. My mission is to make marketing simple and  

[07:54] accessible so people can tell the difference  between what matters and what's noise. It's   never been on a website or in a bio. And it  doesn't need to be public, but it does need to   be true and specific enough to say no with. Here  is what that sounds like in practice. For years,  

[08:12] everybody said that short form video was the  only way to grow. And I didn't chase it. Most   of my content and most of my business is still  carousels and writing because that's what makes   marketing simple for the people I'm talking to.  The mission chose the format for me rather than  

[08:28] letting the trend decide. And our final question,  what are our audience signals? Who's responding   and what are they telling you you're useful for?  You pick the direction, but your audience sharpens  

[08:42] the definition. Audience signal is the feedback  the internet hands you every time you press post.   And once you can read it, you can stop guessing  and start following what's already working. So,  

[08:54] what counts as a signal? Now, it's not likes  because likes are the easiest thing to give and   they tell you almost nothing. The signals that  matter are the ones that cost people something.  

[09:06] What gets saved because somebody wanted to keep  it? What gets shared because someone wanted to   be seen next to it? What gets quoted back to you  weeks later because it's stuck and it turned into   language they use? And what lands in your DMs  because it hit a nerve and they wanted to tell  

[09:22] you about it privately. Watch for the topic that  keeps pulling those reactions and the specific   thing people start coming to you for. That's your  audience telling you what you're useful for. How   do you tell what to lean into? Well, you look for  the repeat. One post doing well is a fluke and  

[09:39] chasing it will send you around in circles. The  same theme landing three four times is a signal   and that is the one that you build on. The sweet  spot is the overlap between what you actually want   to keep making and what keeps landing because  that's what you can sustain once the novelty of  

[09:55] posting wears off. But what if you're early and  you have no audience and no feedback yet? Well,   the signal is quieter, but it's still there.  You just need to read a different one. Start  

[10:07] with what excites you, the topic you can't stop  making things about, even when it's getting five   views. Then look at your own space as the reader  because you're a consumer before you're a creator.  

[10:19] What makes you stop and comment? What topics get  you excited? What do you feel compelled to repost?   The posts that pull that out of you are showing  you what works and you already have that instinct   before you're on the other side of it. Then  treat your real responses as gold because one  

[10:35] thoughtful DM from a stranger tells you more  than 100 passive likes ever will. That's how   I started watching what I was drawn to and others  and which of my own posts quietly got saved. The  

[10:47] strategy only sharpened later once there were  enough people responding to see a pattern.   My audience went from students to graduates  to working marketers to a paid community and   a business. So, who I was talking to changed  every few years. But what never changed was  

[11:03] the mission underneath it. Making marketing  simple and cutting through the noise. And   that's the reason I didn't have to start again  from zero each time. My audience was never my   positioning. My point of view was. That's  the difference between choosing a niche,  

[11:18] which is just picking a topic, and developing a  point of view you can carry across any audience. Here's where you're expecting the big mistake.  The decision I'd rebar if I could start over,  

[11:32] and there is one. I spent too long trying to  cover everything, worried that if I got specific,   I would shrink my audience. And it took me a  while to trust if you're speaking to everyone,  

[11:45] you are speaking to no one. The thing I would  tell myself is that being early is when you can   afford to test because no one's watching yet.  Once you've got followers and a brand people   recognize, testing gets harder and you've got  expectations to manage. With no eyes on you,  

[12:02] there's nothing to protect. So you can experiment  properly and get as specific as you can without   boxing yourself in. The rest I wouldn't change and  not because it was perfect because it definitely  

[12:14] wasn't. It's because I don't think positioning  is a job you ever finish. Over the last year my   identity has shifted again from something  like a thought leader to an entrepreneur   and I'm walking the whole thing out all over  again. I still get lost in the writing and  

[12:30] the publishing and even running through these  four questions today. I can see my own answers   moving and a clearer path showing up as I  go. So that's my lesson for you. Personal   branding isn't a document you write once and  follow. It's a practice you keep rerunning as  

[12:46] you change. Look back at where we started with  deliberate versus emergent and you'll see the   direction was deliberate and the definition  was emergent. I picked the lens, and a few  

[12:58] hundred,000 people told me what it was good for.  So, if you've been answering along, you should   have four things. Your subject, your argument  inside it, the mission you're building on,  

[13:11] and a way to read what your audience tells you and  adjust as they change. That's your positioning.   It's maybe not the comm's document you're used  to as a marketer, but it's got me this far,  

[13:23] and I think it will help you, too. I've built a  positioning statement worksheet with HubSpot that   walks through those same questions so you can  get yours out of your head and onto the page.   It's free and it's linked in the description that  gives you the what. In episode two, I will give  

[13:40] you the how showing you my content calendar,  the tools I used to create, the batching,   and share the details on the month I trusted the  system so much that it fell over. Subscribe to the  

[13:52] HubSpot YouTube channel and turn on notifications  so you don't miss it. And I will see you there.