Do you know what started the personal branding craze? In 1997, Tom Peters wrote a highly popular article, named The Brand Called You. He revealed a pretty interesting fact: it’s the Age of the Individual. If you want to be successful in anything, you have to become your own brand.
Two decades later, the concept of personal branding is even more important. Just type your name on Google. What do you see? It’s the same thing a potential employer or a person interested in your business will see. The personal branding methods are all about improving those results.
Are you wondering what YouTube has to do with that?
Tony Richards, a career expert from BestEssays, makes the connection: “The number of video views on YouTube is getting close to 5 billion per day. That proves: people love watching videos. When you’re trying to show people who you are, will they prefer watching a video or reading an article? I assure you: the video will win the contest.”
Let’s get into details, shall we? How can you use YouTube to boost the personal branding process? Here are some tips that will make it work:
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Develop the Perfect Channel
How will you call the YouTube channel? Since you’re using it for personal branding, it’s okay to use your name as the name of the channel. Charlotte Tilbury, a celebrity makeup artist, does that. However, you may also think of a unique channel name that conveys its purpose and your personality. Karlie Kloss, an American supermodel, has a YouTube channel named Klossy.
In addition to the name of your channel, you’ll have to pay attention to other details:
- The About section has to be perfect. Introduce yourself and explain what the channel is about. If you check out the bios in popular YouTube channels, you’ll see that they also include links to the personal website, social media, and LinkedIn account.
- Experiment with the settings. YouTube allows you to customize your channel. For example, you can set your last video to be featured, but you can also have a special feature video at the profile’s homepage.
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Organize the Channel
The homepage of your channel will have different sections: an avatar, a banner, a channel trailer, and related channels. If you check out the Food Wishes channel, you’ll notice it also includes organized playlists, such as Christmas Brunch Favorites, Grilling Recipes, Tips and Techniques, and so on.
The way you organize the channel is part of the personal branding process.
- Use a logo or a nice profile picture as an avatar. It should be a statement photo that makes your personal brand memorable.
- The same thing goes for the banner. Pick a great one. It should be unique and it should represent the essence of your channel.
- Feature organized playlists. The visitors of your homepage should find exactly what they are looking for without wasting time.
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Explain Who You Are
When you start a YouTube channel, it has to reflect your personality. It’s not about promoting your business. It’s about showing what you do. Instead of the brand, you should make your profession and personal interests the foundation of the channel.
If, for example, you’re a graphic designer, you can share tips for an advanced target audience. Filming prank videos won’t fit into this personal branding strategy. It’s all about showing what you want people to see when they look you up.
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Optimize the Content on the Channel to Get More Traffic
In its essence, YouTube is a search engine for videos. Just like you optimize your content to be found on Google, you should do the same thing for YouTube search.
- Include metadata for your videos. YouTube pays attention to the title, description, annotations, and tags.
- Find keywords relevant to your topic. The ones you get from SEMrush, Google Search Console and Moz should work just fine. Include them in the descriptions of your videos.
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Find the Aspect of Uniqueness
If you check out a popular YouTube channel, such as Food Wishes for example, you’ll notice that all videos are different, but connected with an aspect of uniqueness. They have the same intro. The chef starts each video with the same line. It’s not only about the intro. It’s also about the humor and unique voice that makes you recognize a video by the chef even if you don’t catch the start.
You need to find such aspects of uniqueness for your channel.
- Make a very brief and simple, but attractive intro that you’ll feature on all videos.
- Find your unique vibe and keep it consistent. The topics, your voice, and your body language are important for the personal branding process.
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Find Your Niche and Focus on It
If the videos have no connection to one another, individual ones still have a chance to go viral. However, they will be just random videos that got popular. They won’t present a personal brand. You should focus on making all videos popular. That’s why it’s important to focus on a specific niche and tackle connected topics.
- Make a plan to elaborate connected topics. Film multiple videos and feature playlists on your channel. That’s how you’ll encourage the visitors to spend more time with you. This strategy will make them remember you.
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Stay on Schedule
You may film a really cool video and make it viral. Will that make you popular? Maybe. Will it help you develop a personal brand? Only and only if you continue producing videos.
If you get subscribers and they keep coming back at your channel to see more videos, then you’re using YouTube for personal branding.
- Keep publishing videos on a regular basis. That’s how you’ll be reminding the followers about your personal brand.
Setting up a YouTube channel is easy. Starting to film videos that develop your personal brand; that’s the hard part. Hopefully, the tips above will help you start. Are you ready to start?
