This blog post contains affiliate links, which means I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for using my links.
Starting and growing your business doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money. Many early entrepreneurs make the mistake of misallocating their money and energy.
Part of sustainably and successfully growing your business is developing an entrepreneurial mindset to better prioritize and structure your business needs for growth.
Here are 3 tips for growing a small business to help you start making smart investments that will last for the long run.
Create a healthy relationship with money
Before discussing how to invest in your business, it is important you think about your relationship with money.
Whether you are creating a budget to quit corporate or have already quit, understanding how you relate to money is key.
Take time to understand how your past or current experiences shape how you view money, including how you spend or want to spend your money.
Understanding how you relate to money can help you create financial goals for your business, so you can more easily make decisions.
1. Close your knowledge gap and get paid more
There are various ways to make money, but the key to getting paid consistently and well is mastering your skill and increasing your business knowledge.
How you invest in the early years will differ from person to person, but the one thing every entrepreneur has in common is that they invest to close their knowledge gaps. What do you already know, and what do you need to know to make your business grow?
For example, if you already have a skillset you want to monetize, you are better off spending money on services that help you package your offers to get paid well– you can prioritize a brand or business coach.
If you are pivoting and learning a new skill, you can minimize your expenses by doing free courses on educational platforms like Coursera, EdX, and Hubspot Academy.
Your time and attention are as important as money when you are closing the knowledge gaps. How much time and energy you have will depend on various factors (e.g. if you still have a 9-5, if you have children, if you have caretaking obligations other than children, etc).
Set aside time to deeply focus on your education. Whether it is learning a new skill that will pay more or learning about sales, this knowledge sets the foundation your business needs to grow.
[Pro tip: Track your time with a tool like Toggl for 1-2 weeks. Also track your energy levels throughout the week to understand your energy flow. You will start to see how you can improve your time and energy management to work more effectively]
It can seem boring to learn some of these skills, but having the right knowledge will help you build a sustainable business that consistently brings in money.
And the better you understand how you operate, including what you enjoy doing and not doing, will help you decide how to delegate tasks later. You can then spend more time in your zone of genius and finding new ways to scale your business.
2. Get tools your business needs to move the needle
Don’t get caught up in the hype of logos and building a website. When you first start, spend money on the tools that are necessary for your business.
Unless you are building an e-commerce business or a business around blogging, you don’t need to spend your money on a website.
Canva pro if you are building templates. If you’re not, you can start with the free version. (These customizable branded Canva templates can get your business off to an amazing start!)
Website builders like Shopify if you sell products.
Tools for your wellness like the Vision Book I created, therapy, Calm, or mindset coaching because you are the person behind your business moves
There are many free tools like Google Meet for video calls or Clickup for project management. There are also many tools with free trials to help you decide whether a tool is right for you or not.
As you grow, you can spend more money on more powerful tools, but don’t start overspending on fancy tools that don’t serve you.
The key is to spend money on tools that help you streamline your workflow, so you can spend more time on money-making tasks or on enjoying life because if you are happy and energized, your business benefits from it.
3. Build a brand that connects with potential clients
Building a brand can be a game changer and should come before content pillars or a beautiful feed. Visuals are important to grab attention, but aesthetics without substance will not build a connection with your audience.
Branding is what helps you decide your messaging, niching, and services. If you know your brand, it is easier to make business decisions because your brand is your business compass.
By making brand-aligned decisions, it will be easy for people to understand your brand. The easier it is for people to understand your brand, the easier it is for them to remember it.
In a world where people are increasingly distracted, making it easy for people to remember you will increase awareness and leads for your business.
And because your message is clear, you will also attract aligned clients, so you can work with people who share your values to create the impact you want.
How you spend your first years in business can make it easier or harder to scale later on. Remember that these first few years are all about planting your seed (ideas) in good soil (business foundations).
If you want to build a business that lasts more than 1 or 2 years, take the time to cultivate your business the right way, and you will reap bountiful benefits.
If you are ready to build an online brand that allows you to live a freedom and joy filled life, check out my brand development coaching program. This program gives you hands-on experience creating your brand from scratch, including messaging and social media strategy.
If you want to find your authentic brand strategy, check out this brand strategy quiz I created to help you understand how to show up in your business in alignment with your unique energy, personality & Human Design.
You’ve probably heard someone say there are riches in niches, but as a multi-passionate person you have many interests, and the idea of niching down may feel impossible.
But if you want to build a memorable brand and successful business, creating a niche brand is important.
And niche is not a bad word. It doesn’t mean you can’t show up as your multi-faceted, authentic self.
You can still show up authentically online by bringing your personality into your brand. This is what’s great about personal branding.
The key is to think outside the box to niche outside the box. Here are some tips to leverage your many passions to create a true-to-self niche brand.
If your niche is outside the box, that’s how you should be thinking!
What are niche brands
Before we talk about your passions and figuring out what your niche is, let’s define branding and niche.
What is branding?
The focus of branding is to refine the messaging so that you are attracting the right people with less work. Branding helps you identify foundational elements like your brand purpose.
It tells people why your brand exists, including your vision and your mission. It’s about who you serve and the impact you want to create in the world.
But your messaging doesn’t tell people how you are moving towards your business goals.
This is where your niche comes in.
Niche Definition
Your niche tells people your area of expertise. So Building a niche brand means you are creating a brand within a specific niche, i.e. expertise within an industry.
As a multi-passionate you are better positioned to create a niche brand precisely because of all your interests.
How to create an aligned brand
The key is to look at your different passions to combine them in unique ways that can be monetized..
For example, my messaging is around helping women show up true-to-self and living a vivacious life.
I happen to do this through branding instead of other skills like mindset work or sales coaching. Even though I do talk about those topics in my Brand Development Coaching Program, my title is brand coach.
I chose my brand coaching title because it combines my passion and skills for branding, storytelling, coaching, design, etc.
My niche simply tells people what expertise I chose to monetize. That way no one is ever confused about what I do or who I serve with my business.
So how can you niche down and still show your passions?
Let’s first discuss niching. There are a couple of ways to niche down.
Identify your niche skills
As a multi-passionate, you have many interests and skills. This is your strength!
Your skills can be hard or soft skills you can combine to stand out in the market.
Let’s say you do carpentry but also have a passion for technology, so you learned 3D printing.
Rather than seeing these as separate, you can explore both passions by combining them and creating furniture that uses natural elements with 3D printed elements.
This is the approach we took with my client Elle who is a human design reader and is interested in self-care among other interests. Instead of seeing these as separate, we used this to find her place in the personal development niche.
She used her learned skills and passion for human design readings and self-care to create a brand focusing on energy optimization. This way people know she is a go-to person if they need to optimize their energy to create more mental space and time to live their life.
Here’s how you can do to do the same:
Steps to choose your niche skills
List all your hard and soft skills.
Identify which ones light you up and keep you in your zone of joy.
Experiment to see how you can combine your skills.
The Vision Book I created is a fantastic tool to help with this type of reflection! Remember that not all your skills and interests need to be monetized. There are other ways you can include them into your branding by weaving it through your content.
Find a Niche Audience
If finding a niche based on your skills proves difficult, you can create a niche brand based on your audience.
Some niche industries are very saturated. For example, there seems to be a mindset coach everywhere you look.
If you are passionate about mindset work and feel like you can’t do it because there are so many, choose a niche audience instead.
This is what we did with my client Angie. Angie is a natural hype-woman who loves her planners, and mindset work spoke to her.
But she is also passionate about art. She is a creative person who loves to paint, act, dance, and more. Instead of niching based on her artistic skills, she used them as inspiration to decide who she wants to help: creatives.
This lets her tap into her expertise as a creative. If a creative wants to work on their mindset, they know that her expertise (i.e. niche) is working with creatives.
Now, she isn’t just another mindset coach. She is a mindset coach for creatives, so she’s able to share her passion for the arts while staying niche and on brand.
If you choose to go down this path, digging into your ideal client profile will help you niche your audience, so you can create a brand that attracts the type of people you want to work with.
Niche without losing your personality in the process
I know that as a creative person, you don’t want to blend in. If after the niching down process you feel like your brand is not true-to-you, lean into your other passions.
This is where your content pillars (or buckets) play an important role. As a creative you have a lot of ideas and interests. What you need to do is find the common themes.
To make sense of your passions:
Write down 5-10 topics you are passionate about.
Then group them by similarities.
After grouping them, choose an umbrella theme for each group.
Say you’re a cook who loves gardening and hiking. These two topics may seem disconnected, but if you are someone who is a nature-lover, you can connect them under the theme of nature and talk about how this influences your cooking.
Or if you are health conscious, you can connect them under the theme of health and how it relates to cooking healthy meals.
How you label your themes will depend on your brand messaging, so remember to filter your ideas to make sure they connect to your brand.
Once you have your niche and your core messaging, it becomes easier to see how your passions relate to your brand. And sharing your passions will empower you to show up authentically as well as attract aligned clients.
This is what happened when I started sharing more about my spirituality. When I started sharing my tarot cards, crystals, talking about astrology, intuition, etc., I made an energetic invitation for people who align with me.
Even though I’m not in the spiritual niche, I share this passion because it relates to my messaging of showing true-to-self and is an important part of how I approach brand strategy.
In my brand coaching services, I work with clients to tap into their intuition and skills to create their own true-to-self brand. So when clients work with me, they aren’t surprised when these topics come up.
I help my clients do the same, so they don’t feel like they’re hiding parts of who they are and embrace themselves completely.
If you are ready to build an online brand that allows you to live a freedom and joy filled life, check out my brand development coaching program. This program gives you hands-on experience creating your brand from scratch, including messaging and social media strategy.
If you want to find your authentic brand strategy, check out this brand strategy quiz I created to help you understand how to show up in your business in alignment with your unique energy, personality & Human Design.
Your brand relies on a few foundational concepts: your brand purpose, your brand identity (including brand voice), and having a clear idea of who your ideal client is.
Finding your ideal client is a core session in my Brand Development Coaching Program because it helps keep your messaging relevant to potential clients while staying true to your brand, so you attract aligned clients!
What is a client avatar profile?
Your brand’s ideal client profile outlines who your ideal client is. Many tend to confuse their target audience with an ideal client.
Unlike broad target audience descriptions like “college educated women ages 30-45”, your client avatar finds a specific group within target audiences, so you connect with them on a deeper level.
This process includes identifying demographics and psychographics, i.e. who they are, what they believe and value.
Client Avatar Demographics and Psychographics
When you think demographics, you probably automatically think of words like “gender”, “age”, “marital status”, etc.
People usually focus too much on this part. These details of a person’s identity are important, but you have to make them relevant.
For example, if your client profile is of a woman entrepreneur, this can help you focus on understanding challenges that are unique to this demographic (e.g. overcoming corporate trauma they experienced as women).
These challenges may be seen differently depending on your client avatar’s psychographics.
Psychographics are more abstract parts of your client’s identity like morals, attitudes, beliefs, i.e. their worldview. You can identify this through actions like how they spend their time, the brands they support, etc.
In the example of women who experience corporate trauma, their worldview will influence how they face and overcome the same challenge.
Creating a client avatar does not mean you only sell to someone who checks off all the boxes. It simply helps you keep that person in mind when you are creating your messaging, so it is more relevant.
3 steps you can take to create an ideal client avatar
Creating an ideal client avatar is an in depth process, but here are three steps you can take today to get started.
1. Identify what specific group of people you want to help.
Start by creating a list of your client avatar’s demographics. You can start broad and start narrowing down based on what matters to you and for your brand.
Next, think about how these demographic details impact their lives or how it reflects something about who they are as a person.
With the example of women entrepreneurs, think about where they are in their journey.
The needs of a woman just starting their entrepreneurial journey is different from a woman who has 10 years experience as an entrepreneur.
If they are a mompreneur, their priorities are likely different than women who don’t have kids.
This can also help you as you grow your business and expand your services (i.e. you have a program for beginners and another for more advanced clients).
If you want to find your authentic brand strategy to use in expanding your biz, check out this brand strategy quiz I created to help you understand how to show up in your business in alignment with your unique energy, personality & Human Design.
2. Identify their values
Our actions tend to align with our values. When they don’t, that’s when we feel out of alignment. This will matter when you offer your solution, but before going into that, let’s discuss your avatar’s values:
Continuing with the same example of women entrepreneurs, be specific about your avatar’s values. Perhaps your ideal client values mental health or financial security.
Being specific helps you better understand them.
Let’s say you have two women who are moms (let’s name them Ana and Susana). If Ana values discipline more and Susana values playfulness more, their parenting styles will be different.
People tend to be complex, so the point of this exercise is to identify a list of core values that drive your clients the same way you would identify values for your brand.
As you do this, think about what values matter to you when you work with somebody. Your ideal client reflects the people you will be serving, so aligning your values with theirs will help you serve from a place of joy rather than a sense of obligation. Consider using the Vision Book I created as a tool for this step!
3. Identify their lifestyle
With your client avatar’s demographics and values in mind, think about the lifestyle they have or aspire to have.
For example, if you are speaking to women entrepreneurs who value nature, their lifestyle would include activities like hiking.
Knowing this can inform the type of content you share. Keep in mind that this should still be aligned with your brand’s message and personality.
If a client is not living a lifestyle in alignment with what they truly value and want, this is where your offers fit into their life.
As someone who values nature and freedom, my content includes these types of images and topics.
Through my content, I show women a life of freedom is possible because this is my brand’s purpose: to help more women free themselves from social norms to live a vivacious life.
If you are ready to build an online brand that allows you to live a freedom and joy filled life, check out my brand development coaching program. This program gives you hands-on experience creating your brand from scratch, including messaging and social media strategy.
Creating a personal brand can feel overwhelming, but by taking intentional steps, you can build a brand that can be magical for your success in the online space.
One of the greatest perks about personal branding is that you can start today even if you don’t have anything to sell.
That’s because your personal brand doesn’t start with what you sell but with WHY you are selling.
You can build a pivot-proof brand that gives you freedom to expand beyond a specific service or product in the future, so you can create a lifestyle you want and have financial freedom.
In this guide, you will learn how to start building your very own true-to-self brand including:
Branding is about evoking a specific emotion through messaging and visual recognition.
Your personal brand does the same, but it is specifically about how YOU brand yourself. This means highlighting your superpower and leveraging it to stand out in your area of expertise.
Whether you are building a personal brand from scratch or doing a rebrand, building a brand in alignment with who you are will bring ease into the process.
There are many aspects to consider in your personal brand, but these 5 are foundational:
1. Brand personality
As with a person, your brand personality is about its characteristics. To be authentic, make it an extension of who you are.
If you are someone who loves adventure, create a brand that shows that adventurous trait.
Clarifying your brand’s personality will help you with other aspects. For example, your brand voice wouldn’t be serious if your brand’s personality is fun and quirky.
2. Brand story
As the face of your personal brand, your personal story is important, but it is not the same as the brand story.
Your brand story tells us who and what your brand is about in a cohesive narrative.
It combines its history with its core message and emotion in a structured way, so others can easily understand it and connect with it on a deeper level.
3. Strong brand voice
Your brand voice is how you choose to share your brand’s personality, story, and message.
This includes knowing the words that are important to your brand and the ones you want to avoid. It also includes your perspective and brand values because the words you choose reflect these.
You may ruffle some feathers in the process, but your brand is not for everyone, so honor your voice.
People process visuals much quicker, they remember the information better, and visuals trigger an emotional reaction.
Choosing the right colors, the right filters, and layout is just another way to share your brand message. A cohesive feed should be an extension of your brand by being its visual voice.
Choosing visuals that align with your brand will also increase people’s awareness of your brand, which is important to your success.
Whether your style is minimal or bold, using customizable templates can help you create a cohesive brand image with ease.
5. Consistency and Frequency
The online world can be very noisy, so being consistent is vital to increase brand awareness.
Showing up consistently means showing consistency not only by posting a certain number of posts, but also being consistent with your message.
If you pay attention to the other elements of your brand, this will happen naturally.
7 Steps to Build Your Personal Brand
Keeping the five elements above in mind, you can start taking actionable steps to start building your brand.
1. Start with your personal brand values
A personal brand is, well, PERSONAL. This means it stems from you and who you are as an individual.
Your values must be at the core of your branding even if you change your services later.
Have at least five values to ground your brand. A personality test can help you gain insight into who you are, an important step in your brand development and entrepreneurial journey.
You could use the Myers-Briggs personality test, the Enneagram test, human design, or astrology as guiding tools to reflect and gain more awareness about what is important to you.
Understanding your values will influence how your brand evolves, including the message you share, the graphics you use, and the content you create.
For instance, if you’re an animal lover like Seema, you can include animal graphics in your visual content.
As your brand grows and you feel more comfortable with it, you will find ways to incorporate your values.
2. Find your niche
As a multi-passionate, I struggled with niching down. But it can be done if you focus on your expertise and core message.
Choose your expertise by exploring
Your expertise does not have to be very specific, especially when you’re just starting. With time, you can start niching down based on your experience.
If you are just starting out and are not sure about your expertise, start exploring. Finding your passion doesn’t happen overnight
List a few topics and skills you would like to learn more about and take some online courses. By taking courses, you can find out if you truly enjoy a specific interest.
Pay attention to what excites you and continue to cultivate your interests.
The happier you are about the work you do, the easier it will be to show up consistently for your brand and others.
Decide your core message
Choosing your core message is another way to niche down. Your core message is tied to your brand purpose.
My core message is to live a freedom-filled, vivacious life. This is connected to my brand purpose to help women find freedom and live their life to the fullest.
Sharing a clear message speaks to specific people, so even if there are other experts in your field, your core message is one way to stand out and attract your clients.
Take a moment to write what is important to you. Choose one word (e.g. freedom) that is important in your life and create a message around it.
Revisit this idea multiple times if you have to. It may take you a few tries, but this step will help you stay focused as you build your brand.
3. Share your story
To successfully use storytelling, you need to choose the stories that will speak directly to your ideal client and connect to your unique selling points.
Focus on the parts of your story you are ready to share and that connect to your core message.
Remember that this can be more specific if you choose to niche down even more or it may change if you pivot later in your journey.
The “who” of your brand is your ideal client.
Finding Your Ideal Client
Identifying your ideal client can help you be more precise in your mission.
Knowing who my ideal client is helped clarify my own mission to help multi-passionate, creative women develop aligned brands.
Think about who you want to help. You can start by focusing on a specific demographic group (e.g. women, millennials, graphic designer, etc) and then think about your ideal client more specifically.
You should look at what worldview, values, and beliefs your ideal client has. You can also consider if they want a specific lifestyle that connects to your brand.
Choosing clients beyond demographics, will make it easier to find clients who are aligned, so your brand succeeds.
5. Craft your brand story
After understanding your own journey, your values, and your expertise, you can start structuring your brand story.
Your personal story should have a clear connection to your brand’s core message.
Think about what events in your life led you to where you are. Choose 2-3 major events that led to you there.
Then ask yourself: how did the events in your life connect with your brand purpose?
Identify another 2-3 key moments that led you to build your brand. That may be discovering your passion for a topic and how that developed into your brand and your offers.
Your brand story will develop as you grow, so revisit it.
6. Choose the right platforms for you
Consider your audience, your personality, and your resources when choosing your platforms.
If you are not a fan of video editing and don’t have the resources to outsource this task, using YouTube for your business is not the best move.
Or if you are shy about showing up on camera, a blog or a text heavy platform like linkedin might work better for you.
Once you’ve reflected on what platforms are best for you, select 2-3 platforms to reach your audience.
If this seems overwhelming, start with 1 platform. You can prioritize the platform that has a larger number of your target audience.
Once you feel comfortable with that platform, you can expand to other platforms.
Remember that you can also experiment with different platforms and types of content.
Just because you see videos of people dancing, it does not mean you can’t show up on video in your own way.
7. Start showing up online
Once you have the foundation for your brand, start posting. Experiment and share relevant content without expectations.
Whether it is a new tool you found, a new trick you learned, or your thoughts on these share it with your audience.
The key when you are starting your brand is to share content consistently.
It doesn’t matter if it’s three times a week or twice every day, keep a posting schedule that you can maintain.
You can keep content simple at first while you get to know your brand. The point is to let your audience know you are here, and they can trust you to show up.
This also means engaging with your community. Building a personal brand means building connections as people, from one person to the next.
The more you create and engage, the clearer your message and vision will become. Then you can start creating a brand strategy with specific content pillars.
Be true to yourself
In the end, your personal brand is unique because of YOU, so speak your truth.
Share your story intentionally, so you can reach people who align with you, your values, and your brand.
Most importantly, remember to build a brand that brings you joy!
By doing this, you will build a brand that honors your capacity, rest, and well being while making the impact you want to make in the world.
This may change as you grow as a person and as a brand. Building your brand goes beyond this page. It is a journey!
If you are ready to build an online brand that allows you to live a freedom and joy filled life, check out my brand development coaching program. This program gives you hands-on experience creating your brand from scratch, including messaging and social media strategy.
If you want to find your authentic brand strategy, check out this brand strategy quiz I created to help you understand how to show up in your business in alignment with your unique energy, personality & Human Design.
A brand purpose statement, or big purpose statement, is at the core of creating a cohesive and true-to-self brand.
You can define it as your brand’s internal compass, which gives your business direction, including what you choose to offer and who you serve.
Why does your purpose statement matter?
Besides providing a clear direction, your big purpose statement lets your audience know the reason your brand exists and the impact you want to make.
It captures the essence of your brand, so you can stand out from others in your niche and attract aligned clients.
One of the key purposes of branding is to be memorable, and if your messaging is inconsistent, people will have a hard time remembering and trusting you.
Creating your purpose statement requires deep work, so you can find a purpose that is true-to-you and keeps you motivated. In my brand development coaching program, I use tools like visualization and journaling to help my vivacious clients develop their purpose.
Through these exercises, they are able to answer the questions needed to create a brand purpose.
Five questions to find your brand’s “why”
What values guide your brand?
Why did you start your brand?
Who do you serve and why?
What are your brand keywords?
What would you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it?
For example, the purpose of Livin Vivaciously is to guide women, specially women of color, to live vivaciously, experiencing life to the fullest despite self-limiting beliefs, gender, and cultural norms.
This statement reflects how important freedom to live life on my terms is to me and my brand’s goal to guide women towards a freer lifestyle.
2. Get clear on what you want to do with your brand.
At Livin Vivaciously this means getting clear on the lifestyle you want and the impact you want to make. My Vision Book is a great way to do this!
3. Figure out what problem you want to solve
Understanding the problem you want to solve will help you develop your offers and help you figure out who you want to provide that offer to.
I chose to help women develop brands because I want women of all cultures to experience the freedom I experience as an entrepreneur.
And, as a woman from the Middle East North Africa region who overcame cultural barriers, I especially want this for women in cultures where freedom is not the norm.
4. Keep refining your statement until it feels right.
The first sentence you write will unlikely be the final version.
Start with a simple statement like this: supporting women, caring about the environment, etc. Then ask yourself: Why is this important to me? Why would I support this for the next 5-10 years?
Remember your brand will evolve. Revisit and refine your statement to reflect your growth over time.
5. Use your keywords as a reference
Your keywords can help you as you write your statement. What are the words you want to be associated with your brand, and how can you include them in your purpose?
I use vivaciously because it’s at the core of my brand. It reflects my purpose to help women find freedom from social norms, so they can live their life to the fullest.
Once you’re ready to bring your big brand vision to life, the Social Media Branding Package may be just what you need. This is a one-stop shop service for building a cohesive, stand-out brand AND content strategy that work hand in hand.
If you want to find your authentic brand strategy, check out this brand strategy quiz I created to help you understand how to show up in your business in alignment with your unique energy, personality & Human Design.
If you are ready to build an online brand that allows you to live a freedom and joy filled life, check out my brand development coaching program. This program gives you hands-on experience creating your brand from scratch, including messaging and social media strategy.
If you’re building your brand, it’s important to find and establish a strong brand voice.
Just like creating a cohesive feed is important to establishing your brand’s authority, so is your voice. These elements should complement each other.
Here are 5 steps you need to create a compelling and authentic brand voice. But before that, let’s define it.
What is a brand voice?
Your brand voice is how you share your brand’s personality and message. It includes the words you use, the type of content you choose to post, and your perspective.
The answer: You don’t. You create a garden and let them come to you.
We discussed how your brand is the garden and you plant the flowers that attract the type of butterflies (i.e. people and opportunities) aligned with you.
For example, my brand voice is friendly, warm, and joyful. This is why I include inspirational content throughout my business communications, and, though it may not be business standard, I call my Instagram audience friends.
[Bonus Tip: I connect my content pillars through my core message of living a vivacious, freedom-filled life. Understanding your core message helps you in creating a brand strategy that keeps you focused as you develop your voice]
At the same time, I know I want to attract people who understand that building a brand is a long game that requires self-awareness. This is why I also include introspective content.
Voice vs Tone
It’s important to know that tone is part of your brand personality and voice, but they are different because your tone may change slightly based on the context.
Say you have a warm personality and are invited to give a speech at an event. Your tone should still be warm and friendly, but it would be slightly different than when you talk to your business bestie.
For example, I stay away from cliche corporate language to reflect my brand’s warm, friendly voice and my message about freeing yourself from social norms and the corporate world.
At events I still avoid corporate words, but my tone may sound more formal because my talk would be structured unlike the free-flowing, personal tone I use in my brand development program.
This is also true in your brand copy.
While you may use a more free-flowing, conversational tone in your social media, brand copy like your mission statement would be more structured. But it always has to be true to your brand voice.
[Suggested: use these customizable branded Canva templates to save time on creating content with your own brand voice!]
Why is your brand voice important?
Your unique voice affects how others connect with your business and your message.
You can have a great message and offer, but if your voice doesn’t match it, it will make it more difficult to connect with your ideal clients.
This is why you need to take the steps necessary to discover and establish your voice.
5 steps to define your brand voice
Developing your voice requires deep work because part of creating your brand is personal development. So start journaling and exploring.
1. Identify your core message.
Your brand voice is driven by the core message that gives your brand purpose. For me, I want women to feel vivacious and see that a life of freedom is possible.
This keeps my voice consistent because regardless of where I show up, this is a message I will always share passionately.
You can have the same experience as another person, but if you have different values you will interpret the experience differently, and this will give you a different perspective. The Vision Book I created is a great tool to use in this process!
3. Choose the right words to describe your voice
Once you have your list of brand values, start taking notes of how these show up in your communication.
For example, if you value humor, you may use words like witty or sarcasm to define your brand’s specific type of humor. This way your team won’t make jokes that don’t accurately reflect your brand.
This will help you create clear and specific brand voice guidelines.
4. Try new trends and platforms YOUR way
Brand and life alignment will create long-term success!
As a Muslim woman, Sina shared how she grew her following for three years without showing her face using her podcast. She also used some noise effects but didn’t use music as it may be expected.
Her work is a great example that you can do things differently and be successful on whichever platform you choose. You don’t need to show your face and dance if it doesn’t connect with your culture or personality.
Explore different formats to best showcase your voice. The more comfortable you are with the platform and formats you use, the better your voice will come through.
Showing up authentically becomes easy if you show up in ways that feel aligned and come with ease.
5. Know your audience
Lastly, knowing your audience plays a role in your voice development. While your voice is unique to you, thinking of your audience will help you be more precise in your message.
As my business grew and I started my brand development program, I realized a lot of my clients were creative, multi-passionate women.
This has now become part of my messaging’s language as I love helping multi-passionate entrepreneurs build their brand.
Once you’re ready to bring your big brand vision to life for the audience you want, the Social Media Branding Package may be just what you need. This is a one-stop shop service for building a cohesive, stand-out brand AND content strategy that work hand in hand.
Keep Developing Your Voice
Remember to trust the process. The more you practice sharing your message, the more comfortable you will feel with your voice, and the better you will understand it.
As a woman from the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA)woman, I am creating my own legacy despite what others told me and have connected with women of different cultures who also want to live a vivacious, freedom-filled life.
If you are ready to build an online brand that allows you to live a freedom and joy filled life, check out my brand development coaching program. This program gives you hands-on experience creating your brand from scratch, including messaging and social media strategy.
If you want to find your authentic brand strategy, check out this brand strategy quiz I created to help you understand how to show up in your business in alignment with your unique energy, personality & Human Design.
