Personal branding changes as you level up.

As a beginner, the keys to success are:

1. Focus.
2. Consistency.
3. Starting small.

That sounds like a useless platitude, but it isn't.

Let's take 2 hypothetical creators as examples.

Creator #1:

• Decides to start a personal brand.
• Creates accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Threads.
• Has 4 different topics that they want to create content about.
• Settles on a content strategy that covers all platforms and all topics.
• Gets overwhelmed.
• Starts procrastinating.
• Starts scrolling more and creating less.
• Gets burned out.
• Takes a break.
• Never comes back.

Creator #2:

• Decides to start a personal brand.
• Identifies LinkedIn as the best platform based on the audience and outcomes they want.
• Choose 1 topic to specialize in.
• Creates a fairly easy content strategy to adhere to, like 3 posts per week and 30 replies per day.
• Wakes up every day and executes the strategy.
• Gets better at executing the strategy.
• Scales up to 5 posts per week.
• Starts seeing traction.
• Starts getting their desired outcome (clients, jobs, etc).
• Masters LinkedIn.
• Expands to 1-3 other platforms.

The Art Of Focus

There are 2 sides to focus.

First is focusing on 1 topic and 1 platform.

The former helps with clearly showing people what you do.

The latter helps with time management and not getting overwhelmed.

The second side is day-to-day focus.

My biggest tips on that:

• Work at roughly the same time every day.
• In most cases, it's best to do that early in the day.
• Reduce digital distractions as much as possible.
• Experiment with sounds/music with no lyrics.
• Have a firm plan so it's easier to execute.

The Art Of Consistency

How do you show up every day?

A lot of that comes from discipline.

But some tips can help:

(Some of these will look familiar)

• Work at roughly the same time every day.
• Have a firm plan so it's easier to execute.
• Figure out if you prefer batching content (creating a bunch in one day) or doing it every day.
• Have fun with it (for example, when replying, make jokes and talk to people like they're your friends).
• Find other people trying to do what you're doing, and create a group for engagement trading and accountability (Copyblogger Academy is perfect for that, link at the bottom of the email).

The Art Of Starting Small

You will be tempted to have massive goals.

And that's fine. If you want to make big goals, do it.

Then forget about your big goals.

Instead:

• Break your big goals into small goals.
• Break your small goals into daily habits.
• Focus on daily execution.
• Pick your head up once a month to review progress and strategy, then get back to focusing on daily execution.

That might look like:

• You want to be a 6-figure freelancer.
• You break that into the small goal of getting your first client.
• You break that into the daily habits of practicing your craft, doing cold outreach, and building a personal brand.
• You focus on execution (e.g. 1 hour of practice per day, 30 cold DMs sent, and the content strategy I wrote about for Creator #2 above).
• You pick your head up once a month to adjust your strategy if needed.

Focus in, start small, stay consistent.

Do that, and you'll have a shot at getting what you want.