Guest Post // Tips to Building a Personal Brand as a Female Entrepreneur

Guest Post // Tips to Building a Personal Brand as a Female Entrepreneur

Salome Muhuni, Nairobi Garage Events Coordinator 

“Nearly one in every three entrepreneurs running established businesses is a woman. For start-up activity, there are .80 women for every 1 man. Globally, women were more likely than men to be solopreneurs (1.47 women solopreneurs for every 1 man).”

Link to the article that provided the above: HERE

What is a Brand?

A brand is an entity’s identity within the market/industry they operate in. It distinguishes them from the crowd and gives them distinct features that can be efficiently harnessed to drive enterprise objectives.

Typically, branding incorporates taglines, logos, brand colors, ‘vibe’, value proposition, and market placement. The personal branding journey can be discouraging without a marketing team to help with brand development and deployment.

But, what if you could get ground-relevant tips?

Community: The branding keyword for any 21st-century entrepreneurial venture.

At Nairobi Garage, we have a vibrant community that supports female entrepreneurs. There is great access to a co-working space that encourages creativity, connectivity, and co-working avenues.

Based on our interactions, here are a few tips we have picked from our members that we believe are assets to female entrepreneurs when building brands.

Personal Brand Assets

Personal Socials

Riding on the social media wave, branding has notably adjusted to suit the changing needs of the audiences meant for it.

Your social media profiles can serve as an easy first line of contact with the desired audiences you want to connect with.

We know you could be an introvert and have shied away from revealing what you consider private. In that case, we encourage you to pick an aspect of your life that is close to your personal life but still cuts across your entrepreneurial journey.

Focus on that and provide insight into it. You will get natural ‘content’ that serves the two-bird killing with one one-stone allegory. And your ‘sisters’ will almost always be supportive to comment/share giving you engagement that the algorithm devours.

Build your Brand around Personal Strengths

How self-aware are you? How much of yourself is correctly availed in your reputation?

Have you tried out personality tests to get attuned to yourself more?

If not, here is a great test that will help in your self-discovery journey, and what’s even better is that it provides you with a list of people with established brands that suit your ‘TYPE’ post evaluation. (Free Personality Test | 16Personalities)

Armed with this basic knowledge of your temperament, you can decide what aspects of your personality you’d want your brand to showcase. In this way, it’s also possible to handle any weaknesses that might shoot out in situations that may not be ideal.

We encourage building around your strengths and eventually displaying the ‘human’ (weak*) side gradually, as you gauge how your audience receives your brand offerings.

Ease Into Brand Architecture

Shape your brand initially to what comes easily to you. This will make the creation and establishing process less tedious and one you’ll likely stick to.

We usually stick with things that we like and that make us feel adequate. If your brand development process feels tedious and deprecating, you will soon enough abandon ship.

So as you do design and contour, begin with the likable bits then eventually, target elements of your brand-building process that are less appealing. Working out these less appealing bits under the canopy of what was ‘likable’ will help you create a holistic congruence around you.

Brand Communication

Part of your brand strategy will include where to communicate it from and through. This is not to dissuade you from using your preferred social platform or advertising means.

But it is a call to analysis – where does my brand communicate the best? Where do my audiences hang out virtually? Physically, what areas do they traffic?

A trial period of 3 months is sufficient to collect data on the various distribution methods you have. Then an objective analysis of the data can provide direction on what areas to focus on, platforms to grow into, or which ones to forego completely.

But have fun with your favorite platform as well!

Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide to Choosing the Best Event Space in Nairobi

Audience Consideration

Brand building can be a very self-focused process but it is important to remember that you are not the primary consumer of that brand.

There are audiences you are creating and curating for, and your brand needs to be one they connect with.

Human beings shy away from what is not like them.

To evade this aversion, be careful to build according to what your audience have shown to be points of interest. Community is a primary reason why personal brands remain at the top. Their attachment to your brand will keep them loyal to it and ensure its perpetuity.

Leverage Emotional Connection

Internal reports from top global brands reveal that their longevity is sustained by appealing to their audience’s emotions.

A stereotype used to shame female entrepreneurs is the bias that ‘women are emotional’. The negative use fo this keeps female entrepreneurs from using the power of their emotions when communicating brand values and initiating connections.

Being emotional is a tool; one that can be harnessed into a weapon that sharpens your personal brand’s edge, providing you with a ‘feel’ that is distinctly yours. This emotional compass is a brand strategy – use that label to evoke a feeling that your brand will be affiliated with. Leverage that natural giving into brand success.

START!

If you don’t know where to begin, start with what you do know.

Remain consistent in sharing.

Adapt based on critical feedback.

Practice confident presentation – your brand is worth talking about.