Building a personal brand website is a thrilling yet strategic endeavor. It's your chance to curate your online presence, showcase your expertise, and captivate your target audience. Here's a breakdown of the key steps to guide you:
1. Define your brand story and goals:
What makes you unique? What value do you offer? Articulate your personal brand story, including your passions, skills, and aspirations.
What do you want to achieve with your website? Attract new clients, land speaking gigs, build a community? Set SMART goals to measure your success.
2. Choose your website platform:
Website builders:Â Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress.com offer user-friendly interfaces with drag-and-drop functionality, perfect for beginners.
Content Management Systems (CMS):Â WordPress.org gives you more control and flexibility, but requires technical knowledge.
Coding from scratch:Â Offers ultimate customization, but demands coding expertise.
Bio sites: quick bios and links are a great alternative for socials.
3. Secure a domain name and hosting:
Your domain name is your online address (e.g., yourname.com). Choose one that's memorable, relevant to your brand, and easy to type.
Hosting is where your website files reside. Choose a reliable provider with good customer support and bandwidth.
4. Design and structure your website:
Homepage:Â Introduce yourself with a captivating hero image, concise bio, and clear calls to action.
About page:Â Dive deeper into your story, skills, and accomplishments. Include testimonials, awards, and certifications.
Services/portfolio page:Â Showcase your work, highlighting projects that resonate with your target audience. Quantify your impact with data and visuals.
Blog:Â Share your insights, expertise, and thought leadership through engaging articles, videos, or podcasts.
Contact page:Â Make it easy for visitors to connect with you via email, phone, or social media.
5. Optimize for search engines (SEO):
Conduct keyword research to identify relevant terms people search for. Integrate these keywords naturally throughout your website content.
Meta descriptions and titles are crucial for search engine snippets. Craft compelling descriptions that entice users to click.
Build backlinks from high-quality websites to boost your website's authority and ranking.
6. Embrace visual storytelling:
Use high-quality images, videos, and graphics that align with your brand personality.
Maintain visual consistency with a defined color palette and fonts.
Leverage white space effectively to avoid overwhelming visitors.
7. Mobile responsiveness is key:
Ensure your website looks and functions flawlessly across all devices, especially smartphones.
Use responsive design templates or plugins for hassle-free mobile optimization.
8. Content is king (and queen):
Publish fresh, valuable content that educates, entertains, and inspires your target audience.
Regularly update your blog and share insights on social media platforms.
Engage with comments and questions promptly to foster a community around your brand.
9. Analyze and adapt:
Track website traffic, user behavior, and engagement metrics using tools like Google Analytics.
Identify areas for improvement based on data and user feedback.
Continuously test, refine, and adapt your website to optimize results.
Another MAJOR point we want to make is your website (and purchased domain) is yours. When we look to using social media profiles as our primary resource for connection and treat that as our marketing tool, technically the ownership does not lie with us. it's a borrowed audience from the social platform. So in the event of a potential hacking or some sort of issue where you lose access to your account, like being blocked or having a feature disabled, you also lose your followers and that contact list. Make sure you backup contact lists, an easy task for LinkedIn specifically.
Remember, building a personal brand website is an ongoing journey. Be patient, experiment, and have fun with it! Your website is a reflection of you, so let your personality and passion shine through.
We hope this helps you kickstart your website creation process! Be sure to join the CLUB and get on our email list for more helpful personal branding tips!