How to Build Your Personal Brand and Get Clients from Social Media
Personal Brand Building Hacks for the Online Coach, Creator, or Influencer
Entrepreneurs everywhere are trying to build their personal brands and get clients from their social media platforms.
And are quickly realizing that growing an online platform that’s not just BIG (following size), but DEEP (level of engagement), PROFITABLE (actually making you money), and FULFILLING (expressive and personally branded) is no easy feat.
They enter the game with hopes and dreams, and quickly realize that there are banana peels on the ground and booby traps around every corner.
Over the last few years, i’ve dedicated my life to learning how to not only grow the number of people who follow you on any given platform, but also how to build an environment where people are constantly engaging, connecting, and inevitably converting into a client for your business. The goal? To sell your offers without selling.
The gold is when you get the “how can I pay you?” DMs, and your brand is doing the work for you.
Yes, that’s possible. I’ve done it, and i’ve watched my clients do it.
When I work with clients, my goal is always to focus on translating their real-life magic and essence to the table of the platform, and have that be a main driver of connection and conversion.
If they’re disconnected inside of themselves or their messaging, it always shows up in their sales.
I work mostly with people who are sharing about blending their life journey and experiences with their expertise in their niche to create epic personal brands and thriving coaching businesses. I do this through my High-Level mastermind, and 90-Day Beginner Business Accelerator, online courses business & Instagram, and podcast.
These people have experienced massive transformation in the realm of fitness, health, nutrition, business, life, relationships, or otherwise – and are now looking to show others how to do the same.
When I first got started doing this “thing,” it was all kind of an accident.
I was sharing about my own fitness journey on social media, and BOOM – humans showed up, and started watching my every move.
Over a few short years, hundreds of thousands of people started following me – and I wanted to know WHY.
And here we are – 25 years old, hundreds of thousands of followers, and a 7-figure business with hundreds of clients taking my courses on branding and business.
What was it that I did, that allowed all of these people to show up and stick with me?
Not only that – but what was it that ALSO created enough trust in me to fork over thousands to work with me to build their businesses?
The truth is: a lot of influencers are broke. And a lot of people with successful businesses don’t have large audiences.
The combination of someone who has both a successful business AND an audience of “substantial” size is not as frequent as it may seem (especially when we get stuck in the comparison trap and putting influencers on high pedestals).
In this article, I’m going to teach you 5 methods to creating a personal brand that translates, resonates, connects, and sells.
Translate: Your essence in person and real life onto the screen.
Resonate: Create a moving, emotional experience through your content.
Connect: with your ideal client and audience member, in a way that they can see themselves in your writing, words, videos, or content.
Sell: Convert your content to your offer in a win-win-win scenario.
This is all under the premise that buyers (especially buyers of coaching services) buy emotionally based on their experiences, beliefs, fears, hopes, dreams, behaviors, and expectations.
5 Strategies to Create a Personal Brand that Organically Attracts Clients:
1. Uncover & Curate Your Personal Brand Style Guide to Translate and Resonate
Your brand style guide is essentially how your content “looks.” When we first get on social media, the “muscles” used to create really stand-out content aren’t fully developed. We don’t look at things like lighting, editing, posing, and framing super quickly – and our content ends up being a bit “amateur” looking.
And as you begin to practice more with intentionality and direction, you begin to make stylistic decisions about your content knowing that you have options.
Are you photos going to be warmer tones or cooler tones?
Will you have a preset?
Will you post quotes every 4th image vs. images of you?
Will you choose certain fonts, gifs, and color backgrounds for your IG stories?
Will you utilize boomerangs, filters, handsfree, rewind, and tags in order to create your own stylized IG story theme?
Your business will evolve with you – so it’s important to ensure you’re always expressing what’s coming through.
You may be doing a lot of these things subconsciously already.
For example,
Ann: I have a client named Ann Nguyen – a sexual empowerment coach who LOVES bold, bright colors like Yellow, Red, and Blue, She uses red for the background of her tweetables / IG posts, and she wears red lipstick and red earrings / clothing. Her brand is bright, bold, and loud. @theannnguyen
Chiara: I have another friend, Chiara whose brand is pretty “dark,” but in a witchy, badass way. She’s a business & branding coach. Her hair is black, clothes are black, eyes are sharp blue, and has gold accents in her brand. This shows through her photoshoot content, editing style, and branding on her landing pages. @boldself
Stef Sifandos: Another friend, @stefsifandos, is a teacher of Sacred Union and Healthy Masculinity. His brand imagery, art, and photos of himself fully embody what he is teaching.
John Romaniello: branding expert, writing mentor, and owner of Roman Fitness Systems. John does a fantastic job at representing his essence through his images, writing choices, and even his bio. He’s got New York-loving dog dad, tortured artist, bourbon-drinking tattooed writer written all over him. Much of this was covered in the podcast interview we did.
Me: And last but not least, there’s me: a personal brand and business coach who’s obsessed with the ocean, lightness, California, cozy sweaters, and authenticity.
- amanda bucci social media strategist
This isn’t just about colors and fonts. But it’s the fact that certain stylistic choices REPRESENT who you are, and those who see parts of themselves within you will resonate deeply with your stylistic choices.
2. Share Your Personal Brand Story to Resonate and Connect
Your story is going to be the foundation for sales in your business – and arguably, even more so than your expertise and teaching.
Yes: people are coming to you because they want to learn from you. However, your expertise is only a part of what they’re paying for — especially if you’re a service provider. People are also paying for connection.
Storytelling is one of the most foundational pieces of personal branding and business.
Firstly, there’s your story that got you to this point in time. The story about YOU, and why you’re serving the people who your serving (who here wants to coach people who are their past selves? Raise ya hand, because I see you.)
That being said, your story about overcoming adversity, a challenging time, going through a major change, and transforming into the leader or expert you are today should be ingrained in your audiences’ head.
Second: there’s the story that’s always being told. The unfolding of your life – how you show up, how you’re moving through life, representing the brand and the work you teach.
The people involved in your story. The experiences you’re having. How your own life is unfolding in parallel to the teacher that you are.
Your transformation story and your real-time story allow the ideal client to see themselves in your shoes, aspire to be where you are, think how you think, or know what you know.
How you’re representing yourself as a teacher, a student who’s always learning, and a friend who’s always there for them will build layers of innate trust that’s completely invaluable to a potential paying client.
3. Have a Polarizing Personal Brand to Connect and Sell
Polarization is one of my favorite topics to teach, because it shows you that you can be magnetic and repellent at the same time.
Think of actual magnets: they attract and repel each other. You can watch them run to each other and stick like glue, or repel each other and have massive resistance toward connecting.
This is the same effect that occurs when you insert polarity into your brand. You’re going to build an incredibly powerful connection with those who are in the same field as you, but repel people so quickly who AREN’T the right people you want following you, anyway,
4 Ways to Become More Polarizing
1. Niching – choosing a specific group of people whom you are looking to lead or help. You MAY not know this right away: and that’s okay.
The goal is to be the glaringly obvious choice for that person, rather than the potential consideration for a larger group of people. TRUST ME, you are not “pushing people away” when you feel like you already are starting from nothing. Niching is like being a very strong magnet.
If you aren’t, you’re not magnetizing or repelling anyone. You’re nothing to no one.
2. Honesty – the reason why stand-up comedians can get an entire crowd to laugh is that the jokes are so honest, people have no choice but to burst out. It’s SO funny because it’s SO true.
Ever wonder why memes are so popular? Because they’re SO honest, and they give people a platform to “agree” with something without having to say it themselves.
The more honest you can be, the more you can give other people the opportunity to silently (or not so silently) agree with you.
3. Permission Slips- We walk through life with this subtle, yet powerful feeling like we need to be given permission to do something. Maybe you follow me because I give you permission to post pictures of yourself, make money, share your feelings, stay true to who you are, and connect deeply in a public setting.
Maybe you follow others because they give you permission to eat the salad at lunch instead of fries, or eat the fries instead of the salad. Maybe someone gives you permission to stand firmly in the feelings you have about a certain religion, spiritual practice, ritual, or mindset belief that you resonate with.
So: what kind of permission are you granting to those who follow you?
4. Being Yourself – you don’t actually need to do a whole lot to be polarizing. Sometimes, just being yourself is polarizing enough. Some people may not like swearing, tattoos, the way you dress, your stance on something, or anything else.
It also isn’t always about people “not liking” parts of you, they may just not be similar to you at all. For example: I have absolutely zero desire to follow men who are targeting young dudes in fitness with misogynistic posts and flashing their cars. It’s not that it’s “bad” or that I “don’t like it,” it’s just not really my thang, yanno?
So, I wouldn’t follow them – even if they had millions of followers. You’ve definitely experienced that as well; coming across influencers or creators who just don’t resonate with you.
That will happen for other people with you, too. THIS IS GOOD! For many people, you’re going to be the EXACT thing they need in their feeds every day. Trust that that exists (or you know, dig into your self-worthiness stuff. You may find something in there.)
4. Attach Your Personal Brand to a “Thing” to Force User-Generated Content
Back when I was creating fitness vlogs and videos, I worked with a supplement company called PEScience. That time was the fastest growth I ever had on my social media accounts. One of the main reasons I grew was for doing this ONE specific thing.
I was in the fitness depths, working on ways to eat yummy meals as low calorie as possible and find ways to give myself energy before workouts in the form of energy drinks (I quickly learned that fitness doesn’t always equate to health).
Either way, I formulated a recipe with 1 scoop of protein powder, 1 egg, and a bit of water to make the #1CarbWaffle. I also had a pre-workout mix called #HighVolumeWhiteMonster – a mix of my favorite pump enhancing cotton candy-flavored pre-workout, and my favorite energy drink.
The number of tags I got DAILY of people creating the #1CarbWaffle and #HVWM was in the hundreds, on the daily.
People associated White Monster and Waffles + Protein powder with ME.
Did I mention that it also allowed me to have a 6-figure income from commissions I made from the supplement company I worked with?
Even if you have a “THING” that has absolutely nothing to do with your business, but your followers can 1. Think of you when the thing shows up in their life, and 2. Re-create it and be excited to share to their story and tag you, you’re doing yourself one of the BIGGEST solids in social media growth, personal brand solidifying, and client attraction.
5. Teaching or Demonstrating Your Ideal Clients Needs
Of course: this is the foundational layer of your platform.
It’s the “main show,” or the “main” form of value that you bring to the table. The reason why people think they’re following you.
(reminder: value isn’t just education. It’s connection. Honesty. Permission. Feel-good. Realism. Tough love. Authenticity. Showing them how to access parts of themselves they didn’t know they had. Pure entertainment. Joy. Laughter. Yanno, all of the reasons YOU probably follow people you follow aside from just their educational content.)
The information on the internet is Infinity. They can find the answer to essentially any question with enough digging and searching.
Of course, there are PLENTY of other people out there sharing the same information you’re sharing…
But the way you make it DIFFERENT is simply by putting YOUR spin on it. Your voice on it. Your brand on it.
Along with that: coming up with powerful frameworks, visual representations, digestible trainings, and teaching in a way that allows the content to truly land in people is invaluable.
So, be the teacher and educator you’re here to be.
Educate the shit outta them, and don’t hold back your “best stuff.”
Your brand voice, writing, and teaching methods will develop as you continue evolving your mastery – but again, people aren’t just looking for information. They want to consume the information in a way that’s either fun, entertaining, enjoyable, easy-to-comprehend, sarcastic, loving – or in whatever specific gift that you provide.
If people are in an environment where they have no tough love and need it, your direct and blunt way or being is perfect for them. Let’s use @girlconfident and @isabella.guava as an example for business coaching.
If you want a scientific way of hearing things, maybe @dr.jacob.harden is your go-to for mobility methodology.
If you’re looking for a more compassionate and loving version of your biggest interest, you’ll find yourself turning to people who show up that way.
So show up however it is you do, and TEACH in a way that’s clear, concise, and actionable.
So, that’s it. My 5 top tips. Pretty good, huh?
Before you get going…I wanted to remind you that there are a few downfalls of NOT doing these things.
- Attracting people who aren’t right for you.
- Not attracting enough people/people at all.
- REPELLING people because they can tell you’re being fake.
- Only connecting on a surface level to the right people and never pushing them over the “edge” to say yes to working with you.
So, be you: strategically.
Polarize people by magnetizing the right ones, and repelling the wrong.
Stylize yourself: this should be pretty fun, and easy. It’s just you.
Make a “thing” that gets people talking.
And watch the clients roll in.
Flourish & Conquer,
Amanda
