A thriving personal brand is a ticket to unparalleled opportunities:
Get introduced to dream clients Generate a consistent flow of inbound leadsEstablish your expertise and become known in your nicheStand out from the crowded job market through your work and networkAttract like-minded people and get introduced to valuable opportunities
But, the path to building a solid personal brand and unlocking all these opportunities comes with many challenges.
Unable to generate good ideas or struggle to find a unique voice are among the most common.
Countless inspiring stories, valuable lessons, and personal growth opportunities slip away because of these challenges.
I used to be on the same side — procrastinating every other day. I couldn’t post consistently because I lacked a helpful system to develop ideas. But, after observing other creators and diving deep into my own experience, I found ways to work around all the challenges I faced.
I am sharing some solutions that worked for me and have worked for others (based on my observation), including some amazing AI tools to assist you.
Before we move on, let’s discuss some of the challenges you could be facing:
Common challenges while building a personal brand
Challenge 1: Lack of ideas
“What should I write about?”
When I started working on my personal brand, I faced this question almost daily. The roots of this challenge lie in imposter syndrome:
Am I the right person to say this out loud? Do I have enough expertise to talk about this?Are my opinions or arguments valid?
Thinking and feeling like an imposter makes you less confident even though you have the skills and expertise.
Another reason for the lack of ideas is a cognitive bias – the curse of knowledge. We often assume that everyone has the same knowledge as we do, so we cannot think from a beginner’s perspective.
This limits the ideas you can generate as you discard everything that seems too basic.
Results?
You gatekeep information that might be valuable for others. Erica Schneider puts it very well:
Challenge 2: Creating consistent and authentic content
Posting consistently seems daunting as it’s pressure to post 5x or 7x a week is too much.
And even if you manage to stick to a consistent posting schedule, you might compromise the quality of your posts.
“Continuously creating and publishing content for my niche audience was certainly one of the biggest challenges, especially while I was running and managing multiple businesses and projects on the side. To be honest, I can’t do it all myself, and if it wasn’t for my team and the tools/technology we have available to us today, my brand and influence wouldn’t be a thing.” – Michael Maximoff, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Belkins
This challenge is often associated with another common obstacle — time management.
Challenge 3: Time management
From crafting engaging content to networking with experts and your target audience, each step requires time and effort.
So, when working full-time, managing an agency, scaling a startup, or managing multiple clients, time management becomes an uphill battle.
How to overcome these personal branding challenges (+AI tools to use)
There are some super effective ways to overcome them, and on top of that, AI tools make it 10x easier.
Here’s a quick overview of the solution and AI tools to assist you:
Challenge
Solutions
AI tool to use
Lack of ideas
Start with commenting
Repurpose your old content
ChatGPT
Time management
Time blocking and tracking
Content scheduling
Google Calendar
Buffer
Creating authentic and consistent content
Build a content creation system
Keep a swipe file
MyMind
Notion
Solutions to challenge: Lack of ideas
Generate ideas by commenting
Here’s one of the most common pieces of advice I have received from time to time: If you don’t have ideas to write about, start commenting on other people’s posts.
Leaving thoughtful comments ignites new ideas in many ways:
Build on existing ideas by discovering new approaches and anglesDiverse perspectives challenge your assumptions, sparking new ideas
Here’s how to approach commenting on LinkedIn:
Make a list of your favorite creators: You will be able to generate many relevant ideas if you pick a few creators (aim for 6-10). If you’re a product marketer, look for a creator writing about product marketing, product management, demand generation, etc.Turn on their post notifications: Go to their profile and turn on notifications for all their posts.Start adding thoughtful comments: Once you turn on the notification, add your thoughts to each creator’s post.
Avoid adding generic comments such as ‘Good post” and “I agree” as they won’t help with generating new ideas. Here are some helpful tips for writing thoughtful comments:
Share advice or suggestions (preferably based on your experience)Rewrite or summarize the post in your own wordsAdd your take about the postAsk relevant questions
Here’s how I got some great insights by asking a quick question:
Document all your comments: Once you start commenting, document every comment. It’s easy to forget what you commented about and on which creator’s post. So, use a tool of your choice (Google Docs, Notion, or your phone’s notes app) and organize all the comments along with the post URL.
I have a sub-page under my Notes database in Notion where I add all my comments, post URLs, related LinkedIn posts, and tags.
Once you have the comments database, ask ChatGPT to
Refine those commentsGenerate more content ideasGenerate a list of related questions
Here’s one of my comments I asked Chatgpt to expand on.
By giving it instructions about my target audience and tone, it generated a pretty good response.
Collect all the responses and start refining by filling in any missing gaps or adjusting the tone or structure of the post.
Don’t shy away from repurposing your old content
You don’t always have to come up with new ideas.
Go back a few months and repurpose your older posts.
As a newbie at personal branding, I thought this approach was lazy and repetitive until I saw some of the big creators advocating for this. And, now, I am an advocate of that because it not only jumpstarts the creative process but also helps you in different ways:
Not all of your followers get to all of your posts. So you will get more visibility and reach new audiences.You can make the most out of your existing ideas by adding new angles, insights, or perspectives.Reinforce your core messaging to build authority and expertise in your niche.
Here are three easy and quick ways to repurpose your content:
Repost your older posts: Find your old best-performing posts and share them again with your network. Minimal efforts are required.
Here’s how Bani Kaur, a freelance writer and consultant, reposted one of her same posts over a span of 3 months. The post is exactly the same, but she used a different image for the new post.
Change the format: If you wrote a text post before, create a carousel or share a graphic to deliver the same message.Break down your long-form posts into short snippets: If you wrote a long post about how to build a content marketing strategy, pick each step and expand on it. It will keep you busy for a while.
Solutions to challenge: Time management
Block a certain time per day or during weekends
Time blocking is one of the most effective ways to manage your time. When you assign certain hours or minutes to perform a specific task, you hold yourself accountable.
Either use a time tracking tool such as Toggl tracker or your phone’s timer to work for a certain amount of time brainstorming, writing, and editing posts.
Or you can use a simple old way of scheduling your day in Google Calendar. Kasey Jones, Coach & Consultant for Startup Founders and Co-founder of Power Your Platform, says, “If it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t happen.”
By prioritizing your tasks in a day, you can reduce distractions and focus on getting the work done.
It is also helpful to create content batches in advance. Content batching is helpful because you allot a fixed time and write content for a whole week or month.
You free up a lot of time by content batching and have more time to focus on other aspects of brand building, such as networking, without worrying about what to write about next!
Also, you don’t get burnout in the process of managing multiple tasks at once.
Schedule your content
Scheduling your posts is one of the best ways to reclaim your time. Once you have all the content ideas and posts ready, schedule them based on the best time to post on linkedIn.
With Buffer’s scheduling feature and calendar view, you can see a daily/weekly/monthly breakdown of all the scheduled posts.
Solutions to challenge: Creating authentic content consistently
Build a content creation system
The key to keep posting authentic content consistently is to have systems and processes in place.
One helpful system you can build is a content creation system. It’s a system to capture, organize, and post your ideas by keeping everything in a single centralized place.
Having a centralized place helps in many ways:
You get a 360-degree view of all your ideas without juggling between loads of apps (Ino more one-person WhatsApp groups to send notes)You can identify overlapping themes and patterns which will help you think more clearlyYou can generate more ideas by seeing a clear picture of what you have in your arsenal.
Here’s how to get started with your content creation system:
Capturing ideas: Find a place to jot down all your ideas. It can be any notes app or a project management software like Notion, or Trello.Categorize ideas: Use tags to assign a category to each idea. It will keep everything organized so you don’t feel overwhelmed.Post-generation: Don’t just keep your ideas organized in a beautiful system. Put a timer and start expanding on ideas and turn them into engaging posts.
Keep a swipe file
Another way to maintain consistency is to have a swipe file.
A swipe file is a collection of inspiration – articles, newsletters, reports, infographics, and so on.
A swipe file not only helps your idea repository be full but lends a helping hand to keep you on a consistent path by being authentic. You can use it to surface hidden topics, emerging trends, expert opinions, and so on.
By having access to all the information in a single place, you can get a step ahead and refine your content strategy.
I am a big proponent of swipe files and have built one in Notion. I dump links to templates, helpful articles, courses, beautiful websites, and so on. I assign a tag to each link so it’s easy to organize and filter whenever I need.
But, if that seems like a lot of work (it is!) I found a much quicker and easier way to help you create and organize a swipe file.
Use My Mind, an AI tool that helps you save, organize, and find ideas without much effort.
Once you download the extension, click on the ‘+’ icon to save any page you come across while browsing. Unlike most note apps, you don’t need to assign any tag to find the most relevant ideas. (although you can)
The tool has in-built AI-powered commands that will surface results matching that command. For example, if you type:article, AI will surface all the article pages.
The best part?
You can save thoughts, quotes, or intriguing analogies instead of saving the entire post.
Start building your personal brand
There is no set manual you can follow to build a successful personal brand. Yes, you will face challenges initially and maybe along the line. But you can find a way around those challenges.
Here’s a recap of how to solve the various challenges of personal branding:
Start with commenting if you don’t know what to postSchedule your posts to free up your timeBlock time and create batch contentBuild a content creation systemRepurpose your old content Have a dedicated swipe file
You can also take help from AI tools to generate ideas, organize those ideas, and schedule your posts. But showing up every day is going to take you somewhere more than not showing up at all.
