In this post, I'll share eight essential elements for creating a perfect personal brand website. I'll explain why each element is important and how to implement them.
One of my favorite types of website to create as a web designer is the personal brand website.
One of the reasons I love creating these types of websites so much is because I get to learn so much about the person I'm designing the website for.
I get to discover what a person's passions are, their skills and abilities, and I get to discover their personality and what makes them unique and memorable.
I'm the face of my business here at Magnet4Blogging Media, so I consider this website to be one of my personal brand portals. I own several 🙂
You see, a personal brand website is a perfect platform for promoting the business of you, your products, and your services.
But here's the thing -
How do you design and build a website for personal branding that doesn't look or feel the same as every other personal brand website out there?
How to do design a personally branded website that stands out from the rest, and most importantly, that identifies who you are, what you believe in, and what you do or have to offer?
Well, in this post, I'm going to share with you eight of the most critical elements for designing and building the perfect website for your personal brand business.
Whether you're an up and coming or seasoned blogger, vlogger, author, public speaker, freelancer, business consultant, creative individual - it really doesn't matter, this post should hopefully help you pave the foundation for creating a great looking website that will make the business of you stand out in an irresistible way.
Are you ready to roll? Let's get straight to it.
I will not even attempt to discuss the ins and outs of what a personal brand business is.
I will, however, recommend a fantastic book that I had the pleasure of reading recently and while on vacation in Gran Canaria with the family.
The book is called "Rise Of The Youpreneur" authored by Chris Ducker, and you can find it on Amazon here.
If you're just starting out, or even if you're not, it really doesn't matter - This definitive guide will help to catapult you in the right direction and teach you how to become an authoritative leader in your niche with your personal brand business.
Essentially, everything you need to know about personal branding is in this book.
OK, enough ranting from me, let's get stuck in.
If you are starting from rock bottom as a complete newbie, here's what you need to do.
Before you can start on designing and building your personal brand website, you'll first need a domain name and some reliable web hosting.
For these, I recommend checking out SiteGround.
You'll also need a website building platform, and for this, I recommend using nothing other than WordPress.
Here are some links to useful tutorial guides for installing and using WordPress -
Now let us dive into the 8 elements needed to design and build a rocking personal brand website for yourself.
Let's be honest here; Unless you want to look like every other online entrepreneur, which I'm sure you don't, then you're going to need to think about standing out with a unique design and branding for your website.
Now, don't panic, because it's not as hard or as costly as you think to create a unique identity for your online personal brand.
For the most part, you can do most of the work yourself, unless you can afford to hire a web designer to help you, of course. And also, it doesn't happen overnight.
The reason I say it's not as hard or as costly as you think is that today most of us are extremely lucky to live in a world where we have access to so many different tools, apps, software, online services, etc.
All that is required from you is a little investment, a little elbow-grease as we say in the UK (meaning consistent hard work), time and a boatload of patience.
You also don't need to be a creative genius to come up with a unique design and branding for your personal brand website.
What I recommend you do is research first.
Closely look at how other personal brand business owners have created their websites, get inspired and motivated to come up with your own stand-out design.
Select a palette of colors that you want to use. Heck, why not select a few to experiment with.
Select the font styles you like the most, and then begin visualizing your website layout and style either by creating a mock design on paper or use some free graphic design software.
I recommend using Macaw if you have the time to learn how to use it. It's a great tool for creating website mockups. It's available for Mac and Windows.
Notice how I'm encouraging you to do everything yourself here. This is important I think, especially if you want to have complete control over the design and branding of your website.
Also, I think it's beneficial, as an entrepreneur, to be able to manage and make changes and improvements to your own website design as and when you need to.
OK, so here are some design tools that I recommend you take a look at to help you design and build your personal website -
To really stand out, your personal brand website cannot have a generic home landing page.
Your website homepage needs to be unique, purposeful, and it clearly needs to highlight your personal brand's value proposition.
Now once again, I'm encouraging you to do this yourself, however, if you're not comfortable with designing a custom website homepage then hire a web designer by all means.
There are some powerful, simple to use drag-and-drop tools you can use, as I mentioned above, to help you craft the perfect custom personal brand homepage.
Check out the Thrive Architect plugin. This plugin will allow you to create any type of landing page in WordPress without touching a single line of code.
I also created a useful tutorial video that shows how to create a custom homepage using this very plugin. See below.
Once you have established your brand design and message, ensure that you're consistent with it.
Pam Moore from PamMarketingNut wrote in this post that it takes just 5 to 7 impressions before someone remembers your brand. So, make it memorable by being consistent.
Ensure that every single page on your website is in uniform, not just your homepage, but also your landing pages, blog, about page, etc. are all instantly recognizable and memorable for your users.
Repeat this over and over again, because this is one of the smartest ways to make your personal brand website stick in people's minds.
Do the same offsite as well. After all, you don't spend all your time perfecting your brand's design and identity only to have it seen in one place, i.e. your website.
Another smart strategy you can implement to help you increase awareness about your personal brand business is to ensure that you amplify yourself across every marketing platform you are using.
You want people to recognize your personal brand regardless of the platform, right?
[clickToTweet tweet="You want people to recognize and remember your personal brand, regardless of the platform..." quote="You want people to recognize and remember your personal brand, regardless of the platform..."]
One great way to do this is by being consistent with your brand design and marketing message everywhere.
For example, your social media profiles, email marketing newsletters, incentives, advertisements, content marketing, graphics and images, and even your offline marketing material should all be consistent with your brand identity and messaging.
Consistency in branding will also help you to establish yourself as a trusted authority in your niche or industry, and that's what you want for your personal brand business.
Now that we have design, branding, and consistency of branding taken care of, the next step in creating the perfect personal brand website is writing a compelling about page.
Now, before you head off with excitement to share your life's story. Just stop for one second.
Writing a compelling about page is not an opportunity for you to write about everything and anything that's happened in your life, it's your opportunity to let people know why they should even care about the business of you, and what you have to share or offer to them.
So, make sure you highlight just the following in your about page -
Other than these six elements above, nothing else should really be included on your about page.
Of course, if you feel the need to share your life's story and believe it's appropriate to do so, you should consider writing your story in a separate page and then add a link to it from your about page.
If you choose to do this, just make sure your storytelling is relatable and relevant to your personal brand.
Chances are that you'll have a unique skill or ability that you can use to help you grow and stand out with your personal brand website and business.
For example, my ability is creating beautiful, simple websites with WordPress, amongst other skills (graphic design and video content creation and editing).
I use my skills and abilities to add value to others, by providing a service. For the most part, that's what most folks know me for.
So, for you, if you have a professional skill or ability and have worked on personal and even client projects that you are able to share, consider showing off your very best work on a page you can call your work portfolio.
Perhaps you can also share some examples of your work on your homepage too.
If you already have a bunch of written testimonials you can use to add credibility to your personal brand business website, and if you have the permission to use those testimonials, consider selecting the very best ones to show off on your homepage. Or, on a separate page, you can call client testimonials.
There's an awesome plugin from Thrive Themes called Thrive Ovation. This is a paid-for plugin, however, you can use to gather and display testimonials for social proof.
Click here to learn more about it.
Building and growing a successful personal brand business website means getting more active on social media, right?
Of course, and while you might think that linking to all your social networking profiles from your personal brand website is important, well, it's not always the best strategy.
Instead, consider linking to only the most appropriate ones, and the ones that you're most active on.
For instance, if you have a Facebook page with a small audience, or that isn't very active, then don't be afraid to leave it out.
The same for any of your personal profiles that aren't at all related to what your personal brand website is about, or what you do. Just leave those out too.
On the other hand, if you're active daily on, let's say, Instagram - And you're sharing timely and relevant content related to your business, products, or services, then, of course, you'll want to link to it.
If you take a look at the homepage of this website, you'll see that I'm quite happy to show off images from the Instagram profile of my work and life.
I do this because I feel it's important for my website visitors to see that while I'm passionate and a professional at what I do and what I have to offer in my business, I'm also a human being and have a friendly disposition and personality that I like to share.
Whatever you decide to do, link to your social network profiles smartly.
Finally, let's talk about communication because, like any other online business, this is important.
As you begin to grow with your personal brand business website, some of your visitors, subscribers, and frequent readers will want to get in touch with you.
Perhaps to share an idea with you, or to talk about a problem they might be experiencing, or just to connect with you.
As the face of your business, the business of YOU, make sure that folks can get in touch with you quickly and easily.
Display contact details prominently on your website, or create a contact page with a contact form, as well as other ways you can be reached by, i.e. Facebook page, Twitter profile, Skype, etc.
So there you have it, eight very important elements for designing and building the perfect personal brand website, and hopefully, you found all of the tips above valuable and most importantly, you'll take action to build the most awesome personal brand website ever for yourself.
Remember, if you need any help with website design or branding, you can learn more about my design and creative services here.
