
Your brand is your presence in the world.
When it comes to strategies for brand building, your first consideration is your art, your style and who you want to be in the world. When you create what you’re drawn to create, then those who love it — your ultimate audience — will reveal themselves to you.
Yes, I know. This is contrary to much of the traditional advice about identifying your target demographic and serving them. Sure… you want to serve your audience, but until you begin putting your work out into the world, you won’t know for sure who they are.
Creators often resonate with multiple styles. The good news is, so do your fans. Never be afraid to branch into other areas. Don’t limit yourself and your creativity because your audience expects one kind of thing from you. As you expand and evolve, so will your audience.
If you’re not yet sure what you unique style is, don’t worry. Just get busy creating and you will discover more of that… (more of yourself!) as your art evolves and you with it.
Your brand is about you doing you.
Strategies for Brand Building Begins With Creating and Sharing
It’s easy for most creators to create their art than it is their business, unless they’re an entrepreneur and their business is their art. For most creators the business side of things is not our strength because we just want to engage in our craft and create our art and write our words and books.
Creators just want to create.
Many creatives are even inclined toward disdain or at least a distaste—and sometimes, despair—for the business side of things. However, there’s another way to look at it.
Good news, creators! Brand building doesn’t have to be tedious business stuff. It begins by doing what you love to do: create and share… create and share! And… it’s about passion and purpose and we know you’re all over that!
Brand building is discovering and aligning with passion and purpose.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Audio Article – Brand Building – Keep it Simple:
Brand Building is About Creating
Branding is not a component of a dry business process. This is an age where we all have the luxury of integrating our passion and purpose into our work.
Creators are good at looking at things creatively, and bringing creativity everywhere they go. That’s what’s needed to grow your work in the world.
When you infuse your creativity into the business side of your work, your work will flourish. Creativity breaths purpose and passion into even the mundane and can be applied to anything or situation. The more we exercise creativity, the more of it we’ll have to call upon for the hard stuff.
Bring your artistic creativity to every aspect of your business. Make it just another one of your creations… for after all, that is what it is.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Discovering Your ‘Why’
Artists love to create beauty, intrigue, entertainment, enjoyment, delight and inspiration. To do that we need an audience… a fan base. And to build that, we need to define our “why”.
Your “why” is central to building your “brand”… it’s the reason you do what you do. In other words… your ‘why’ is your purpose and that’s a great place to begin.
If you’re not at all certain as to your why, don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal to have no idea. Purpose is often something that comes increasingly into focus over time as you engage in doing work you’re drawn to do.
When it comes to brand building, this is your art, your company and your chance to give it a voice in the world.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

The Artist Entrepreneur
Business artists, aka, entrepreneurs, love to create industry, products and services that serve, that solve problems and that delight. Sometimes they connect and serve through their chosen industry. Other times it is through the art itself that people are served.
When a singer delights her audience, they are transported in her performance of her art. And yet the more that artist engages her fans, the more fans she will have because people want to connect with people they admire and who touch their hearts. As an artist, especially, your brand is a platform for your purpose.
Your brand is an expression of your purpose in the world.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
K.I.S.S. – Keep It Super Simple
We’re very much aligned with a super simplistic approach to branding recommended by Tim Ferris in an article on Fortune.com as well as in one of Tim’s podcasts.
When we remove the feigned stuffiness around systems and processes and strip it down to the core—the essential reason for the existence of our business—branding is simplified and no longer a business task.
“Personal branding is a side effect of doing the right things.”
~Tim Ferriss, entrepreneur, author, speaker, b.7/20/1977

Brand Building Simplified
“Forget about branding. Focus on what matters and the rest will take care of itself.”
~Tim Ferriss, entrepreneur, author, investor, b.7/20/77

Tim Ferriss’s 3 Brand Building Rules
- Identify your 1,000 true fans – who they are and what they want and need; what’s important to them.
- Own a category (or create one) for your 1k true fans. I.e., don’t try to sell to or please everyone.
- Forget branding – focus on the customer, on delivering one or two benefits really well.
Keep it simple! Your slogan is your message, the one thing that sums up why you do what you do. So keep it simple and poignant to you, your brand, your company and the customers you serve.
If you don’t yet know what that is, or if your slogan is okay but not yet “it”, that’s okay. Go with the best fit for now and it can evolve over time as you do.
When you focus on creating, connecting and contributing with purpose, growth happens and with it purpose is revealed.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®
Brand Positioning – My First Online Company…
When it comes to brand positioning, Tim Ferriss advises to own your category or create a new one. You want to come up first or second in searches for your niche category, and if you can’t, then consider creating a new one.
I did this for my first brand, but then I blew it. The first product I brought to market from inception to selling online, was the My Trainer Fitness line of sturdy, removable laminated workouts in books of 24 and packs of six complete workouts.
When the My Trainer Fitness product line was first published in 2010, I knew enough about PR and marketing to gain good local and national media exposure (with the help of an expensive PR company). However, I knew little about product branding and nothing about ecommerce and the new world of social media.
I could’ve owned that new market, but I new nothing of the new online world, keywords and ranking, and as a result, I totally missed that blue ocean opportunity.[1]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blue_ocean.asp
Own your category, or create a new one.
~Tim Ferriss, author, born-7/20/1977

… and How I Blew It With My First Brand (for starters)
The first product line we created: complete workouts on laminated cards, were a category of their own. As such, no one was searching for it.
Where I missed the boat (there were many places, actually) was in not knowing how to create a market for that category. I had no idea what keywords were or their importance to any branding building an online presence.
I knew nothing of SEO and how to position it in the Google stratosphere. Nothing of the “new marketing” called Social Media, still in it’s infancy back then, and nothing about growing traffic to our website.
I wasn’t focused on the business of the brand. I was the creator and didn’t want to manage the business.
We created a cool product that was likely the first of its kind to market. We got rave reviews, served our customers well, BUT I didn’t know enough about how to grow our base beyond the initial traditional media coverage and exposure.
I didn’t know about how to “play the Amazon game” of getting more people to publish more reviews on Amazon, or the essentiality of how such reviews are the lifeblood of any product on Amazon. And I wasn’t at all into social media. And the worst part for that business at that time is that I outsourced most of the work to others way too soon; before I knew and understood it myself.
Like most creatives, I thought my job was done once the product was created. I didn’t realize that was just the beginning.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

My Ignorance Cost Millions
In fairness, I was a—mostly—full time homeschooling mom at the time, and part-time business owner. So building a brand and a business around the product I created was not my focus.
Subsequently, that brand suffered from neglect and missed the gaping entrance available during the early Internet heyday. It was just before the fitness industry exploded into the online world.
The fitness industry was one of the first to embrace the new online world. Those who studied it and learned the ins and outs, succeeded. By not focusing on understanding this new era of branding and marketing we lost countless millions and far more opportunities that I care to imagine.
They go hand-in-hand… focus and understanding. Focus leads to understanding.
So focus on what’s required to grow your brand in the arena of choice. Embrace the fun and personal growth that comes from stretching into learning new areas.
Ignorance is Not Bliss
The consequences were huge. If we’d known then what we know now, we could’ve owned the category of fitness cards and would’ve had enough revenue success to continue growing that brand into the digital workouts space. Now there are more competitors in both card and digital versions who have shouldered in and claimed their stake in the market of big boys in the very crowded fitness industry.
I left millions on the table out of ignorance.
Don’t let that be your story. Dive into this new world of infinite opportunities.
The My Trainer Fitness line still exists. We have a successful authority website that’s now more than just a product site, and we still sell great workouts that serve people well.
However there are many more players in the same genre, plus the added competition of many digital workouts that weren’t even around when we first launched, and which are infinitely cheaper to create than highly produced physical products. So we missed out big time.
I missed the opportunity to own our niche, and take that brand into a huge market share.
Like most entrepreneurs, artists and authors, I thought my job was done once the product was created. I didn’t want to do sales and marketing. Can you relate? But… without marketing, your ideal customers can’t find you and without that, there aren’t enough sales. Alas…
Nothing is served by mourning what isn’t, so focus instead on what is and can be.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

It’s All Learning and Growth
However… it’s all a lesson and learning toward better. Nothing is served by mourning what isn’t. Best to use that time to make what is, better. We paid a very heavy tuition but that lesson is now serving our growth.
Every brush stroke goes into the painting, and every keystroke goes into the writing. Even when we hit delete we are constructing our manuscript, because every effort made is building the neurological pathways that expand our capacity.
When it comes to brand building, this is your art, your company and your chance to give it a voice in the world. Your brand is who you are, not what you create. The outer forms may change — for creativity, like water — flows everywhere into everything.
Your purpose is ever present, even if — like the air — you cannot see it. So breath it in… meditate and reflect on it daily and your brand will be a natural outgrowth of your daily pursuit of building your dreams in the world.
And if you’ve no idea of your purpose, that’s actually perfectly normal. It is something that will come to you over time as you pursue creating around that which interests you.
Your ideal life as you want it to be cannot happen without you.
When it comes to branding, keep it simple! Your slogan is your message. Your message is what you do. What you do is because of who you are.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Strategies for Brand Building on Social Media
Document Everything.
Gary Vaynerchuk says: “Document everything.”
Brendon Burchard says, “Publish don’t post.”
Every word we type in texting, messaging and social media timelines are words not filling the page of your book or blog.
I’m social and extroverted. I love people and sharing with others, so I totally get the lure. If that’s you; if you’re drawn to posting and commenting on social media, there are ways to leverage your passion with purpose toward brand building.
Turn your social distractions into social actions that build your brand.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Strategies for Brand Building
Turn Your Ideas into Content
Consider how the words you may be writing when sharing on social media can be leveraged to grow your brand or channeled into your project of focus.
While connecting with friends online is fun and good to do, social media can also get in the way of our goals. But with a little tweaking you can put it to use for you.
When we feel moved to react to things we see on social media, rather than acting on that impulse, consider leveraging that time, energy, effort and creativity.
Leveraging Ideas and Thoughts
If you have the inspiration or impulse to share something on social media with your friends, or comment on someone else’s post, consider instead how you might leverage that into something more.
We’ve written on this extensively in this article on content creation and distribution. In short you can…
TURN THAT IDEA INTO SOMETHING MORE THAN A SOCIAL POST:
- Create a blog article.
- Publish the article to Facebook and other social mediums you engage in.
- A page of your book or chapter of your book.
- That theme can be turned into an engaging Facebook conversation with your audience
- Convert longer social posts into tweets, Instagram and Facebook stories.
- Extract different quotables to meme
- Create a 30 second – two minute video clip
Instead of text chatting, take 30 seconds… 2 minutes… or whatever, to create a video clip on a relevant creative thought, or Facebook Live. That then gets uploaded to your YouTube channel and helps to grow your following.
We’ve also written extensively about leverage in this article on multipurposing your one creation into many things
How do you build your kingdom? One well placed brick at a time.
Branding is about connecting and serving, and it’s about purpose. It’s where you get to do you.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

From the Community
Strategies for Brand Building – Ideas for Creators
- Share a creation each day on ALL your social feeds, (or daily progress on longer projects)
- Posts
- Videos
- timelapse
- live social feeds such as Facebook Live – these get a broader reach
- Photos
- Share other’s work:
- as tribute to those you follow and admire
- to help other new artists get exposure
Last week, in the iCreateDaily for Creators Facebook group member, Beth Murphy shared her Haiku. She’s writing them regularly and is really good at it. She also commented that she and her son planned to do a TikTok together.
Shannon Schofield has been reading her poems into video voiceover to various nature scenes from her property. Her soothing voice and often uplifting words accompanied by the birds and bees, sunrise and trees, are captivating.
Other community members, such as Crystal Jean, Colleen Nichols (here’s her Etsy store) and Brandy Swartz, post regularly and also do time lapse videos of their art. These are all GREAT ways to grow your brand following. Not only do these things bring enjoyment and engagement from your friends and followers, but they’re also more likely to be shared, which attracts others to your page.
Sharing the posts and articles, videos, etc., of people you follow is a wonderful way to pay tribute to them and their work in ways that help them grow. And your fans will do the same for you.
For more on brand building, you may enjoy this article on brand identity.
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