Let’s talk about how to add more of you to your brand. A great word for that is infuse—how to infuse more of you into your brand to attract your ideal clients.

You’re probably wondering how to bring yourself into your brand without sounding fake or forced, right?

Figuring out your natural style is a process

At the beginning you’re going to have a growth phase where you’re trying to figure things out. The important thing is to not feel forced. We see a lot of people show up on social media in a lot of different ways and it can be intimidating.

If you’re not a high energy person and consider yourself a little quieter, like me, then it can be really intimidating. Everyone else looks so entertaining or funny or outspoken and energetic, and it feels like you have to be that way too. I’m here to say that it’s important to just be yourself.

I know it’s easier said than done. But one rule of thumb that has been helpful for me is thinking of how I normally speak. How I normally come across to people. How I behave around friends or family, or in places like networking events where I’ve never met any of those strangers—how do you talk to them?

Pay attention to what your energy is like in those situations. Those are clues as to how you normally act and behave around people. It seems pretty obvious, but I think we can easily get lost in the pressure of feeling like we have to be a certain way.

Being natural is really interesting.

You have your natural personality that will come out. Take a bit of time to get used to it, because often it feels weird to be speaking to a camera all by ourselves, or writing the way we speak. The first few times you speak on camera as part of your brand will feel a little uncomfortable, but I would say that practicing is important—after 20 times of doing it, it feels a lot easier.

Some of the things you can try to make showing up as yourself easier:

Challenge yourself to show up every day and do a little bit of speaking. It’s scary when we’re first starting out, but doing it on a daily basis will hep you see how much you’ve been able to shift that feeling of being uncomfortable toward feeling more natural.

When you’re speaking to your audience imagine speaking to someone who is a friend that is your ideal client because then you’re not trying to direct your message to everyone. This will help you speak to someone on a one-on-one basis.

Think about someone showing up to your house. How would you act around them? How would you speak to them? Imagine that situation to help you pay attention to what feels natural to you.

Try the Marco Polo app to leave a video with a message to someone. This will help you practice being on camera and getting comfortable with it. Practicing with a friend or accountability partner (or with yourself) will help you to get comfortable with your voice, your expressions, and how you speak.

Take little baby steps to show up on social media.

How do I know how much to share? What if I want to keep things private?

Knowing how much to share with your audience comes down to understanding who you’re speaking to, who your ideal client is, and basing your content around who they are.

Ultimately, we want to attract a specific person with specific interests, goals, likes, mindsets, etc, so if we try to attract like-minded people, then you need to think of the things that they would be interested in. Those things you have in common. The goal is to build connections with them, and to build real relationships with real people.

There are many possibilities of what you could share. It’s really important to narrow down the things that are the most important that you really want to continue to share. Sharing too much is easy, but you don’t have to share all of you—sharing about you doesn’t have to take away from your privacy.

You have that control.

You can decide to only share about these 3 topics and not everything about you and that’s okay.

I break it down that 70% of my content is directly related to my brand and business, whether it’s educational, motivational or entertaining. The remaining 30% is from the lifestyle I lead that aligns with the values and interests that my ideal client has.

You can also choose to highlight someone else’s business (like I've done here with Ella) or show support for something else you believe in too. It doesn't just have to be about your day and what you're doing.

Ready to work through narrowing down your brand with a brand strategist? Then, let’s chat!