Today we have a special post for freelancers and for anyone who wants to build a brand around their person, because we are going to learn how to design a website for your personal brand.
If you are reading this is because you are thinking about taking a step further in your professional career and you are interested in having a presence on the Internet through a web page or website, but maybe you do not know where to start and what is the difference between a company website and a personal brand website, so in this post we will explain what is a personal brand, why you need your own website, plus we will give you some tips for you to design yours in a simple but professional way.
What is personal branding and why do you need your own website?
Personal branding in a nutshell is to present yourself as a commercial brand in order to differentiate yourself from the competition and achieve more visibility and therefore greater professional success.
As you can imagine this is an excellent way to present yourself to the world if you are a freelancer, but it is also an excellent opportunity if you want to start selling your own products.
Having a website that represents you as a brand is an excellent way to tell the world that you are a professional in what you do, in a massive and innovative way, plus you can reach many more people than if you did it only through traditional media.
Having a website allows you to be present for your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Imagine the possibilities that this can bring to you, because you can hardly reach this level of presence in a physical business. A website is an excellent way to reach customers anywhere in the country.
If you are here, it is because you are probably interested not only in creating a personal brand, but also in creating an Internet site to promote this same brand, so today we present you this small guide to take your site from paper to practice.
1. Choose the platform
On other occasions we have already talked about how easy it can be to create a website today and especially if you are interested in a site for your personal brand, because you no longer need to be a web designer or developer to create a functional and professional website.
There are several platforms that allow you to create your website as easy as dragging and dropping elements. Undoubtedly the most famous and complete of them is WordPress, it is best to invest and hire the premium version so you have access to more templates, plugins and above all you can register your own domain, in fact we have a guide to make your site on this platform if you want to learn more about it.
2. Choose a domain
As with a professional website, the domain of your personal brand is the first step to make your Internet presence a success. Remember that a domain is the address by which your customers will find your website. It is composed of two parts: the domain name and the extension.
To choose the first part there is not much complication because as it is a personal brand page, ideally it should be your own name or a part or derivative of it, ideally it should be short and easy to remember, so you can keep this in mind if you are going to change your name a little to make it your domain name.
With extensions you do have to take into account some aspects to choose the best one. There are two types of extensions, on the one hand there are those that indicate what your page is dedicated to; for example .edu for schools or .com for companies, and on the other hand there are the geographic domain extensions that locate it in a specific country, for example .es for Spain, .col for Colombia and .mx for Mexico.
Choosing a geographic location extension implies paying a fee, however the ideal is that you choose a .mx domain regardless of whether it is accompanied by a .com, because this domain can bring important benefits for your website, especially if you only plan to offer your services at a national level, because when an address contains a .mx it is easier to appear in the search results after any local search, if you omit it you will end up competing with pages from all over the world, wasting the opportunity to be priority in the results for those who are browsing from Mexico.
3. Outline the content What should a personal brand website have?
If you have already decided to create a website for your personal brand but you don’t really know what it should contain, don’t worry because here we are going to present some of the basic elements it should have in order to make it a success.
Who are you?
The most important thing in a personal brand site is to explain who you are, that is to say, the most important part of your website should be focused on explaining what you do, what is your goal and what distinguishes you from your competition, in particular your website has to make very clear what your essence is.
Show a bit of your work
Maybe this is a bit obvious but it is important that your website reflects your work, no matter what you do or the turn of your personal brand, but it is important that within the site you dedicate a part of it to give examples of everything you can do.
If you want to convince more clients the ideal is that in your website you not only describe what you do, it is best to put examples of your previous work or projects, for example if you are a designer you can add a space only for your most outstanding designs, if you are a copywriter then you can add a blog or screenshots of other projects.
If your personal brand is focused on selling products and not so much on services, then what you can do is to add a section of comments from your customers, so your visitors will know from personal reviews how good they are.
As you can see the content of a website for a personal brand is not very different from a website of a company or a corporation, the only thing that makes it different is that this page will always be a reflection of your personal style.
4. Plan the design
Your website should express all your personality and essence, that’s why you should pay special attention to everything related to its design. If the platform you have chosen to create your website allows you to use several templates or allows you to design it from scratch but you do not have much idea about graphic design do not worry because here we will give you some elements that you need to pay attention to and some tips to make them in a professional way:
Logo
This is one of the most important elements to give identity to a brand, so it must say a lot about it, ideally it should be something simple with few colors, because you will use it in all your stationery such as business cards, website, brochures and other advertising.
If you don’t have a clear idea of how to do it you can hire a professional designer through Fiverr or design it on a site that does it for you and then change what you don’t like.
Color palette
Another element that you can not leave to chance is the color palette that you are going to use on your website, because they are an important element that over time will give identity to your brand. If you can not measure the importance of colors for a company, think about what the color red means for Coca Cola.
Ideally, you should only use a maximum of three colors throughout the site. There is a whole theory of color that will help you choose an attractive color scheme that will arouse the interest of your visitors.
Graphic elements
Graphic elements are all the icons, images and infographics that you are going to use on your website. It is important that you plan which are going to be your recurring graphic elements and what their characteristics will be, since they are a fundamental part of the aesthetics of the page and above all they help to project a good image of your brand.
Site structure
It seems obvious but it is always better to remember to plan the structure of your website before you start creating it. Think about how many pages or sections you will need, how you would like them to be arranged, where the images or videos should be.
If you still don’t have a clear idea about this, you can help yourself by reviewing the sites of brands similar to yours.
We hope you found this little guide very useful and that it will help you clear up some doubts about personal brand pages. But before you run to create your own website, let us know if you have any other advice to start with your personal brand or to make a page for it.