Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “personal brand”? Does it make you stressed out because it feels like one more thing to do in your already packed schedule? Or could it perhaps be the hidden key that helps you speak the language of your ideal client?
I’m excited to bring you this interview with local Canonsburg resident and business owner Aaron Hunt, who is a personal brand photographer. He’s not only excellent at his photography craft, but an expert on personal branding. Aaron is also the host of a fantastic podcast called “Your Personal Brand.” Here's some of our conversation about branding. My questions are in bold below.
How do you define personal branding?
When you were growing up, you had a reputation, right? Maybe people talked about your character or your integrity? Well, all of those things are things that go into personal branding. So really, personal branding, for me is just largely What do people think and say about you, not only when you're around, but when you're not around? Right? And what is that? That sense of character in that reputation that you carry with you, no matter what you're doing professionally?
There are two people that pop into my head of the best personal brands in our contemporary era. Those are Richard Branson, and Oprah Winfrey. Those two have done so many different things with the brand that they've built. And you know, if you say Richard Branson, there's a handful of things that may pop into your head. They're somewhat related, but not really the guy started with a magazine. Then he bought a music, you know, a record studio.
How would you recommend that someone who is an introvert, or who gets exhausted by interaction with a lot of people on social media?
Well, I'm actually an introvert. We think we have to be on all these different channels, we have to do Pinterest, and Instagram, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and whatever else is out there. But pick one thing that works for you, and just do that really, really well. And so quite frankly, you know, as an introvert, you may be an amazing writer of emails, and you may be wonderful at writing handwritten letters. And so take the time to connect in a way that makes sense for you. For me, the one thing that I really got into as a photographer was was using Instagram as sort of like the beginning of my platform. And and then, as I got comfortable with that, I started trying to figure out, well, how can I have some of this more personal connection.
The Key Takeaways From Our Conversation
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Aaron. Here are a few takeaways from our conversation. First, not everybody sees everything you create or post. If you post on social media, if you write blog posts, if you have a YouTube channel, if you have a podcast, if you write books, nobody's going to see all that material except for you. So it's okay to repurpose material between all those different outlets, and all those different ways that people can experience your content. I think that's a really good insight that Aaron shared with me.
Another thing is to create an avatar for the person you're trying to serve. Aaron mentioned to me that when he created his avatar, it was a blend of some real people that he knows. So you too can make your avatar somebody that you have in your mind. I want to give a huge thank you to Aaron Hunt for chatting with me. And I want to encourage you to make sure to check out his website, which is the personalbrandphotog.com.
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