Wednesday, January 1, 2020

How To Build a Personal Brand Without Any Money

Better Marketing



How To Build a Personal Brand Without Any Money

Every step I took to go from college graduate to writer and agency founder





Nicolas Cole Instagram

  1. I needed to build myself as a writer publicly. I needed to start branding myself.





1. Instead of Trying to Generate Press and Media Attention for Myself, I Used My Writing to Build Credibility Through My Work

Unlike most other writers who either receive advances for their first book or make their money elsewhere and then decide to start building themselves as an author/writer after the fact, I didn’t have the means to hire other people to make me look talented.

I started writing on Quora near the end of 2014

Knowing that I didn’t have any of these other “buyable” options on the table, I committed fully to the process of writing on a daily basis. I told myself I was going to write one Quora answer per day, every day, for a year straight. Worst case scenario, it would be a year of extreme practice. Best case scenario, Quora would be my launchpad.





2. Instead of Spending Money on Hiring a Photographer, I Reached Out to Photography Students Studying at Columbia College Chicago

I’ve always been a huge rap and hip-hop fan.

As a 23-year-old with zero resources and determined to build myself into a successful, fully independent writer, I saw this as a massive opportunity

Not having any other writer to use as a model, I basically decided to take the branding playbook of an up-and-coming rap artist and apply it to myself. If rappers hired photographers to take on tour with them and capture candid photos of them behind the scenes, then I was going to do the same thing in my everyday life. If rappers made their Instagram pages give the impression that they were this massive superstar, then I was going to do the same thing. If rappers had creative directors, then I was going to be my own creative director.

I emailed 20 different students I found on the site

A few got back to me. And I just started meeting up with them, walking to different parts of the city, pretending like I had any idea what I was doing. “Look at me like you’re thinking about something,” this girl said, pointing her camera lens at my face. I thought I was doing what she had asked, until she said, “No, like, actually move your face. Make a different expression.” I didn’t know how to do that. I tried again. She said, “No, OK so like, umm. You know what, nevermind,” and I followed her to a different street where we tried again. And again.

Nicolas Cole Instagram





3. Instead of Spending Money on Advertising, I Started Building a Massive Library (a “Web”) of Content to Advertise for Me Long Into the Future

One of my first big lessons in the world of digital advertising happened when I was working as a copywriter at this ad agency right out of college.

Once I started executing this strategy for myself, I started to see the secret weapon I had unlocked for myself

Every article I wrote was another asset that I owned. The more assets I owned, the more organic viewership I started to attract. The bigger the library got, the wider my reach, the more “sticky” my web of content got, and the higher my average monthly views went.





4. I Sacrificed Short-Term Opportunities to Make Money for Longer-Term Opportunities That Had Exponentially Higher Ceilings

The last thing I did, and this is a choice I continue to make for myself today, is I always questioned whether or not it was time to start monetizing.

From that day forward, I wrote one Quora answer per day and one Inc. Magazine column per day, five to seven days per week, every week, every month, for months on end

In my first month writing for Inc. Magazine, I had my first small viral hit, and I made something like $1,000. The next month, another article caught fire. And then again, and again. Until eventually, what I was earning from Inc. Magazine alone wasn’t too far from what I was making working eight or more hours per day at the ad agency.
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WRITTEN BY

Writer | Founder of Digital Press | 4x Top Writer on Quora | 50M+ Views | https://www.nicolascole.com


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