Everybody knows that to succeed as a freelancer and particularly as a solopreneur, personal branding is very important. As a guy who has over 70 nicknames on LinkedIn given by others, here are my personal branding tips for freelancers, solopreneurs, and all kinds of independent professionals.
In this 2-part article, I explain what you might not know about branding as a freelancer:
- Part 1: Why personal branding a mandatory step for serious freelancers
- Part 2: How to create a strong brand that lasts the test of time
Enjoy responsibly, and don’t destroy your brand while attempting to create it!
The first 70 nicknames I got from freelancers on LinkedIn.
Brand… what brand?
A brand is something that people recognize you from. In my case: coconuts. My tagline makes a contrast between coconuts and peanuts in a freelancing context: “Don’t work for peanuts, go straight for coconuts.” Simply put, many freelancers accept low rates, compete with others in the “race to the bottom”, and never succeed as individuals because of their attitude and business approach.
Having a personal brand means that people associate something with you, be it whatever you want. Here are some examples.
Chukwuka Deh and Evgin Serbest seem to know well what I do. 😉
Apparently, it works the other way around too! Your name becomes synonymous with your brand.
Komal Kumari seems to think of me as a coconut. Which is fine!
Honestly, on a conceptual level, it’s not more difficult than this. Become synonymous with something and there you go, you have a brand. Then, it’s all about who and how many people recognize it and if it helps in doing business as a freelancer.
The coconut thing… I’ve had it ever since I started my one-man business in 2014. I called it Improventions with the tagline “improvise, invent, and improve” all the tech stuff I do. I figured I needed some photos for my website to have an elementary-level marketing and portfolio.
When shooting the photos and sitting in my beach office, I thought a mere “director’s chair” and a laptop was not enough. So, I picked up a coconut and held it high up and that felt like the most natural thing to… while wearing a black suit, a nice tie, and sunglasses! 🙂
My original website back in the days… My coconut was already there from Day 1.
A successfully created brand is something other people start to talk about amongst themselves. That’s one of the moments when you know it’s working well.
Beatrice Omoh explained basic accounting concepts in terms of “coconomics”.
Visibility, perceived authority, and trust
Perhaps the most significant part of having a recognized brand is that people “know you” and therefore everything you might end up doing with others skips one little step: building trust. For those other people you are already a trusted source, so to say, for the information you’ve provided, tips you’ve given, posts you’ve made, helpful comments you’ve been writing, and so on.
This is the step where many freelancers struggle at first. For instance, imagine an interview situation in the case of a fresh freelancer without a brand and a solopreneur with a strong brand.
The fresh freelancer will be asked all kinds of things about the previous experience by the client who is interviewing him or her. This is natural because the freelancer’s achievements are not public knowledge. They might be a couple of bullets in the resume or a few short lines in an Upwork proposal. The client needs to know more to assess the possible fit for the job and to gain an acceptable level of trust before hiring.
But when interviewing a branded solopreneur, the previous achievements are already known for the most significant parts. Many times these kinds of interviews start with the client going straight to the point by asking if “you could do a similar thing for us as in that previous project”. Or the interview starts by talking about “how great it would be to work together because…”
If your brand is strong, it is the client who is pitching you the collaboration idea!
In my case, this seems to be working in two ways. First, potential clients who send me messages about potential collaboration projects mention “I love the coconut vibe” or something like that. It’s very easy to start a conversation because of sending positive vibes to every new connection who might have already seen me somewhere online before.
“Coconut vibe” appears to be a popular topic if you took a look at my LinkedIn inbox.
Also, we don’t need to talk so much about prior experience or about my prior specialization e.g. in making VR training simulators because they’ve already seen my track record on Upwork or something. I rarely post about VR stuff, but people who connect with me for business purposes seem to do their research past the first level of coconuts.
The other side of this is that other freelancers whom I might hire would love to get hired by me because they don’t need to worry if the “CocoLord” would pay or not. I get a 0% suspicion of being a scam client. (More about the hiring aspect later.)
Community leadership
With a brand that many people in your reference group recognize means also that you have the opportunity to take a role as a thought leader. You can do all kinds of crazy things, like turning Upwork’s Coffee Break discussion forum into Coffee & Coconut Break for a month just because many people are supporting your ideas!
You can run contests that people will gladly contribute to when having great hopes of winning and becoming visible parts of your community. One example is a drawing contest I had in 2022. A more recent example is this nickname emoji contest that blew up in a way and produced by-products useful in future branding efforts.
Saad Ullah Butt’s brilliant emoji combination as well as the animated gif he made became a permanent part of my branding arsenal.
You can even ask your community for branding tips if you are in doubt about how to do these things. And that might turn into a self-feeding circle of sorts when more and more people see your brand.
Asking for tips – And getting them in plenty.
You can even trace it back to the source by simply asking folks how they got to know your brand. Like this.
Elfrida Ogoe figured it out very early.
Fatima Imran connected my Upwork tips to coconuts immediately (as I hoped).
Faheem Ghaus followed suit.
Sana Ijaz had a more personal reason and connecting for the sake of coconuts made perfect sense.
Shaheera Shahid remembered seeing the categorization of bad client types first.
Saad Ullah Butt was confused about the message at first, but perhaps that was the genius part of the whole plan. Make people a little curious!
Sundas Anwer faced a similar confusion too, at first.
Jenny Maxwell’s confusion is entirely my fault. People with a similar sense of humor attract each other, I suppose. It’s enough for connecting!
Abdulrasheed Girigisu put everything together so perfectly that I couldn’t do it any better myself.
Blessing Momoh was recommended to connect by another member of my nutty community to be part of the “fuzz”.
Easy recruitment
One of the big benefits of having a widely recognized brand is that you will have no problem hiring freelancers for your own team. No problem at all, actually! This is the part that I value above all else: the ability to team up and get stuff going.
Like my attempts to hire affiliate marketers to advertise my webinar courses. My experiment of using LinkedIn job posts failed miserably and I quickly came to learn why. The main reason was that because the people applying for my jobs:
- Didn’t do any research on the company that was hiring them (because too lazy)
- Were not my followers and connections (yet)
In both cases, the one hiring appears as someone who might or might not be a decent employer. So, there were very few hires because of a mismatch of perception. What does I2 Network LLC do, who runs it, and why does it even exist?
This is mainly because it is only the company name, not the person’s name, that appears in the job post. This works well for big brands but not for individuals whose personal brands are all shiny but whose business names are largely unknown.
Now, the good side.
Use your personal brand to leverage your recruiting process by targeting your followers and connections exclusively. You don’t need to make official job posts! Just put the word out there and let people come to you. Works like a charm!
For example, when I was looking for affiliate marketers, a couple of posts like this one brought me an inbox-full number of emails starting with “Dear CocoLord” (which of course made me giggle 8 hours straight one beautiful Sunday morning).
Many went to great lengths in preparing absolutely fantastic cover letters that leave no room for not hiring. For example, Manal Aslam’s legendary email.
The best cover letter I’ve ever got.
Easy collaboration with peers
Without a visible brand, it might be a bit harder to build collaborations with peers. For instance, all of the guest speakers in the Freelance Like a Boss webinar course are coaches and mentors whom I have met online (mostly on LinkedIn), noticed that we have a lot in common including a similar clientele, and decided to join the CoachLancer community to help all members understand various aspects of freelancing.
This has been working extremely well. It’s been a win-win-win kind of situation: great for the members, great for the guest presenters, and great for me as well. In other words, perfect collaboration!
Referrals
Last but not least, as this is the final part of the benefits of personal branding, the main business impact: you will get clients through your friends and community members as referrals!
For instance, one of the coaches who gave a wonderful guest presentation in the webinar course asked one day what kind of primary clients I prefer to work with (the “mad VR scientist” part). I said Silicon Valley-based technology startups doing virtual reality.
Not very much later, I was connected to an entrepreneur who is starting a new VR business in California, and after a couple of calls, I joined their team with great enthusiasm as I learned how well-planned and realistic their plan was.
There’s nothing better than being connected and recommended by others for a specific job that matches what you do perfectly. No heavy interviews, just a quick scan of mutual interest. And the job is yours!
Even more personal branding tips for freelancers
That was all about the purpose of branding as I have understood and experienced it. Next, we shall learn how to create your brand in a way that brings you business!
‘CocoLord and My 99 Other Crazy Nicknames – Personal Branding Guide for Freelancers, Part 2: How?’ is out!
