Branding is key, regardless of your website’s focus. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a blog, an online store, or a service site – your brand will play a significant role in the way visitors perceive you, so it’s important to start developing it as soon as possible. That’s where a personal branding website comes into play.
With a powerful brand, people may begin to recognize your content simply by seeing your logo or your site’s other imagery. This kind of recognition is fantastic because it means that your audience knows and trusts you. As a result, you’re likely to have fewer problems attracting conversions.
In this article, we’re going to talk a little about what online branding is and the role your site plays in it. Then we’ll cover some tips for building a personal branding website using WordPress. Let’s begin!
What an online brand is (and how your website plays a key role)
Your site’s logo, tagline, colors, and style are all pieces of its ‘brand’. In other words, your online brand is a combination of all the elements that people associate with your website and other presences (such as your social media profiles).
If you think about it, most popular websites have easily-recognizable branding.
Take this logo, for example:
We’re willing to bet you know exactly what service this icon represents, even without seeing it in context.
A powerful online brand can make your website more memorable and engaging, which is crucial for building an audience and driving conversions. Of course, branding alone is not enough – you’ll still need to create and publish engaging content if you want your personal branding website to succeed. If you pair both of those elements together, you’ll have a winning combo on your hands.
Five tips for creating an effective personal branding website
Branding, in most cases, is all about implementing a few key elements. In the next several sections, we’ll talk about what those elements are, and how to use them to develop an effective personal branding website.
1. Design a unique logo that reflects your brand
When it comes to online branding, your logo is the element that stands out most. A unique logo can set you apart from the competition and make your website and content easier to recognize. Not taking the time to create (or commission) one is a wasted branding opportunity.
The problem is that not everyone has the design chops to create a stylish logo. In some cases, hiring a designer to do this for you will be your best option. Of course, you’ll need a decent budget if you want a logo that doesn’t look like it was put together in five minutes.
Whether you decide to design a logo on your own or hire someone to do it, there are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind:
- Your logo’s concept should reflect what your site is all about.
- It should be easy to read and/or understand quickly.
- It should include your brand colors (we’ll talk more about this element in a moment).
To play it safe, we recommend that you commission multiple logo variations, so you can weigh your options and choose the one that represents your brand perfectly. While you’re at it, you might also consider developing a tagline that describes what your brand is about, as this is an excellent complement to a strong logo.
2. Choose a color palette for your website
In some cases, users learn (usually subconsciously) to associate specific colors with a particular site. When you think about Facebook, for example, you can probably picture the exact shade of blue the company uses throughout its website and other materials.
That’s not a coincidence, either. That association forms because those sites make color a deliberate part of their branding strategy. To do the same, you’ll need to choose a color – or multiple hues – and incorporate them into as many elements of your site as you can.
Choosing a palette where each color complements the others can be tricky. However, using a color wheel can make the process significantly easier. For best results, you’ll want to stick with somewhere between one and three primary colors.
As for which elements to use your brand colors on, there are plenty to choose from, including:
- Buttons and Calls To Action (CTAs)
- Navigation bars and footers
- Dividers between sections
- Featured images
Those are just a few places to start, of course. You can get pretty creative when it comes to incorporating your brand colors into your designs. Just keep in mind that consistency is critical, which brings us to the next section.
3. Keep your branding consistent throughout your website
For a personal branding website to work, it requires a high level of consistency. That is to say, your branding elements should appear throughout each page, and should look uniform.
To give you an example, you wouldn’t want to use two different logos within the same website, since that could easily lead to confusion. The same logic applies to all other aspects of your branding, from the colors you use, to which elements you apply those colors to.
This also means that if you use a particular color for CTAs on one page, it’s best to do the same on other relevant pages. The goal is for users to become acquainted with your brand’s core elements, so they’ll recognize them more easily over time.
4. Add social icons to your website
These days, just about every website needs a social media presence. Moreover, those social media accounts should also represent your online brand. That means using the same logo, colors, and tagline, as well as writing in the same style as your site’s content.
Keep in mind that you don’t need social media accounts on every platform, just those that are relevant to your audience. Then you’ll want to link those accounts to your WordPress website, and the best way to do that is by using social icons.
The WordPress community offers a lot of plugins you can use to achieve this. One of our favorites is called Social Icons Widget:
This plugin includes icons for over 80 social media websites (yes, there are that many of them!). Plus, it enables you to add any of them to your pages using widgets. This will direct your website visitors towards your social pages, where they’ll be exposed to more of the same branding – hopefully helping it to ‘stick’ more effectively.
5. Create an “About Us” or “About Me” page
If you want people to connect with your online brand, they need to know what it’s all about and what you or your business stands for. The easiest way to share this information is by adding an “About Us” section or page to your website:
“About Us” pages don’t need to be overly complicated. In most cases, a few pictures of your team or headquarters alongside a brief introduction will do the trick. The idea is to give visitors enough information that they know you’re more than just a personal branding website, and there are real people behind the content you publish.
There are plenty of ways you can go about creating an About Us page in WordPress. Some themes include pre-built sections or pages that are perfect for these purposes, including several of our own. So you may want to check those out and see which one is a good fit for your site.
Conclusion
Chances are high that a lot of your favorite websites have powerful online branding. You’d probably be able to recognize their names and logos anywhere. Your goal is to use your website to develop your online brand in much the same way, until it reaches the point where you don’t need to introduce yourself anymore.
