If this is your first time here, my name is Cortney, and today we’re going to be talking all about branding yourself on YouTube, specifically, if you’re a beginner we’re going to be talking about the steps you should take from a marketing perspective, but also from a perspective Of someone who’s actually going through it aka me recently. I’ve been going through a rebranding process on my blog, and I want to be super transparent with you guys and show you the steps that I’m taking in order to portray this new brand image that I’m going forward and just take you along for the ride, because Sometimes it’s a lot more beneficial to read somebody do it themselves, rather than just being told what to do so.
I hope you guys, like this article, give it a thumbs up if you like this kind of content and let’s just get on into this article. So in marketing we talk about the five dimensions and brand personality, and this is really just how you’re going to bring across your message. So, for example, if you’re wanting to start a YouTube blog, your brand personality is going to be how you present yourself present your message present your articles so pause the article and take a look at this chart.
This is the five dimensions of brand personality and pick one to two that are going to be how you present yourself on your blog. You may naturally somehow be all five of these, but seriously just try to narrow down to one or two. I try to position myself as sincerity and excitement, because those just naturally go along with my personality and the person that I’m trying to reach on the other side of the camera, which is what we’ll talk about in a little bit.
So for the sincerity component of my brand personality, I’m cheerful and friendly – I’m optimistic and positive, but on the other hand, I’m also portraying excitement because I’m very adventurous, independent daring. I love to travel. That kind of thing so having a brand personality will really help. You create consistency across all of your social media blogs, with the tone of voice that you’re portraying it in.
So this needs to come before you pick out your brand colors, your fonts and all of that fun stuff, because you want to know exactly how you’re going to position yourself in the minds of your target audience. So the positioning in your target audience it just kind of means like what they think about you. So, for example, when I think of lavend deer on YouTube, I think of pastel pink, I think of bright and airy colors relaxing tone of voice beautiful imagery.
I think of productivity and intentional living and that might be unintentional on her part, even though it probably isn’t, but that’s just how a viewer of her is perceiving the things that she’s presenting so really think about how you want people to remember you. You also want to make sure that your brand is crystal clear, so a lot of times when people start their YouTube blog, they realize how multifaceted they are and they don’t really want to settle down into just one niche.
That can be really scary. For someone trust me, I know it can be really scary to narrow yourself down, especially when you’re just starting out, because you don’t really know where you want to go with YouTube, and not only that. I can feel like it’s really difficult to narrow down a niche or find a niche when you don’t really feel like you’re an expert at anything. So a lot of people tend to just go the lifestyle route, and that is really going to hinder your growth on YouTube.
You really want to dive down into a niche. Take it from me. I completely understand how difficult it can be and if you’re not an expert at anything, people love reading the process of learning things. So, even if you have a passion for something – and you think that could be your niche, though you’re not an expert at it, be sure to be transparent with your viewers and let them know that you’re not an expert and that you’re learning and they can learn With you – and I think that that’s one of the most valuable things to read as a subscriber, because you are also learning from them as they learn and you end up feeling more connected to them in that way.
The reason why you truly want to niche down, especially when you’re smaller, is because, when a article does pick up and goes viral or it ends up on the home page of YouTube and people, click on that article – they love it. They love your vibe. They go to your blog and all of your articles are the same topic they’re going to subscribe to you because they know what they can get from you. But if you make a article – and it goes viral and people go to your blog after reading it, they love it.
They want to subscribe to you, but they don’t know what they can expect from you, because it doesn’t match the rest of your content. That has happened to me a lot, unfortunately, so this is why I’m telling you like, please take my advice. Do that try to niche down if you can, when I first started, one of the first articles I uploaded was bleaching my hair blonde. It picked up on YouTube and I didn’t get a lot of subscribers because it was one of the first articles I had, and people didn’t really know if I was going to be making more content.
So eventually I ended up making more hair articles because people loved that and believe it or not. I don’t like to do my hair that much especially when I know I’m doing it for a article, so I have a lot of hair articles that ended up doing really really well. But a lot of people didn’t subscribe to me because I wasn’t making solely hair content on my blog. If I had of, I think I would have grown a lot more so here you can see this article, how to dye your hair platinum blonde.
One of my first articles, it has eight hundred and thirty-four thousand views, but when you go to the analytics you can see when you click on the lifespan of the article. I only gained two thousand six hundred subscribers over that time from eight hundred and thirty. Four thousand views, that’s so bad. The same thing goes for this article: how to dye your hair, copper, slash, ginger. It has two hundred and eighty two thousand views and over the lifespan of this article I have only gained eight hundred and eighty nine subscribers, and here is the reason why the thing is people need to know what they can expect from you within three seconds of Looking at your YouTube blog, if you’re an all over the place kind of person like myself, I understand it can be hard.
But when you’re starting out on YouTube, also know that you have a lot of room to experiment, especially when you have the 1000 to 5000. Subscriber range play around with your content, but once you find something that you’re good at and you like, creating content about, stick to it, stick to it for like a year and create articles solely for that topic and just see if you grow and see. If you end up creating a really engaged audience, because you positioned yourself as an expert in that niche, now we’re going to talk about creating your true fan, if you’re creating content for everyone, you are doing it wrong.
Like myself, I was doing that I was creating content for everyone and that’s typically what I believe, as the lifestyle niche or trying to reach really wide for a certain audience when you could be going super deep and creating really valuable connections with your audience. So when you’re creating content, it’s so so so helpful to have this audience persona. This true fan in mind when you’re filming that’ll help you not only deliver your content better but tell you how to brand yourself and knowing that when you’re creating your brand and your brand image is going to be so helpful.
I feel like it’s the number one thing you should understand when you’re creating YouTube articles. So whenever I film articles, I have my true fan right here. I have their personality, their aspirations, their pain, points, somehow they’re, all wearing hats and bohemian clothing. I don’t know I just grabbed what I could on canva, but I really do recommend having a true fan kit like that around you, when you’re filming you could hang it up behind your camera, just so that you can see it so you’re really talking to that Person you do want to create this imaginary person.
Ask yourself certain questions like what do they aspire to be? What is their daily routine? What do they wear? What do they look like? Where do they live? How old are they? What is their gender? What are their hobbies? What does holding them back in life? What could they do if they had the resources to do it? What is their greatest fear? Did they go to college? What did they study different things like that? You really want to get this person down to a tee and then every single time you sit down to make a article.
You would talk to that person. You talk to your true fan because, if you’re talking to everyone, you’re not really providing value at that point because you’re trying to appease to everyone, you want a super engaged audience and if people think and feel that you are talking to them, that is going to Help you so much in the long run so earlier I mentioned what do you want to be remembered for when I was talking about positioning your brand in the mind of your audience, but now we’re talking about the more creative things like when I said I envisioned Lavender to have bright, airy, colors very last five with her editing.
That’s what I’m talking about with! What do you want your audience to remember your articles by so you’re going to want to create some sort of consistency in your imagery across your YouTube blog, even onto your Instagram, if possible, or your other social media blogs? This is pretty fun. You can do it through your editing style on YouTube through the colors that you use the fonts that you use the presets that you use all of those really contribute to your brand image.
The reason it’s so important is because when people are scrolling through their subscription feed on YouTube, they might not even see your name and they probably won’t, but as they’re scrolling, if they see those images – and they see those colors they’re instantly going to associate that with You – and that is what you want, because they don’t even have to see your name to know that that’s a article from you now, some of those are going to take a little bit more trial and error to figure out, specifically your editing style.
That’s something! I’r straight-up going to tell you I’m still working on, because my brand personality is sincerity and excitement. I do find it a little hard to have my personality show through my editing, because sometimes I’ll have like really funny graphics pop up, because that’s how I’m feeling, when I’m editing other times, I feel like adding like some soft vintage II fonts, and it’s just you.
Never know what you’re going to get and I feel like that might be my editing style. You just don’t know what you’re going to get, but it might take longer for you to come up with your editing style, because first, you have to learn how to edit and that can take a while in and of itself, then you got to play around with Different transitions and titles and graphics and just see what you end up liking.
What your audience likes so don’t feel like stress that you have to figure that out right away and remember when I said it is good to experiment, especially if you are micro, influencer. A little I can’t even say that, especially if you are a micro influencer like myself or even if you’re a nano influencer, it is the perfect time to experiment when you are on the smaller side. So you’re going to want to start by picking four to five colors that you want to represent yourself to be your brand image.
I I recommend using canva. I have the trial, the free trial of it right now. So I don’t know if the brand kit is a part of the free version, but it is with the paid at least and the free trial. So I’ll show you my brand kit right now here you can see. I have way more than 4 to 5 colors, but also not really because I have different gradients of the same color that I use on my thumbnails. I have four shades of a muted pink.
I have three shades of beige three shades of brown and I have a white any black and then for the accent color. I have this dark green color that I have never even used. But if I did want an accent, color, that’s what it would be. Then you can see it. The fonts that I use. I always use League Spartan or B bas new both are free and really great fonts to use on thumbnails because they’re bold, they stand out when you create thumbnails, you do want to minimize it to about 30 %, because when people are on YouTube, they see this Tiny tiny little thumbnail and you want to make sure that it’s readable when it’s small.
So I would definitely not use cursive fonts at all, because it’s going to be very, very difficult for people to read when it is that small, also from a marketing perspective. Different fonts portray different messages, so sans-serif fonts they typically give off a neutral message, so it’s not going to sway any viewer in any direction. They’re just going to see it and not feel any type of way about it.
But if you use a serif font, typically that means like sophistication intelligence power. Like think of Vogue, I think very high, like high class, when I see that logo so just know that they do give off different messages, so understand what you want to give off to your subscriber or potential subscribers. A lot does go into your branding and your brand personality, so I’m just throwing this all at you take notes.
The last thing we’re going to talk about is your own image. Your background. I have struggled with this so much. You guys have seen this. If you are subscribe to my blog, your background is your chance to really grab your subscribers. They are reading your articles from about six to thirty minutes. You want to create an engaging connection with right off the bat and, if they’re not feeling like that engaged to you, they might see something in your background that they really, like your background, really should give off some information about the types of articles that you’re creating Or the type of person that you are the type of person that you’re trying to reach so I’ve mentioned this struggle a lot on my blog before I live in an old house.
My walls are plaster. So it’s really hard for me to stick nails in here. I’ve just had tapestries hanging up. I can’t really hang up any picture frames by myself. It’s just really been a struggle so this past week I really went for and tried to create my own background. It’s not done yet, but, for example, this I made this a long time ago and that in my mind, connecting to my true fan. It has like that bohemian vibe to it, but also in this moment I’m talking about more marketing and branding and YouTube content.
And so you know my microphone, I have my laptop in the background. Like I said on so this is not me like. I have a perfect background because I do not, but I also have some crystals back here, because you guys know my subscribers know. I love crystals, I’m very like spiritual, so I have some spiritual books right here that you can’t really see but they’re there. So those are like little nuggets of information about my personality for potential subscribers um.
If you’re someone who loves Harry Potter, having like a Hedwig, stuffed animal in your background, might really grab people’s attention. Another thing, you probably don’t really think about weighing that you’re, creating your content or you’re thinking about branding he’s. Actually the clothes that you wear. It should stay in line with your branding, and your brand personality doesn’t necessarily have to match your colors, but it should kind of match your vibe and your true fan.
So, for example, if your brand persona is more minimal and clean, I can imagine them wearing like a lot of j.Crew clothes. But Ana Republic, like like more neutral tone items that look a little bit more professional, but it depends for your true fan, is at the end of the day, but if you’re like very bright and bubbly – and you have a lot of humor involved on your blog, I can imagine a lot of bright colored clothing, some fun and funky clothing.
Again, it depends on what your brand is and who your true fan is at the end of day. So thank you guys so much for reading this article. I really hope you liked it and it found it valuable in any way. So let me know in the comments what your brand persona is, how you’re going to be portraying that in future articles or how you have been portraying that, in your current articles, give this a thumbs up.
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