You need at least two things to have a successful personal brand that helps further your career opportunities: an active LinkedIn account and a personal brand website.

I’ve been teaching Personal Branding at the University of Nevada, Reno since 2020. I am a firm believer that every single person has a personal brand, whether you are actively engaged with it and shaping that brand yourself, or not. It’s part of my passion to help educate others about what a brand it, why it matters, and how to start taking control of theirs. Now what a brand is and why it matters is a blog for a different day, but I wanted to share here how to get started.

This is a YouTube tutorial I made for my personal branding students at the university. This 42-minute tutorial will give you the basics of what you need before you get started and then will take you step by step through how to easily create a basic personal branding website using WordPress.

The one term you may not be familiar with, if you haven’t yet read Mark Schaefer’s KNOWN, (which I highly recommend) is “sustainable interest.” A sustainable interest is a topic you want to build your brand around. It should be something you are interested in, have knowledge about and want to learn more about, and that you feel you can continue to consistently share knowledge about with others. For example, my brand is Connective Marketing – marketing tips and tools to help people become better storytellers and connect on a heartfelt level with their audience. Check out Mark’s book and website for a much more thorough explanation. I hope you find this tutorial useful!

Why do you want a personal brand website? Because it’s something you own and control. It gives you the power to connect directly with your audience and grow your email list, creating an effective way for you to network online globally. It gives you a place to showcase your passion and expertise, something you can share on your social media networks and link to on your resume. There are plenty of examples of creators getting kicked off or banned for various reasons from social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Twitter (now X). But if you own your own website and grow your audience there, you’ll have direct followers and won’t need a third party to be able to connect with your online friends.

Do you have a personal brand website? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you for reading!