As a business owner, building an awesome personal brand should be one of your priorities. After all, people often buy from people they like and relate to, and it’s through personal branding that you can show your authentic self and be human.
Doing so requires a considerable amount of work, but here are some personal brand examples of people who successfully built their brands online:
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Neil Patel
As one of the top SEO resource persons on the internet, Neil Patel is one of the most recognizable names in the online marketing circle. He is also an entrepreneur, investor, and analytics expert, helping companies like Amazon, HP, and Viacom grow their revenue and expand their online presence.
To date, Neil is the co-founder of several multimillion-dollar companies: HelloBar, CrazyEgg, Kissmetrics, and QuickSprout.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Early adoption of best practices
Neil started online marketing in 2001, making him one of the pioneers of digital marketing. Back then, only agencies were talking about it.
✅ Quick building of expertise
Neil learned digital marketing skills fast, enabling him to start teaching people right away to establish his knowledge.
Seth Godin
Marketer and entrepreneur Seth Godin is so famous, you only have to Google “Seth,” and his name would automatically appear on top of the search results.
Known as the Godfather of Modern Marketing, Seth is the author of 18 bestsellers translated to more than 35 languages. One of his most successful books is “The Icarus Deception,” which reached its campaign goal on Kickstarter within three hours.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Innovation
Though Seth didn’t invent and modern-day marketing methods, he adapted age-old ones and applied them to current situations.
He understands the most common problems that people face, experiments to see what works, and puts it out there so that everyone else can benefit from his insights.
Jeff Goins
Writer Jeff Goins is the person behind online community Tribe Writers. He manages a blog and podcast for writers to help them write better, unlock their creativity, and take practical steps in marketing their work.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Focus on conversion
One of the first things that you’ll see when you go to his website is the opt-in form that encourages you to sign up for his list. The opt-in box states, “Hi, I’m Jeff. Can I send you something?” which is a straightforward way of asking for an email address while also providing value to his subscribers.
✅ Testimonials
Jeff’s homepage also features testimonials from Darren Rowse, Michael Hyatt, and Brian Clark—three well-known influencers in the online marketing space.
Featuring these testimonials front and center makes people trust him automatically even if they hadn’t heard from him.
Jon Morrow
Jon Morrow of SmartBlogger.com has built his reputation as one of the most successful bloggers online. Even though he doesn’t use his name as the title of his blog, his constant guest posts and helpful blog posts enabled him to build a solid personal brand. In fact, his website gives him over $100,000 of revenue a month.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Unique story
Stories humanize people. Jon’s story as a person living with spinal muscular atrophy has inspired people to follow his lead and start living their dreams.
✅ Guest blogging
Guest blogging across the biggest sites on the internet enabled Jon to make a name for himself. In fact, one of Jon’s guest posts is the most read post on Problogger.
He is also active on social media, which makes him easily accessible to readers.
Oprah Winfrey
Say the name “Oprah” anywhere in the world, and people immediately know who you’re talking about.
Considered as the queen of personal branding, Oprah Winfrey has leveraged her brand to get paid, become a billionaire, and achieve her dream life. “The Oprah Winfrey Show” is the highest-rated talk show program in history in its 25 years of airing. She is also one of the richest and most influential women in the world.
What Made Her Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Authenticity
Oprah’s branding is all about being authentic, thus gravitating people toward her. She uses her brand to influence people’s actions and make them change for the better. For her, it’s all about helping people become the best version of themselves so that they can reach their full potential.
✅ Consistency
Oprah has always been consistent with what she represents. It’s easier to build trust because people see her act a certain way consistently and intentionally. That is the reason for the “Oprah Effect”—a critical factor in her endorsements because she can easily influence public opinion and purchasing decisions.
Marie Forleo
Marie Forleo is an American life coach, author, host, and motivational speaker who started her coaching journey while bartending and instructing fitness classes.
Oprah dubbed her as “a thought leader for the next generation” because of her influential personal brand. She has amassed over 100,000 followers and fans all over the world with her award-winning web show, Marie TV.
What Made Her Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Strong online presence
In a world full of self-help gurus, Marie stands out from the rest not just because of her authenticity and relatability, but by how well she packaged herself on the internet.
Every bit of her website and social media channels feel 100% authentic to her brand and vision. The design, colors, and photos all showcase her quirky and down-to-earth personality and are all well thought of. People see what her brand is all about just by looking at her website.
Ramit Sethi
Known as the author of the bestselling book, “I Will Teach You to be Rich,” Ramit Sethi teaches people how to use psychology and systems to live a prosperous life.
His blog of the same name tackles topics such as automating your finances, finding your dream job, starting an online business, and mastering your inner psychology.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Valuable content
Ramit gives out no-nonsense financial advice to his readers, focusing on big wins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of the usual personal finance tips.
Best of all, 95% of his materials are free, giving him a loyal following and making his subscribers feel that he genuinely cares for them.
✅ Proven system
Unlike most financial gurus, Ramit has a proven method of living an abundant life. He makes his audience choose which path they want to take—earn more money, find their dream job, or save more money—and personalizes his content depending on their goals.
Simon Sinek
Motivational speaker and bestselling author Simon Sinek only has one goal: to inspire people to do things they love so that all of us can change the world for the better. He discovered remarkable patterns about how great leaders and organizations think, act, and communicate and imparts this knowledge to his followers.
Simon’s TED Talk in 2009 about the concept of “Why” is the third most-watched video on TED.com, with over 40 million views.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Key messaging
Simon knows what his message is and can articulate that to his audience. Even his website and social media channels reflect his message and personal branding statement.
By nailing his why, Simon can sell his vision and not just his products.
Tim Ferriss
As an entrepreneur and the world-renowned author of “The 4-Hour Work Week,” Tim Ferriss is listed as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and Fortune’s “40 under 40.”
Aside from being an angel investor to big brands such as Uber, Shopify, Facebook, and Alibaba, Tim is also the owner of “The Tim Ferriss Show” podcast, a business podcast with over 400 million downloads.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Radical ideas
One of Tim’s most popular books is “The 4-Hour Work Week, which eternally cemented him as an A-list business guru. But what made the book popular is its innovative and unique ideas that don’t conform to the way the world works.
Being a misfit like Tim isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, radical ideas can defy established trends and create new trends that might help other people.
Elon Musk
Everyone knows technology entrepreneur Elon Musk and his multitude of businesses: Tesla, The Boring Company, SpaceX, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Needless to say, Elon is one of the world’s richest and most powerful people with a compelling personal brand.
What Made His Personal Brand Successful?
✅ Sticks to his mission
Elon’s business decisions are all guided by his mission: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport and energy so that he can change the world and help humanity. This has created a compelling brand story for him and his companies.
Even in his memos, Elon reiterates this mission so that everyone in the company is aligned with one another.
✅ Makes his audience the hero
To achieve his mission of changing the planet for the better, Elon essentially enlists his audience to take part in it and become part of the story. In fact, every Tesla owner has a personal role in reducing carbon emissions on the planet.
Elon acts like a guide to his clients in achieving their goals as he shows them how they can generate impact by supporting his mission.
Remember, personal branding is all about marketing your most valuable product: you. It’s what you wish people to associate with you when they see your name.
Understanding how you want your brand to be perceived allows you to be more strategic in building your personal brand.