Crafting a personal brand

Hi there. You’ve probably heard about personal branding a million and one times from those folks on Twitter who write really long threads, even to your granny. But if you’re like me, with no idea how to actually build a brand, well, welcome to Artwork. My name is Toba. Today on the show, we have Christine Meintjes, an award-winning photographer, podcast host, and creative entrepreneur based in South Africa.

We’ll be chatting about the steps to take to build a personal brand identity and the role of crafting the right narrative.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Christine.

Hi Toba, thanks so much for having me.

So jumping into the main conversation for today, would you mind describing what personal branding is, and then what it is not, and maybe provide examples of times when you’ve experienced the term being misused?

Personal branding for me comes from looking internally for a source of inspiration before you look externally. This means asking questions like, “Who are you?” “What is your personal mission in life?” “What are your personal values, and what is your vision?” and “How do you want to add value to the world?”

I remember as a young designer in those years, when people said, “I want to start a business,” I mean, the first thing we as designers jumped to was like, “What’s the logo going to look like?” You know, a logo and what your brand mark looks like is not branding. Branding is the full, holistic experience. It’s the storytelling component that pulls through the golden thread, through everything from who you say you are, what the world thinks you are, what the visuals look like, and what the voice is that you’re communicating with, is it formal? Is it informal? Is it relatable?

I think if you’re going to do personal branding, you obviously cannot do it without the person, and that person is you. So, “Who are you,” first of all? “What is your personal mission in life?” And that mission will also start rolling out into your value systems.

For me, I am utterly obsessed with quality, and for someone else that might not be as important. And it doesn’t mean that the product is substandard to mine, it just means that for them, something like human interaction or human connection is more important, so they’ll focus more on relationship building, etc.

An extroverted photographer would probably focus more on an element of fun, and that will then become part of their brand. While for me, as an introvert, I’m very serious, and that’s just my way of processing the world. And so that became a part of my Christine Meintjes brand. This means the logo and the branding assets that I then developed over time also became, let’s just say not so much fun, it leans more towards, “We’re down to business,” you know?

And now that I’m a mom, there are elements that have changed in my brand purely because I see the world differently.

So I think you have to be open to the idea that your brand will change and that it’s okay for your brand to change over time. Maybe don’t change your logo every week, that might not be a good idea 😁

The outflow of the components I just mentioned, like your mission, your values, will flow out into an external flow into the world. So you have to think, “How does that happen?” Like visually, how does that happen? And then you start working on the logo, on the tone of voice, like, how are you going to talk to your audience?

A practical example using the Instagram posts or newsletters that you send out to your audience or your website copy, is that going to be informal? Is it going to be formal? Is it going to be fun? Are you going to add slang to it to make it cool and trendy? Or are you going to keep it a little bit more serious?

So things like image selection and curation, the types of photos of yourself you post, your about page, for instance, the videos you take, are you going to be okay with a no-makeup selfie or is it always going to look like studio images?

Because at the end of the day, the branding is about the storytelling. So what story are you telling to the world? And can people relate to that?

And I think it’s important as a startup brand to know that this will resonate with certain people and not others. And that’s a good thing because you need to focus on, and spend time on, the people that actually resonate with you.

I would say don’t spend too much time on the naysayers and all the people that are actually just trying to kill the brand, spend time on the people that are actually engaging with it in a positive way, and understand why they’re engaging. What are their needs? And in that way, you’ll start crafting the story of your brand.

I don’t think it’s something that you can pre-design. I think it’s something that you start designing and it evolves over time.

I’m curious about what are some mistakes that you find creatives making when it comes to building out their personal brands?

Be open to learn and also build a network around you of people that are not necessarily your love and support structure, but people from an industry that has your back from crafting your career. Because at the end of the day, you don’t just want to be cuddled and loved, you also want to be an expert in what you do.

And this is why personal branding is important. Because becoming an authority/expert is not about having the loudest voice or the prettiest Instagram, it means that people trust you. It means that people want to listen to you. And that does not come by force, it comes by earning the right to speak to them. It comes from having gone through the journey that was very hard, and come out the other side. And if you want to go on this journey, you would have to build a community around you that can support you.

This means using all the tools that are available to us, like podcasts and the like. For example, you and I, Toba, are connecting from different places in the world. The tools are there; use them.

This might seem pretty obvious, and it probably is, but would you mind chatting about the importance of building a personal brand? What exactly does it do for the creator?

I could just talk from personal experience, but what it did for me is it helped me to have confidence in what I do. And beyond that, it helped me to not just feel, but to honestly put something of value into the world. Whether it’s a service or a product. For me, it added value to my life.

What I learned while building a photography business was that sharing my journey of building a business that was not very common at the time gave other people the permission to do the same.

To be a frontrunner, to be someone that breaks ground in some way, shape, or form, whether it’s something very small or something very big, is one of the most beautiful things that one can do. So building my personal brand wasn’t necessarily about me, but about birthing something new into the world.

Are there any tips that you particularly use to make your brand stand out? Essentially, how do you elevate your brand from all of the noise?

An important element for me is to not try and compete with the noise because, on the one hand, yeah, sure, naturally I am competing, but if I’m focusing on competing, then I would constantly be producing content for the sake of content. And I think volume versus quality is an important element that we need to look at.

And so if you have the capacity to create exceptional content in volume, great. You know, amazing, then that’s probably the thing you should go for. But if you don’t have the capacity, I would strongly recommend that you focus on quality content versus mass content.

One of the elements you spoke about was storytelling, so I’d like to focus on that for a minute. I think it’s such a powerful tool in connecting with others. So how can we use storytelling to drive the growth of a personal brand?

A big element of storytelling that was important to me and that I feel helped me to build the brand was building something that relates to my audience. So if you choose to do personal branding, there definitely has to be some element of personal.

Now, whether that is sharing about your family life or whether it is just something you went through as a designer, or content creator, even if it is just a little element of showing the audience how and what it takes to create what you do, giving them a little bit of insight into the behind the scenes. It’s important to do all these things as it helps to build that strong personal connection, otherwise it becomes very corporate.

And I think the world wants an element of realness. If, for instance, it doesn’t sit well with you to share a lot of your personal journey, your personal life, maybe a strategy could be to include more of your customer’s journey and more of your customer’s story. You know, behind the scenes of someone using your product or someone giving maybe a testimony of working with you and your services. And I think the human element doesn’t have to come from you as a founder.

Well thank you very much. So where can people find you?

So you can find me on Instagram @cmeintjes, I'm very active on Instagram.

Awesome sauce! That’s all folks, thank you very much for joining us today on the show.

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All right. Until I come your way next time. Take care and bye-bye.

Thanks, guys.