Building Your Personal Brand

Khobi Brooklyn is senior vice president of communications — marketing — at Aurora

Building a personal brand - lessons from big brands that could help solopreneurs and non-corporate level businesses
by Khobi Brookyln
Senior vice president of communications - marketing - at Aurora

April 26, 2023

We hear a lot about brands and how important they are in driving value for a business. I’m sure many can name a great one you love. 1) It comes from the combination of the product or service 2) the value it delivers to customers 3) and the people and culture that create that product.

This concept also holds true even talking about a personal brand, especially today, where people are interacting with the creator economy and small businesses just as much as they are with global brands. 

Building a strong personal brand is how you are perceived and connected with your audience. Whether a large company, solopreneur or a local business, there are some simple truths that I’ve learned from my time leading communications and building brands at Tesla, Square, Aurora and Nike — as well as from building my own brand to find success in my career. 

Here are 6 lessons I would pass along to anyone thinking about how to build and create value: 

Define your brand 

Be clear with what it represents. Answering important questions: 1) What is your purpose, what do you stand for? 2) What value do you, your business, or your product deliver? 3) What does your best self look like? 4) What are your values? 5) And, how do you want to connect with your customers? 

Build your story 

A great way to share your brand is through stories. Storytelling is one of the oldest, most ancient forms of connecting with people and building culture.

Entire civilizations have been sustained because of storytelling. It’s how we build and carry traditions, understand direction and connect with each other.

Through engaging and compelling stories, you can drive your business by showing your value, sharing your idea or service and giving people a reason to care about the work that you’re doing. 

Stories can be told in many ways: in pictures, written as a blog, shared through your voice on a podcast or in conversation. 

Know your audience 

If you’re just building your business or your brand, start small. If you have a business, who are you serving? If you are building your own brand and voice, who do you want to be listening to what you are saying?

When you know who your customer or audience is, you can identify what’s important to them and how they spend their time.

Once you have a good foundation of who you want to connect with, you can identify what ways of connecting with them will resonate with them best and be authentic to who you are.

For example, do you want to build a relationship founded on trust or do you want your customers to look to you or your business for a daily laugh?

Spread the word 

Now that you’ve identified who your customer is, the brand you want to build and the story you want to tell, share it. 

The best way to connect with your audience is to meet them where they are. Does your audience spend most of their time online? Do they read a local paper or watch the local news? Do they get their information at the neighborhood coffee house?

Recognize what influences your audience and then think about how to present your brand and tell your story there. 

Here are two tips around working with the press to share your story: 

● Do your research! Take the time to find the right media outlets and journalists to work with. Make sure you’re reaching out to publications with the right focus so there’s a natural fit between your story and their audience.

When you reach out to the publication and reporter, think of the interaction as building a partnership rather than a sales pitch.

Together, you and the reporter are on the same team, working to build a great story that both of your audiences will love.

Ways to do this are to provide helpful context around your product and service, why it’s relevant to the publication’s audience and examples from the real world: quotes, customer testimonials, screenshots, statistics, etc.

● Don’t underestimate the power of keeping it local. Thousands of people in the US read their local newspaper in print or online and follow their local news and community social media accounts.

Engaging with these publications and channels is a great way to do some local marketing.

The best way to get the attention of local outlets? Give real-world, local examples. Pitch a story about how you or a customer are part of your local community and how your service or product is impacting the community. Show up and meet people in person if you can. 

Show don’t tell 

In every company I’ve worked for, every product I’ve introduced to the world, we’ve stressed the importance of showing why the product is valuable, not just saying it is.

A really effective way of doing this is by sharing standout customer experiences. The voice of your customer is an incredibly powerful way to show proof that your company’s value is working. It’s proof that people love it and it’s already made a difference for someone who is relatable to the audience. 

Another way to show the value of your product or service is to provide advice from your area of expertise. You don’t have to talk about your product specifically to show why it matters. Instead, use your insights and expertise to teach your audience.

For example, when I was at Square and we were building tools for small businesses, we would work with our customers to gather tips for building and running small businesses and share those with our entire customer community.

It was a way we could continue to be a valuable resource and partner to our customers. If you can be a resource without constantly trying to sell, you can build a long-term relationship with people. 

Track your progress 

Wherever you can, track what’s engaging your audience and what’s falling flat. When you get press coverage, see if it drives more business or engagement on your social channels.

When you post something on your social feeds, see what drives more engagement. For example, do videos perform better than pictures? Not everything will work, and that’s ok! The more you try, the better visibility you’ll have into what does work. 

The concept of building and nurturing a personal brand can feel daunting, but another way to think about your brand is as a reflection of who you are and what you’re offering to the world.

Be authentic, be intentional, and be consistent.

In my experience, when a person or a company sticks to who they are and what they stand for, while being intentional and consistent with how they connect with their customer and audience, the relationship organically grows and strengthens. 

Khobi Brooklyn is the senior vice president of communications — marketing — at Aurora. She has over a decade of experience in Silicon Valley, building large brands and introducing the world to new technologies and lifestyles.

Prior to Aurora, she was vice president of Communications at Nike leading communications for the Converse brand; global communications at Tesla and a leadership team at Square to reposition the company from a Silicon Valley darling to a globally recognized payments company.

When Khobi is not telling stories, she’s playing outside.