5 key steps to building your brand online

As part of our Passion Pioneers campaign with GoDaddy, best-selling author and career expert Linzi Boyd shares her secrets for entrepreneurs on building your own personal brand online...

While the UK may be known as the start-up capital of Europe, only one in three UK entrepreneurs is female, and while that's a vast improvement from just 17% in 2015, there is still a long way to go.

Marie Claire UK wants to increase the number of women starting their own businesses, so we are joining forces with our trailblazing friends at GoDaddy to create change with our Passion Pioneers campaign.

Our new channel will be giving practical advice and 101 guides on all things entrepreneurial, while inspiring you with first person accounts and profile pieces on some game-changing women at the top.

As part of the special, we want to look at how aspiring entrepreneurs and budding companies can build their brands online, from growing their Google fame to investing in a website.

To get the insider tips, we sat down with Linzi Boyd: best-selling author of Brand Famous: How to Get Everyone Talking About Your Business and founder of BOB School, a company that runs business and branding workshops across the world.

Linzi has built her career on helping people take their businesses from ideas to execution and create great personal brands that stand the test of time.

Here, she shares her golden rules for creating a successful personal brand. This is her advice...

5 key steps to building your brand online

1. Google yourself

Go in with the mindset "I am already a brand" and Google yourself to see how you're showing up online, whether that's your name or the name of your company. Potential investors, followers and customers will make an opinion of you within three seconds and they will lose interest if they can’t find you, so if you're showing up as a murderer, or your brand isn't showing up at all, you need to audit your online profiles. Make your brand on the internet the one that you want it to be.

2. Build your google fame

Build your brand to attract the market, rather than being forced to sell yourself to the market. The better your profile on social media, the bigger your Google fame, and the greater value for you in your market.

3. Have a website

When building a brand, creating a website is crucial – even if it’s just a one-page WordPress site. You need a "house" for all of your work and information to sit in, increasing your Google fame, adding value to your brand and pulling the market. Through GoDaddy, you can buy a domain name, build a website and access easy to use marketing tools.

4. Speak it, Look it, Share it, Be it and Live it

• Speak it: You are your brand, so always remember, whether you’re speaking on stage or out in the marketplace, be an ambassador for the brand your building.
• Look it: Every time you walk into a room, people are analysing you before you’ve opened your mouth, so make sure you understand what the "look" of your brand is as well as what’s coming out of your mouth, "looking it" is just as important as "speaking it".
• Share it: It’s so easy to build your own network, and it’s so important as it can go with you in future entrepreneurial endeavours too. The bigger the network, the bigger the database that you’ve got, giving you a following which is very important. If you're launching a campaign or holding an event and want to get it noticed, you only have to push it out to your network, and if they’ve got a big following, they can potentially sell it for you.
• Be it: As an entrepreneur, you need to be the expert in what you're creating, so think about what you want to be an expert in, and then pursue it.
• Live it: You’re a brand everywhere, both online and offline, so remember to live like your brand too. If you end up doing something that doesn't fit with your brand, you could be photographed, it could get put on social media, and before you know it, the message you're trying to spread could have changed.

5. Find your personal DNA

The market is so crowded, so how are you going to make your brand stand out? Create a personal brand DNA of what you want to be known for and have it running through everything you do.

Visit @MarieClaireUK for more information on our Passion Pioneers campaign with GoDaddy.