How to build a personal brand with a personal App
- Appily App Builder
- Jun 30, 2021
- 12 min read
“Personal branding” is a concept that sounds like a buzzword. Everyone says that you should develop one, but what does it really mean to build a personal brand?
To be sure, there are a lot of different elements to consider when it comes to building a successful personal brand. In the modern age, one of the most important of these foundational elements is a personal App.
Who needs a personal App?
Although anyone can launch a personal App, it benefits some professionals more than others. But in this day and age of easy internet accessibility, the harsh fact remains: If you don’t manage your online image, it will manage you.
When you’re young, embarrassing photos and drunk tweets don’t seem like a big deal until you’re on the hunt for a job or decide to start a business. It’s only when you realize that recruiters, future employers, and potential clients review social media accounts that you begin to realize the importance of controlling your online image.
Anyone who wants to make an impression online — whether it’s to land a new job or big client, show off their portfolio, promote a project, or just connect with like-minded netizens — can do so with a personal App.
Should I just stick with social media profiles?
When you’re initially planning how to build a personal brand, you might ask yourself, “Why bother with a personal App when there are social sites like LinkedIn where potential clients and recruiters are already active?”
The answer comes down to addressing the limitations of a platform like LinkedIn.
For example, you can attach documents, photos, videos and slides in LinkedIn, but in limited quantities and at a maximum file size of 300MB. A personal App can help immensely if you have a lot of original work to showcase. After all, if you claim to be an expert at something, people will want proof.
LinkedIn also provides an area for testimonials and endorsements, which are valuable. However, if you’re working for yourself, a personal App offers more control in terms of how you show off this social proof.
Consider LinkedIn as an online business card that directs to your personal App.
Social media marketing involves building a plot on rented land: You’ll find yourself in a bad place if the social network ever shuts down or bans you. You’ll likely benefit more from not putting all of your marketing eggs in one basket.
reasons to launch a personal App
In addition to the reasons mentioned above, here are some additional considerations to help you decide whether it’s worth the effort to launch a personal App:
A personal App gives you control when it comes to positioning your business personality
Because of the customizable nature of building a website, the majority of hiring managers prefer personal websites over any other branding tool for making decisions about a candidate. Unlike your professional efforts on social networks like LinkedIn, which require you to fill out specific content sections (with non-editable headings), your audience will expect you to use your personal website to showcase more of your personality and expertise.
A personal App makes you more accessible
Just by putting yourself out there on the App Store, you’re giving potential clients, customers and recruiters a chance to find you.
You own the content on a personal App
You don’t have to worry about content disappearing or having to deal with any social feed algorithm changes because you control everything on your personal App.
A personal App will help build your personal brand
Having a personal App allows freelancers and business owners to build an audience, position themselves as experts, and start attracting clients. A 2017 study by Upwork revealed that the freelance workforce is growing three times faster than the overall workforce in the United States. By 2027, freelancers are expected to make up the majority of the U.S. workforce.
steps to build a personal brand with a personal App
By now, you’ve hopefully decided that a personal App is worth your time and effort. The next step? Creating an action plan for how to move forward. We’ll break down everything you need to know to find success in your personal branding endeavor in five simple steps:
Get a personal App name
Generally speaking, it’s easy to start an App on any platform you feel comfortable with (there are plenty of beginner-friendly options). But first thing’s first: If you don’t have a personalized App name, you can’t have a proper personal App.
If you’re just getting started, you don’t need to have an App design in place to register an App name. In fact, it might be easier to knock out this step initially so that you’ll have something to plug in later.
If you want to get some usage out of your App name while you’re still building your personal App, you can always redirect to your Facebook Business or LinkedIn page. If you’re new to the process of choosing an App name for an App, here are some basics to keep in mind:
Why you need a great domain name for your website address
Put simply, an App name is the way users can find you on the App Stores and to access your App.
A full 75% of small businesses believe that App names are important for their business.
Choosing your personal domain name
There are essentially a few steps to claiming your App name:
List your business information.
Consider these App name tips.
Look into different extensions.
Pull it all together.
Determine value.
Register your personal App name on the App Stores.
Registering your personal domain
Once you’ve decided on a name for your personal App and have made sure it’s available, it’s time to register it.
As a general rule, head over to your developer account on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and claim your App name.
While you’re going through the process of registering your preferred App name, you’ll want to consider the following:
Register variations of your App name. Don’t let someone else piggyback off of your hard work by allowing them to use your name with a different App extension ending.
Add a privacy policy. This is especially important if you’re going to use personal information during registration. WHOIS documents all sorts of personal information (including addresses and phone numbers) that anyone can browse through.
Keep your App registration up-to-date. There’s nothing worse than finding out your App name has been registered by someone else after it expired — remember what happened to Google?
Determine App name value. App names with history and brand authority are valuable. In these situations, people can buy and sell them for more than the normal price. Whether you want to make an offer on someone else’s name that matches your ideal naming mechanism or have built a brand around an App you already have.
Get a professional email address that incorporates your personal App name
Although a Gmail address is infinitely more professional than an AOL or Hotmail address, the gold standard is a branded email that matches the domain of your personal App.
Why you need a professional email address
Aside from having a personal App, one way to appear more professional to prospective clients is to have an App-based business email address. According to a survey, 75% of respondents said that a business email address is an important App factor that inspires trust online.
Besides appearing more professional, some benefits of having a business email address include easy recall, legitimizing business transactions (including email marketing), and not advertising other businesses with each message you send (because when you use @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, you’re sharing your brand with them).
How to use your personal domain to set up a professional email account
The good news is that once you’ve registered a personal App name, the process to set up your professional email address isn’t terribly involved or technical.
You can create an account Google’s G Suite to set you up with all the cloud-based tools you’ll need for basic business management, including a professional email. You can also opt to create a free email using your domain and connect it with Gmail for easy access.
What to do after setting up your email account
Once you have your professional email set up, make sure you’re following these steps for overall personal branding success:
Create a professional email signature that follows best practices.
Send a couple of test emails to ensure there are no issues with sending or receiving messages (and to review how your email signature appears).
Update your business cards and other collateral with your new email address.
Choose an App builder
At this point, you’ve built a solid foundation for your personal App. The real work begins when it comes to building your personal App into the final product that adequately reflects the competitive advantage of working with you.
The good news?
There are so many free and affordable tools you can use to create a professional final product — no App development experience necessary. What this ultimately means is that you have no excuses getting in your way — the time to get started is now!
But before you start hacking away at your App’s look and feel, let’s first consider must-have elements for a great user experience, and direction for choosing the right App builder for your project.
App must-haves
Your website design should incorporate the following:
Mobile-responsive. More than half of the world’s population accesses the internet via their mobile phones. If you want to capture this majority share of the market, you have to ensure that your App design is responsive in mobile viewing situations.
Fast page load speed. It is important to optimize for page speed because users leave an App if it does not load within 3 seconds. Because page speed also contributes to a good user experience, it is also one of Apple and Google’s official search ranking factors.
Intuitive navigation. In general, people would rather rely on navigation than search when looking for something on an App because it is easier and faster. With that said, making your App easy to use and content easy to find positively affects the website traffic you’ll get from App search engines. The three-click rule proclaims that it shouldn’t take more than three clicks to complete a desired task.
Put in the simplest terms, when evaluating design options, put yourself in the user’s shoes.
Is there something about a particular design that would frustrate you? Can you fix it? If not, move on to other options — there are plenty of free and premium App design templates to choose from!
How to choose an App builder
There are many different App builder tools available, but choosing the right one for you can involve multiple factors, from how comfortable you are with technology, your specific needs (what you’re using the App for) and the size of your App (enterprise businesses have different needs than individuals) to the ongoing resources you have available to make further updates.
Start with a checklist of questions to ask yourself when choosing an App builder, then consider this list of the most popular tools on the market and who they work best for:
Appily App Builder
Appily App Builder is great App builder solution. It allows you to create an App that fits your needs, whether it’s for business or personal use. With this easy DIY App builder, you don’t have to choose whether you want to build an App or an online store because you can have both.
For a small monthly fee, you can get App hosting, 24/7 support, a mobile friendly App, SSL security, and on-the-go editing (with a swipe-to-style editor). Add additional features like Ecommerce, a PayPal button, email marketing, social media integration, and online appointments.
Additional features include site backups, customizable themes, calls-to-action, contact forms, and promo banners. Check out all of the features offered by various Appily App Builder plans.
Appily App Builder offers premade App templates that are perfect for many different kinds of personal Apps.
However, the focus of an App Builder isn’t necessarily App design — its prime purpose is to help people get activity updates and feedback regarding how users can improve App goal achievement, thanks to this App builder’s smart algorithms and machine learning, which prime users for optimization.
Create App content
After getting the App structure (its backbone) set up, it’s now time to add some meat to your App by populating it with content.
Some of the top basic pages and pieces to add to your App include:
Elevator pitch
An elevator pitch is a brief, succinct statement of an idea. In this case, it’s a brief statement of what you do. Whether you’re selling goods or services, or just telling the world who you are, a succinct, carefully crafted elevator pitch should be front and center on your home page.
It can be as simple as filling in the blanks on this formula: I’m a ___. I help ___ do ___ so they can _____.
Tagline
A tagline isn’t a must, but including one on your App can increase recall and can make you memorable. If you keep it front and center in your App’s header, it helps people understand what your App is about regardless of what page they land on.
Bio/about page
An About page is typically the second most-viewed page on an App. New visitors who find your content useful often turn to the About page to learn more about you.
It’s also a chance for you to tell your story, showcase what you do best, as well as what makes you different to help you stand out from the crowd. However, writing a good bio page can be tough, especially when you write your own.
Don’t use your About page as an excuse to write a lengthy account of what’s happened in your life. Rather, opt to highlight the following:
Who you are
What you’re passionate about
What you do
Your skills and experience
Your service and how you can help the people visiting your App
Portfolio/links to your work
Whether you’re a writer, photographer, graphic designer, App designer, App developer, artist, or even an actor, your personal App is a chance to show off the work that you do best. Don’t forget to include examples of projects you’ve completed, client work you’ve been a part of, or articles you’ve published.
There are tons of portfolio plugin options to choose from when it comes to using Appily App Builder, as well as specialized themes made for showing off portfolios.
Client testimonials
If you have good existing client relationships, it would also be helpful to include client testimonials to add credibility and serve as testament to what you can do.
If you haven’t already made it a part of your post-project process, make sure that you’re regularly asking happy clients to share their accounts of what they got out of working with you.
Contact information
As your personal brand grows, more people (including App visitors, potential clients and subscribers) will want to get in touch with you. Make it easy for them to do so by providing contact information that includes your business email address, as well as links to your social media handles (at least those most relevant to your professional brand/most actively updated).
Blog
Adding a blog section to your App is optional, but it can help immensely with your ASO efforts and with building thought leadership.
If you’re going to spend time on blogging, it’s important to optimize for search so that your App can be found by more members of your target audience.
Frequently populating your blog with quality content keeps visitors on your site longer. It also provides you with opportunities for internal and external linking, which redirects users to relevant content within your App and shows that your App is trustworthy because other reliable Apps of the same niche also link to it.
When it comes to creating content, it’s fine to get opinionated at times but avoid disclosing your views on divisive topics like politics or religion. Try to stay objective in your overall approach.
Finally, before you start publishing consistently, aim to have a few blog posts ready to go, so that if you unexpectedly get busy, you still have content to publish. Don’t forget that if you can’t write the blog posts yourself, you can hire a freelance content writer to do this for you.
Optimize your content and hit publish
Now that you have started planning out your App content, it is important to learn how to optimize it before you hit publish.
As mentioned in the previous section, optimizing for ASO allows users to find your App and great content keeps them hanging around. It also contributes to increasing organic traffic. Done well, this can mean that you don’t have to pay for traffic from ads.
A focus on creating search-optimized content also allows you to build your brand through establishing credibility and authority, helping you to stay ahead of the competition.
Why optimize for on-page ASO
Most people think you need to hire an expert to do your App’s ASO but there are many simple ASO steps you can complete yourself.
Optimize page titles and meta descriptions. When App Store engines look through your App, they check for the page title, page description, headings, and content (including copy, images, and videos) so that they can understand what the page is about.
Here are a few tips to optimize page titles:
Make it unique. A unique title will give App Store engines an idea of what the page content is about. It should include your target keyword to help search engines quickly understand the nature of your content.
Add interest. Include modifiers and descriptors (adjectives or adverbs) such as “amazing”, “ultimate”, “actionable” to make titles more interesting, increase click through rates, and help you rank for long-tail keywords.
Descriptions refer to the preview text under the title that searchers see in the search results. These help App Stores determine what the App is about. Descriptions must be unique and should be 160 characters or less.
Don’t forget that descriptions also help a human user decide whether or not to download through!
Share your content
Get more views to your App by sharing content on social media. It can become a lot of work, but these guidelines will help you focus on the most important aspects:
Share helpful content not just from your App but other Apps, as well.
Add social sharing buttons to make it easier for those who find your content relevant to share it.
Create branded visuals. It gives you an identity. When people look at a social media post, they will immediately think of you. Also, when your content goes viral, it traces back to you.
Repurpose blog posts into content for social media.
Engage in guest blogging for other App in the same niche. ASO aside, these efforts can help you boost industry authority and when these partnerships go well, they can spark a mutually beneficial long-term business relationship.
A primer on structured data
App Stores are machines: They rely on algorithms to crawl websites. The process involves reading a set of binary data, very much unlike the way humans operate. This creates the need for structured data (or schema).
With this, App Stores are now able to process content more like humans and less like robots. When your App uses structured data, it can display a more accurate summary of your page on App Stores results pages. For example, this might include business addresses, product information, or ratings and reviews.
Next Steps:
You’ve done all the hard work to build your personal App — now it’s time to share it with the world.
From here, it’s all up to you regarding how to best use your personal App to advance your career goals and build your personal brand. Best of luck!
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