Personal branding as an artist — How to market yourself correctly

Part 1: Who are you?

Jun 03, 2024

What do Andy Warhol, Albrecht Dürer and Joseph Beuys have in common?

They were all superstars of art — in short: true self-promoters!

There are characters who seem to intuitively do everything right. But not everyone is born a self-promoter. The good thing is, you don't have to be an extroverted, center-stage person to build a successful personal brand as an artist. Everyone can potentially market themselves.

With a few tips and tricks, you too can learn personal branding and use it to your advantage. But first things first.

What is personal branding?

Personal branding means building a personal brand. The special thing is that it's not about marketing a product or service, but about establishing yourself as a brand. It's about highlighting your skills, personality and professional competencies positively and building a reputation for yourself. Especially in the digital age and due to the ever-growing competition, the “expert status” is becoming more and more important even outside professional circles. So it can't hurt if you, as an artist or creative person, work on your “self-brand”.

Firstly: The topic of “personal branding” is very extensive. It is not for nothing that there are entire books, seminars, or workshops in which the topic is broken down into its individual parts and prepared. I have read a number of online articles to get an overview of what is already out there on the subject. And I was surprised and disappointed at how superficially the topic is often brushed off. I have found little that is helpful, especially in relation to the art and creative industries.

So here is the first part of a three-part series to give you, as an artist and creative person, the most essential basics of personal branding. In this article, we will deal with the question of who you are. Because without self-knowledge, it is almost impossible to build a “self-brand”.

To clarify the meaning of the individual questions, I will provide a concrete example for each point.

Overview:

What is personal branding?
What are you good at/not so good at?
What do you like doing most?
What sets you apart from others?
What values are important to you?
What is your goal?
How do you like to communicate?
Conclusion

1.) What are you good at/not so good at?

Before you can build a strong personal brand, you need to know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are. The better you know yourself, the easier it will be for you to specifically highlight and use your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. After all, the personal brand is not an end in itself, but should help you to present your qualities and skills to the outside world in a more targeted manner.

First, you should ask yourself the following questions in this context:

What am I good at?
What do I like?
How can I use that specifically?
What am I not so good at?
What can I do to avoid my weaknesses?

Take the time to answer these questions in detail and honestly. Write down the answers so that you get a clear picture.

If you find it difficult to reflect on yourself, you can also get help from outside. Ask close friends and people who know you particularly well. They will usually come up with things that can be helpful ideas for you.

Example: Let's assume that you want to become self-employed as a musician. You are an ace on the guitar, you always manage to get the audience excited and you are a real one-man show. You are down-to-earth and modest. Furthermore, you don't like to advertise yourself everywhere and constantly tell people how great you are. You really just want to make music. You are also an introverted type and feel extremely uncomfortable with the thought of “sales”. This realization is extremely important because it paves the way for all further steps and ultimately for the development of your external communication. It determines what and how you do it. Without this realization, you lack the basis for a strategy that suits you and your personality. An introverted type who is not very good at selling himself is probably not well advised to rely on a content strategy and spend the whole day shooting videos for social media. Apart from that, we will never follow through on things that we do not enjoy. Which brings me to the second point.

2.) What do you like doing most?

Marc Anthony once said, “If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life.” There are similar quotes from Mark Twain and even Confucius. The idea behind it is that things that we enjoy doing are easier for us. We don't have to force ourselves to do this. That's why it's easier to do it continuously. Continuity plays a huge role in building a personal brand and in entrepreneurship in general.

So ask yourself right from the start “What am I passionate about?”. The goal should be to name your passion and focus on it.

Example: You are an illustrator and love to draw. Whenever you can, you have a pen and paper in your hand and are working on new characters and worlds. This realization is important so that you know what you should be doing most of your time and what you should focus on in the future. I know that this is sometimes not so easy, especially if you can't (yet) make a living from your passion and are therefore forced to invest your time in another job. Nevertheless, it can help to keep this in mind so that you can work towards changing it in the future and making your passion a priority.

3.) What sets you apart from others?

No matter how good you are, no matter what you do, it is unlikely that you will be the only one. That is why it is particularly important to find your unique selling point. Because nobody is like you, even though there are probably many out there who do the same or similar things. What characteristics do you have that others don't? There are no limits to your creativity here. They can be both external and internal characteristics. The more original and memorable, the better.

Famous examples: Karl Lagerfeld was known for his elegant clothing style, always in black with a white ponytail and sunglasses. Recognition value times 10.

Elton John always wore unusual designer sunglasses.

Gary Vee is an incredibly stressful but also motivating guy. His trademark is more his temperament, which is absolutely authentic.

So ask yourself what quirks you have, what sets you apart from others and use that for your external image.

4.) What values are important to you?

This is perhaps the most important point when it comes to your brand identity. Values are your general goals. There are both personal and social values. A few “big” examples would be freedom, justice, honesty, kindness and trust.

Your values are the foundation of a credible identity. Only if you know your values and communicate them to the outside world can you appeal to people with similar values.

If you have difficulty finding your values, you can google “value tests”. I recommend that you do several of these tests to get closer to your personal values. Limit your most important values to a manageable number. The goal should not be to force all of your values into your personal brand, but to establish a personal brand that represents a few, strong values.

Example: Let's assume you are a photographer and run your own studio. Professionalism, order and punctuality are very important to you. Your studio is always tidy, stylishly furnished, the satisfaction of your customers is very important to you, in short: you want people to feel comfortable with you. In return, you also value professional cooperation with your customers. You want customers who, like you, are well-groomed/neatly dressed and arrive on time for shooting appointments. You use your own values to create a kind of “filter”.

If you don't communicate your values clearly enough to the outside world, you might attract people to your studio who don't match your values at all and who you would be annoyed with. Your future collaborations will therefore depend to a large extent on your values.

5.) What is your goal? (Your “why”)

Simon Sinek is probably the most prominent example when it comes to the question of your “why”. Take a look at his “golden circle”.

According to Sinek, the goal or your why is the core of what your venture is ultimately about. This means your convictions and belief in the one thing that you absolutely want to implement.

So, what is your why?

When I think of my why, it is the desire to bring the potential of us artists and creatives out into the world and to show that we have skills that are useful and valuable. That is the drive behind every new thing I start. But it wasn't always like that.

Finding your why is harder than it seems. And it can always change. It is important to understand that with every change in the goal, the entire “mission” and direction of the company must also change.

Example: You are an entertainer. You like to entertain and make people laugh. You believe that you can make the world a little bit better with it. That's why you go out every weekend and play on open stages, even though you don't earn a single cent there.

Then there is this one colleague. He is comedian, likes to be in the spotlight and enjoys it when people laugh at his jokes. He now plays in larger clubs and charges a lot of admission because he is convinced that good entertainment can cost something. He will never perform for free again.

What I am getting at is: what you believe in determines the path you take.

6.) How do you prefer to communicate?

The last point is about making all your new insights visible to third parties. For this, it is important to clarify which type of communicator you are.

Do you like to be in the spotlight or do you prefer to stay in the background?

Can you show yourself in front of the camera without any problems or do you prefer other formats?

Do you like written, text-based communication? Can you imagine blogging or writing books? When you make music, do you prefer to just upload songs or do you enjoy producing elaborate music videos as well?

You notice that your communication type determines which strategy you can use for your external communication. I don't think I need to mention that the strategy you choose has to suit you and your personality.

Example: Let's say you're planning to build something up with creative workshops. You want to give online courses and are now looking for a way to promote them. If you enjoy videos, then choose a video format to report on your courses.

If you're good at writing and like to write, then start a blog that's thematically related to your courses. Always remember to choose a format that suits you.

You're not doing yourself any favors if you don't like hearing yourself talk and decide to start a podcast. Although it seems so logical, I keep seeing cases on social media where this is exactly where it goes wrong. Suddenly people are in front of the camera who are visibly uncomfortable. Musicians burn out because they produce content on an assembly line. All of this is unnecessary and is not very productive.

In the end, you will never prevail against someone who likes what they do and therefore does it better than you.

Conclusion

Building a personal brand as a creative is a process and takes time. I know this from personal experience and from working with my clients in mentoring. It is important to take a detailed look at yourself at the beginning and to use this to create the clearest possible identity for your personal brand. Above all, emphasis should be placed on credibility (authenticity). The personal brand is a representation of your own values, skills and expertise. With the help of a strong personal brand, you can stand out from the crowd, attract people with similar values and promote your professional career.

In this first article, we explored the question of who you are and what defines you. The second part will be about your target group.

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