The goal of personal branding is to establish know like and trust with our readers and there are a lot of factors that play into this, but there are two things you can do to subconsciously increase the know like and trust your readers feel when they’re on your blog.

2 Keys to Establish Know, Like, and Trust in Your Personal Branding:

Your Photograph and Signature: Your photograph makes you a real person and helps your readers to get to know you and like you, and your signature establishes trust.

When you’re trying to build an online business, it’s important to be aware of the fact that people will naturally be skeptical of you.  Not having these two essentials will subconsciously make you seem untrustworthy. They don’t know you, and we’re raised from childhood to be wary of strangers.  But by adding little things like your photograph and your signature to your blog, you can subconsciously help your readers to trust you.

Use your photograph in your personal branding to build know, like, and trust:

Having a nice photograph of yourself gives your readers an instant feel for you, your personality, and it increases your like-ability.

Photograph: Personal Branding Tips:

• Use a clear photograph that shows your face.   Don’t use something too far away where your face isn’t clear and don’t use a photo of your kids or your pet.
• When you’re trying to brand yourself choose one or two photos and use them on all your social media accounts to keep it consistent.
• Go to gravatar.com and set up an account so your photo shows up on the comments you make on other blogs.

Use a signature to enhance your personal branding and create more know like and trust:

Your “John Hancock,” your autograph, your signature, whatever you want to call it is special for many reasons:

Your signature is unique to you. Duplicating your signature is next to impossible.  Think about 20 kids in a classroom all being taught how to write by the same teacher…no one does it just the same, and our signatures develop over time to become unique to us.  It takes an expert to duplicate a signature, and even then it can be proved to be forgery by handwriting analysis.

Your signature makes something yours. Every paper you turned into school and every card you’ve sent to someone you love, had your signature on it. We signed our names to our toys (think of Andy in the Disney Toy Story movies) engraved them into our tools, and some people carve them into trees and picnic benches to prove that they were there!  There are restaurants who brand themselves by allowing people to sign their walls.

Your signature expresses who you are and what you believe in. Think about signing a petition or signing your name to vote.  It says that you’re putting your name behind something!

Your signature makes something valuable. Fans will scramble and fight to get the autograph of their heroes, a baseball with a signature on it is 1,000 times more valuable than a baseball.  A signature on artwork makes it priceless, and books with the author’s signature become collectible!

Your signature makes something legal. Think about ever contract, check or receipt you’ve signed.

Your signature builds trust. Think about the four points I just made.  All of those things are related to building trust with you.  Having your signature on your website makes your readers believe you’re real, you’re not phony, you stand for something, you believe in the message you’re sharing.

Signature: personal branding tips:

1. You can write your name on something and scan it in as a photograph.
2. You can choose a font you like as your signature.
3. You can use a digital signature like I’ve done with my signature above. I created it and linked it to my photograph to help me with my personal branding.  You can do this for free at: mylivesignature.com (affiliate link) and you can also have your signature animated for use on your blog, on websites, and in your videos for a small fee.

Subtle changes in your personal branding strategy will make the difference in building trust with our readers and using a photograph along with a signature is a simple way to enhance your personal branding results in your online marketing.

If you enjoyed this post, learned something new, or have an opinion to share, please comment below and share it on twitter and Facebook!  You’re on a do-follow blog, so you’ll get some link love as a thank you from me!

The little things can make all the difference to your readers in establishing know like and trust with your personal branding.

Heather Stephens

Thanks for reading! I’m excited to have you here and I hope you enjoyed the content. Please let me know what you think in the comments below (this is a dofollow blog!) and connect with me in social media. It’s time to unleash the Clever Marketer in you!

  

Tagged as: know like trust, personal branding, personal branding stragety, personal branding tip, relationship marketing