Brand Copywriting: How do I brand myself as a copywriter?

Branding in 2022 can be the difference between people seeing and remembering you online and not. 

There seem to be more and more freelance copywriters out there now.

While I firmly believe that there is work for everyone, you’re gonna want to stand out from everyone else, as someone who can help your ideal community make money. You can do this by creating your own unique copywriter brand. 

Do some research on the ideal community you want to serve

Who do you really enjoy working with? If you are a new copywriter, this could be an initial idea and you may adjust it over time. 

Is it Saas? B2C businesses? Entrepreneurs? Coaches? 

Take some time to do some research into their pain points, things they love to do, things they find challenging.

 Really get to know your ideal community. 

If possible, arrange to talk to some members of your ideal community and find out what they need from a copywriter. 

Top tip – record on Zoom (asking them for permission before) because then you capture the language they use and you can mirror this through your copywriter branding) 

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Develop a clear brand identity

Brand identity just means how you communicate with your ideal community on a daily basis, but you can adjust and modify it over time as you develop. 

Heather Buchanan from the Copywriter Collective points out that your

… brand identity must be flexible and should be able to evolve with the growth.

HEather buchanan, copywriter collective

Step 1 – Develop your copywriter USP 

Your USP should be your starting point, along with your ideal community ideas. I want you to try to answer these questions first. 

What is your service? 

How does hiring you benefit your clients? 

What is different about you?

Then craft this into no more than 3 sentences or one short paragraph. 

Step 2 – Develop your copywriter brand voice and tone 

Brand voice and tone are really important for your copywriter brand. You’re probably rolling your eyes right now, saying…but Helen, this is all so hard for my brand. 

I’ve got you. 

We are so skilled at creating brand voice and tone guides for other businesses that why is it when we come to our own, it’s super hard? 

With me, it definitely was my perfectionism streak, and also wanting to represent myself in the best way possible online. 

Here are a few things I learned along the way. 

I am not totally my brand

Yes my brand represents me and my values online, but it doesn’t represent all of the character traits I have. Like wanting peace and quiet and to read a book last thing at night. 

Or… 

…one minute being an extrovert and singing loudly, then next minute being the shy introvert. 

Kira Hug summarizes this awesomely in her article on Copyhackers.com

“For me, my brand is a multidimensional window into who I am as a copywriter, business owner and human being.

It’s the best of me.

It’s the weird inside me.

It’s my purpose, my manifesto, my resume.

It’s what I strive to be—especially on days when I feel lost.

And while, yes, it’s a big chunk of me …

IT’S NOT ALL OF ME.

Because your brand can never be ALL of you.”

Kira HUg, featured on copyhackers.com

My brand mirrors my ideal community  

The language I use connects with my ideal community of new copywriters. So when I was developing my brand voice and tone, I listened and talked to a lot of new copywriters, learning what phrases, and words they use. 

This now forms the basis of my copywriter brand voice and tone. 

Developing your brand should be fun and not take too much of your time

Think fun when you are developing your brand. What would make it fun for you? Creating an ideas board first? 

Looking at other gorgeous websites and brands? 

Reward yourself when you have completed part of the branding process. 

Step 3 – Develop your visual identity

The real fun starts when choosing the main colors for your brand, and also fonts. 

Maybe go on to Canva and try different color and font combinations. Pinterest is also awesome for coming up with beautiful color combinations.

Top tip – fonts. Make sure they are readable on any screen. You don’t want people to scroll past your amazing messaging! 

Now that you’ve developed your copywriter branding, now it’s time to get the word out there about you and how you can help. 

Fancy learning more about branding? 

Whilst I’m not an expert in branding, I’ve created a training that will help you make decisions quickly and not end up down a procrastination rabbit hole!

 You know the thing… before you realize it, you’ve spent all day looking at color charts.. and not written a single pitch!  🤣

Engage with your ideal community via social media 

One way of doing this, especially if your copywriter website is very new, is to connect with your ideal audience via social media. This is 1 because SEO content takes a few months to bring traffic to your website without promotion. 

Also because you want to get your ideal community to know, like and trust you over time. 

Once you are more established you can share your brand voice and tone guide with a VA and outsource. 

Develop a community around your brand 

You started out as a copywriter to help people right? 

So one step you could take is to build a community that you love to help. Building trust and authority is all about building connections with people after all. 

You’re going to want to be top of mind, when they are ready to hire a copywriter. 

Ideas for community building: 

• Facebook group 
• Donate a percentage of your earnings to a charity they will love to help
• Host free and paid challenges and trainings via social media 
• Develop a paid or a free membership 
• Launch a podcast. (Krystal Proffitt has an awesome starter course that I took to launch my podcast ‘The Profitable Copywriter’)

Develop an SEO strategy and write SEO content 

This is such an important part of your strategy because you want to attract more prospects to your website on autopilot. 

Side note – this is gonna take a few months of consistent effort, writing optimized content that you will see ranking. 

The great news is that, provided you keep sharing epic content, you will see way more website traffic

Need starting points for SEO? 

I know my stuff (one blog post of mine has made over $36k to date and with a tincy bit of optimization every so often, stays firmly on page 1) 

Check out my FREE cheatsheet 👇

Blog Post Essentials for Copywriters

Promote your brand 

To build more awareness of your brand, you can take part in live events. These can come in many forms. Take a deep breath. These may scare you but they are going to expand your reach so much if you take the plunge!

Collaborate with other brands on Instagram live or Facebook live 

This is a superb way of getting direct exposure to a whole new set of people. My suggestion for this is to arrange to meet and get an outline ready of what you are going to talk about, and how the live is structured. Try to limit the live to one topic and 3 main points. 

Approach podcasts related to business or copywriting 

Pitching to a few related podcasts can land you a spot discussing your expert knowledge to a way bigger audience than maybe you have right now. Remember to ask for a pre-interview and discuss terms such as whether you can promote your freebie or whether you can get a link back to your website. 

Wanna pitch me? 

Seriously, just sent me one of those great emails of yours to .. [email protected] 

Pitch a guest post to your copywriting or business hero

Writing for a prominent brand can mean loads of extra exposure for your copywriter brand. 

Get together about 3 ideas (based on some keyword research) and summarize what your ideas are for the guest post) 

Again pitching me is fine ( I am not assuming I am your hero btw, but I am doing a quick unicorn flounce around the room! 🤣) 

Scale your brand by outsourcing before you’re ready 

This is probably the most challenging aspect of building your copywriter brand. Letting it run free..skipping and dancing through the fingertips of a VA.

Okay I’ll be serious for a minute. 

Just before you’re ready…so when you can just about squeeze the money out for a VA for one hour a week, you should invest. 

This is the stage I am at at the moment and my brand baby needs to be shared so I can focus on things that really light me up: 

• Like creating epic content and courses to help you create your profitable copywriter business 
• Creating courses and resources to help businesses that haven’t got the budget to hire me to write their copy. 

For me, this means sharing my brand guide with my VA and letting them fly with it. It..is..scaring the crap out of me…

But I want to take my copywriting business to the next level. 

Are you with me?