The Assets You'll Need To Set Your Platform Apart from the Rest

In 2013, there were over 152,000,000 blogs on the internet. Since then, that number has only grown. With so many voices to be heard, how do you set yourself apart from the rest?

Over the last couple of months, I took a good hard look at my platform and realized I needed to step it up. My site looked pretty good, but it wasn't incredibly unique or memorable at the time.

With a little expense (and a lot of time), I revamped the look on my site as well as social media and across the web.

To be a successful entrepreneur today, you need a platform and brand—but you also need to stand out from the crowd. To do so, you're going to need a number of distinct assets.

1. Brand Descriptives.
   Identify the words you'd like people to use when describing your brand. Use these words to shape the branding process from here on out. Most people skip this and present a scattered image of their brand. When I did this, I came up with words like friendly, helpful, actionable, and energetic.
2. A Clear Color Scheme.
   A clearly-defined color scheme conveys professionalism, consistency, and builds trust. It's best if you use no more than two or three colors plus a white and a black. Reference your brand descriptives and the psychology of color to determine which colors to use. I went with blue as my primary to match the words friendly and helpful, and orange as my secondary to convey energy and action throughout.
3. Intentional Font Selection.
   Do yourself a favor—don't limit yourself to the default font that comes with your theme. Again, your font choice should reflect your brand descriptives. Don't go too crazy, and stick with serif fonts for body text and sans-serif for headers and titles. I went with Futura for my header and title font, and Georgia for my body text across the site.
4. A Simple Logo.
   Most people already have this, and use their initials if it's a personal brand. A common mistake is to be too clever with this, so it's not clear to the reader what the logo represents. You can get a logo created for relatively cheap from 99 Designs. I had my brother create mine, which is my initials within a thought bubble design.
5. Professional Photos.
   This asset is key and is worth a small investment to show the best pictures of you. You'll need a headshot, working cameos, and landscape images of your profile as well. I had a great photoshoot with Rachel Moore, and you can see new images in my header and other places across the site (see my about page, sidebar, coaching page, and footer).

You'll need to gather these assets if you want your platform to succeed. It's a noisy world, but you have a message to share.

“Give yourself the chance you need to get heard—set your platform apart from the rest.”

Question: Do you have all five of these assets?