Personal brand for the successful development of a furniture company

Today, more than ever, it is important to develop personal brands of a furniture company’s leaders and founders. Why? 

During the pandemic, people became more attentive to each other, virtual personal connections and interest in personal stories of business partners have increased. Face-to-face communication via video services has become common place and you no longer have to fly across the country to meet with the founder of a big company, you can just attend a conference call via Zoom. Ironically, people have grown closer through virtual technology, even though we’ve been physically separated for over a year. Therefore, we want to know more about what is going on with the leader of the company we work with, how everyone survived the crisis and what new ways of success leaders and competitors have invented.


Human-to-human marketing rules!


That’s why, if you want to stand out, you should tell about personal success of the people behind the brand and the company’s success through a personal brand. People love reading personal brand stories – they are interesting and memorable! Your audience will relate better and recognize themselves in your stories. 

And today I prepared a guide that gives you 5 steps of building a personal brand in a furniture company.

If you type “Curations furniture” in Google, then, most likely, all top queries will be somehow related to the name of Eleanora Stefantsova.
I created the brand in 2010 and the word “Curations” was very strange then. What? People kept asking what it meant.
As a foreigner, I explained that this was my play on words. And the word began to be used more and more in the design and collecting of unique things in the interior. At the same time, through exhibitions and my video posts from my showroom, I had great reach, and my showroom visitors really helped with that. So over 75,000 people subscribed to my social media pages without any paid ad campaigns: designers, dealers, people who were interested in my style in the furniture industry. My daughter and my dogs appeared on the feed, my travels to factories in China, work with new samples for Curations collections attracted more and more Facebook followers! And I am sure that my personal brand was the main factor in all of that.

Why does a business need a personal brand?
This is free audience attention.
Large traffic, or flow of customers, for which you do not need to pay a lot.
Authority and high level of trust.
Ability to find great contractors, do the coolest collaborations, work with major brands, dealers and customers.
Unfortunately, you can often hear advice to invest in social media ads so that people know about you.
But this step will only drain your budget without tangible results.
To build a personal brand that delivers all of the benefits listed above, you need to go through the following 5 steps.


Your personal brand development guide:

Step 1. Expertness and authority

You must be an expert in the product, style and direction your company is developing. Moreover, it is very important to do something that no one in your niche has done before. Something very special that would set you apart from everyone else in the market where you operate. Something that can trigger your audience’s associations and make you stand out in the constant flow of information.

That is why it is so important to share your knowledge and expertise with the world! The ability to generate unique content in your area of expertise, to have your own unique opinion in this space is key. 

Step 2. Packaging. Speak in plain language

We live in bubbles of reality. It seems to us that we are well-versed in a subject, everyone else must have the same level of understanding. So we start using a language that is too advanced, describing ourselves as an expert in something where half of the words are incomprehensible.

For example:
Difficult to understand: “I ( Eleonora)  am an expert on auto funnels in the furniture industry.”
Easy to understand: “I (Eleonora) influence online sales for furniture companies.”

Therefore, packaging and the ability to explain to people, regardless of their level of training, who or what you are in a simple language is another important step towards building a successful personal brand.

Step 3. Creating exclusive and engaging content

The better the content, the more audience it will hook, the more people will follow you and be within the radius of influence of your personal brand.
Someone records new videos, someone releases podcasts or posts, someone likes to communicate through short but very natural and live video messages in Stories, record inspiring videos for YouTube, write cool emails or Instagram posts, run webinars and master classes.

It depends on your preferences, but consistency in delivering content to your audience is the most important metric in promoting your personal brand.

Step 4. Collaborations

When you understand that you are confident in your area, and are able to create unique content that is understandable and simply “packaged”, you can increase awareness and add credibility to yourself through collaborations with other brands or personas, interacting with someone who has already established a personal brand.

These are people who have achieved a little more than your and can recommend you as a good professional, talented person, or cool and interesting person.
When you are recommended by more authoritative people in the furniture industry, your personal credibility grows too. And such collaborations are very necessary and useful, especially when you are just entering the market.

Step 5. Traffic

It’s time to go to public events: speak at conferences at High Point or other Market weeks or apply yourself if you are just starting to build a personal brand.

Advertising, participation in promotional campaigns, events where a large number of people are involved - all this is a massive step towards building a personal brand.
Social media are the most effective way to make yourself known today. Business goes to Instagram. But it’s not enough to create an account and fill it with photos. You need to constantly keep the attention and interest of subscribers, learn to sell your knowledge and stories unobtrusively, not like everyone else. 

If you want to dive deeper into the subject, subscribe to my blog mailings and read my internet marketing tutorials.