This content was created by Girlboss in collaboration with Adobe.
If you’re a content creator, entrepreneur, marketer, small business owner, or anyone else trying to stand out from the crowd online, making your mark on social media can feel almost impossible.
That’s why defining and establishing a standout visual brand identity can be key to your success. Easier said than done, you might think. But here’s the truth: It’s a lot easier than what you’re probably expecting (especially when you have the right tools in your pocket).
“A lot of people overcomplicate it,” says personal branding expert and writer Anna Vatuone. “A personal brand, really, is how you express yourself online. And the process of personal branding is about being intentional with how you choose to present yourself, how you choose to share who you are and how you choose to create content.”
Thankfully, whether you’re trying to grow your brand, rebrand or build your personal brand from scratch, we’ve found the perfect tool to get you started: Adobe Express, the new all-in-one AI content creation mobile app and your new favorite creative sidekick.
With thousands of beautifully designed templates for photos, videos, logos, flyers, social content and more—the easy-to-use platform brings creativity and professional-quality design to everyone, right in the palm of your hand.
You don’t have to be a design expert or creative pro to create standout content for any of your platforms. Adobe Express is intuitively built with hundreds of design tools, including new Adobe Firefly generative AI technology, to take your personal brand to the next level with ease. Best of all? The Adobe Express mobile app can take you from your desk to on-the-go in a breeze, allowing you to create from anywhere, anytime.
Ready to get started? Same, tbh. We called up a couple of experts to help walk us through the basics in building a personal brand from zero to launch—with a little help from Adobe Express—in as little as one week.
Day 1: Laying the Foundation
So, you’re ready to take your personal brand to the next level…where to begin? Both Anna and brand strategist Tristan Thibodeau agree: Before you can even think about building your brand, you’re going to have to answer a few questions and, sorry, you’re going to have to dig deep:
Why are you doing this and what are you trying to say?
What is your vision and where will that vision take you in the next five years?
What are you creating?
What gaps are you trying to fill? What solutions are you providing?
Once you have clear answers, it’s time to channel your inner Hermione Granger and hit the books.
“You have to research your industry, thinking through trends and how the world is impacting the industry you want to play in. That’s going to help you know how to position yourself,” says Tristan, who is also the founder and CEO of brand strategy and design agency Wild Womn Haus.
More of a visually minded person? Adobe Express has an array of streamlined templates and vision board tools to help you organize your research in a way that ‘s visually appealing and easy to understand—no chaotic whiteboards with disparate threads connecting pieces of info needed here.
Once you’ve done this foundational work, you’re ready to dive into the next steps!
Days 2 to 4: Developing Your Strategy
Remember, patience is a virtue, which means you shouldn’t jump into the brand-building work you actually want to be doing—aka having fun with design—right away. There are a few more building blocks to put in place before the fun begins!
Tristan suggests spending the first few days working on your brand strategy. With that in mind, start with determining your target audience. It’s not enough to know where you want to go—you also have to know who you want to reach, how those people engage with your chosen industry and how you (or your brand) are actually going to benefit them.
From there, Tristan calls day two “offers and solutions day,” which is when you figure out what you can say or represent to change something for your audience. Then, on day three, you should define your differentiation point—basically, what allows you to own your Main Character Energy. “I like to call this your ‘only-ness’—it’s what you can claim that no other brand on the market can claim,” says Tristan.
Feeling lost and don’t know where to start? Scroll through Adobe Express’ thousands of free design templates, fonts, photos, videos and more, for creative inspiration and to ignite the spark for your own brand.
For extra support and inspiration, Tristan suggests bringing in your BFFs and asking for their feedback—they might be able to highlight unique things about you that you haven’t even realized about yourself. With Adobe Express, you can invite others to seamlessly collaborate, review and co-edit your files in real time, allowing your besties to provide their insights and ideas on any step in the brand-building process.
Days 5 to 6: Creative Direction + Design (with the Help of AI)
Finally, the fun part! It’s time to start working on developing the visual aesthetic of your brand, and the Adobe Express mobile app—with tools like Adobe Firefly generative AI built right in—makes designing easier than ever (like having a creative assistant in your pocket!)
Even better? You don’t have to be an artist to create stunning creative content or bring all of your wildest creative ideas to life. With the Adobe Express AI features, you can seamlessly create anything you can imagine with just a simple text direction.
Here are some of our favorite features that have made designing a breeze:
Text to Image: Type in a simple description and instantly generate an extraordinary custom image straight out of your imagination.
Perfect for: Leveling up your product shot with notice-me details, like this lavender body lotion with a peacock-style bouquet of lavender bursting behind it. See above!
Text Effects: Looking for attention-grabbing messages, logos and headlines that pop? Just type your idea into the text effects tool and see your incredible text designs come to life.
Perfect for: Creating a completely custom logo that no one else has (and one that looks like you dropped hundreds of dollars working with a professional designer to make).
Generative Fill: Insert, remove or replace objects, backgrounds and more with just a description, making it fast and easy to achieve flawless edits (without a professional design background).
Perfect for: Adding a little extra spice to your professional headshots! Victoria, Girlboss’ senior writer, used Adobe Firefly generative AI technology to add a painting and a plant to the background of her headshots. We’d double tap!
Text to Template: Design fully editable templates with a simple prompt to help you create and promote social posts, posters, flyers, and cards that are truly unique to you and your brand.
Perfect for: Creating a one-of-a-kind template design from your imagination to the blank page—like a poster for your small business’ launch party, perhaps.
Once you’ve compiled an initial set of personal brand assets that you love, you can save them to your personal Adobe Express brand kit and come back to those elements—all saved in one place—for future design needs and consistency across your brand image!
Anna also recommends using your favorite photographer across all photo elements like headshots and product shots for an elevated and consistent brand identity across the board. Once you’ve made your favorite photo selects, you can also use Adobe Express to quickly edit and resize photos for any social platform—such a game-changer.
Day 7: Launch Day + Post Launch
After a week of grinding, you now have all the pieces that make up a personal brand. That can only mean one thing: It’s time to launch. That likely feels like it’s own version of seriously overwhelming, which is why Tristan recommends starting only on one platform, whether that be a social media platform like TikTok, Instagram or LinkedIn, a website, a podcast, or a newsletter.
Set a realistic goal for yourself in terms of how often you’ll be able to post every week in order to build brand awareness. Once you have a plan in place, the Adobe Express Content Scheduler (also available on mobile) can help you plan, preview, schedule and publish your posts directly to any social media channels, so you can spend time creating and less time worrying about your content calendar.
Not everything will always go according to plan, and as a creator with a personal brand, that’s something you have to be ready for—which is why the endless options and creative freedom that come with Adobe Express are so valuable.
“You have to do it for you,” Anna says. “Your content needs to be rooted in who you are. And if there is a misalignment with what you’re creating and what’s authentic to you, people are going to sense that. If your brand is something that you’re passionate about and enjoy, you’re going to find this to be so much easier than you may have ever thought.”
Ready to start building your own personal brand? Download the new Adobe Express mobile app and try all of the new features, including Adobe Firefly generative AI, to help you go from zero to launch in just one week. Anywhere, anytime.
