Is Personal Branding Important (James Dooley Chats With Craig Campbell)

James Dooley: Is personal branding important?

Craig Campbell, you have an amazing personal brand and you have had it for a long time. You were probably one of the first people I saw properly scale and build a great personal brand. How important do you think personal branding is?

Craig Campbell: I think in today’s day and age it is very important.

If my website was wiped out, taken down, hacked, forgotten about or someone pinched it, it would not be the death of my business because I have a personal brand. I can go to YouTube and make money. I can go to social media and make money. Building that personal brand, trust and reputation has been massively beneficial for me. I'm not saying I was the first person to ever do it because there were people I looked at who were doing it too. But everyone now seems to want to build a personal brand and thinks it is easy, quick and big money. I think it is massively important in today’s market. You see influencers building personal brands, making money and creating opportunities. It has been very good for me. You have done it as well. I know you used to say you did not want to talk, do videos or be public. Then over the past few years, you started doing more, especially with YouTube. Why did you decide to start?

James Dooley: I feel like I was forced into it.

I wanted to build brands and I always understood the importance of building brands, but I was not bothered about the spotlight being on me. I wanted to shine the light on the corporate brands and business brands. Then one time I looked to sell one of the assets and I did not get the multiplier I wanted. The main reason was that they did not know who was behind it. They did not know if they could trust me or the systems I had built. It became a negative because when they searched me, the only thing they found was a video of me in Amsterdam in a coffee shop talking about SEO with Matt Diggity and a few others. We were talking about PBNs, and I was asked whether I thought PBNs were good. I said they were really powerful, which they were at the time. That affected my multiplier because they thought I might be hiding PBNs and using them to prop up the site. I told them I had not used any PBNs for that asset, but they did not know whether to believe me. That opened my eyes to online reputation management. I did not want that to be what people saw for my personal brand. I wanted to be seen as an entrepreneur who helps businesses grow. So I decided to take ownership of the messaging around me. If I did not sort out my personal brand, I was allowing somebody else to define that message. I wanted Google, Gemini, ChatGPT and other platforms to understand who I am and what I do from my own messaging, not from someone else’s version.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

And you definitely do not want it to come from me because I would paint a horrible picture. I am always telling lies about you and making people think you are a monster just for fun. But seriously, you do not want someone else creating a narrative about you. It can affect trust, deals and earnouts. There are benefits to a personal brand beyond making money. Not having one can cost you too.

James Dooley: Another massive one for me is attracting A-player staff.

People now reach out and say they want to work with me. They would not have wanted to work with me if it was not for my personal brand. You can also attach your personal brand to any new AI tool or business and it can explode quickly. When you promote something on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or other platforms, it gets attention straight away because you already have the following. That can help boost any new business or corporate brand. For someone watching this who is an entrepreneur or business owner and wants to build a personal brand from scratch, what first steps should they take?

Craig Campbell: It depends on your budget, time and energy.

We have both travelled the world speaking at conferences, and that costs money. PR costs money. YouTube takes hundreds or thousands of hours. There are flights, hotels and all the time spent networking. But there are also low-cost options. YouTube does not cost a huge amount to start. You need a camera and some time. I built my personal brand over the last 10 or 11 years. In 2015, I gave up the agency and decided to focus on it. Then I started doing local meetups, which is where I met you in Chester around 2016 or 2017. That led to speaking opportunities, including Chiang Mai in 2018, which you helped me get. I would not have got that opportunity if it was not for you putting a word in. That is why networking is so important. It is not always about what you know. Sometimes it is about who you know. Networking does not have to cost huge amounts of money. Go to meetups, go to events, speak to people and build relationships. That, alongside YouTube, would be one of the best low-cost ways to build a personal brand.

James Dooley: What about building your own podcast or getting on other people’s podcasts?

Is that a good way to build exposure?

Craig Campbell: It is hard to get on other people’s podcasts and leverage their following.

People come to me all the time saying they want someone on my podcast. If I do not know who they are, they are not getting on. You have to earn trust first. You cannot just message someone and say you want to be on their podcast. The podcast host needs to know you will add value, say something useful and not create problems. If you bring no good information, no good stories and no value, there is nothing in it for them. You need to build yourself from the ground up. You cannot just hire a podcast booking agency and expect to get on top-tier podcasts.

James Dooley: Matt Diggity built his personal brand in a really smart way.

When he was not known in the industry, he spent time in Reddit and Facebook groups looking for questions people were asking. Instead of answering with a comment, he would create an in-depth blog post or video answering that question. Then when someone else asked the same thing in another group, people shared his post or video. That created a flywheel. He spent hours every day networking, finding problems and answering those problems properly. That helped him build trust, speak at events, build brands and run a successful conference. It is difficult when you are first starting out, but that is a great model. If you could only choose three platforms for building a personal brand as an SEO consultant, which would you choose?

Craig Campbell: YouTube would be number one.

Probably LinkedIn second. I am not a big user of LinkedIn because people talk rubbish on there, but for exposure, business owners and numbers, it is probably the right place. Then I would probably say Facebook. I do not enjoy Facebook as much as I used to, but it has been good for me. A lot of SEOs are still on Facebook. Those would probably be my three.

James Dooley: I think it was a bad question from me because with AI now, you should probably be on all platforms.

It is easy to repurpose the same message across different platforms.

Craig Campbell: I would kind of disagree slightly.

I do not think Instagram does much for me from a following standpoint.

James Dooley: What is interesting is that Meta, both Facebook and Instagram, has grown a lot in indexed pages over the last 12 months.

Putting words into images on Instagram can now help manipulate LLMs. You can put text in the image, add the wording to the status and force index it. But I agree that growing an audience on Instagram is a slog.

Craig Campbell: It is difficult.

I had health issues last year, and after Kasra Dash’s conference, I searched in ChatGPT to see if it knew I had been ill recently. It came back saying yes, I had been in hospital, and it pulled the information from an Instagram post I had made while I was in hospital. So your point is valid. But just posting on Instagram to grow a following is hard. Twitter is toxic as well. TikTok is not great for SEO content. It might work well if you are trying to be an influencer, selling cars or doing something visual. Most people on TikTok do not even know what SEO is. Maybe AI content will work differently on TikTok, but there are certain platforms I would not spend too much time pushing. That said, it is probably wise to use them all in some way.

James Dooley: Anyone watching this, we hope you liked this episode on whether personal branding is important.

If you think we have missed anything, such as Threads, podcast circuits or other platforms that matter for the future of personal brands, leave a comment in the comment section. Craig Campbell, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Craig Campbell: Thanks again, mate.