HOW TO

BUILD YOUR
PERSONAL
BRAND
ON INSTAGRAM
Kickstart your personal
branding journey with
this complete guide.

Created by Ashiqur Rahman Ashiq

@therahmanashiq
INTRODUCTION
This book is created for “YOU” to show my gratitude for
all the support “YOU” have given me so far.
If you want to build a personal brand on Instagram and
grow an engaging community, then this book is for you.
This book will give answers to some of your burning
questions related to growing a brand on Instagram.
How to get started, how to connect with people, how to
collaborate with others, etc.
My only advice for you is to don’t sleep on this book.
Implement as soon as possible whatever you learn from
this book. The results will come sooner or later.
See you on the other side!

- Ashiq (@therahmanashiq)

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MINDSET
Everything starts from our heads.

Building a strong personal brand requires a lot of time,

and it’s worth it.

Your mentality/mindset is very crucial to achieve success

on Instagram.

You have to put in the work consistently to get results.

It’s crucial to start with the right frame of mind.

So, if you don’t have a mentality to work hard for your

brand, then I suggest you stop reading this book right
now.

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YOU ARE STILL HERE?
Then I believe you are one of those people who likes to
take action!

So, save the below-given 10 rules into your head.

1. I will give as much value as I can without any

expectations.

2. I will not overthink, overanalyze, overconsume.

3. I will help people without any expectations.

4. I will put aside my ego and be approachable while

talking with people.

5. I won’t compare my journey with others.

6. I will experiment, and I’m ready to fail.

7. I will put in the work consistently.

8. I will try to overcome my fear if there is any.

9. I am going to enjoy the process/journey.

10. I will not hesitate to reach out for help If I need it.

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MAGIC QUESTIONS
There are some magic questions that you need to ask
yourself before you start building your personal brand.

It’s time for your first exercise.

Take a piece of paper (better) or open notepad/word/docs

on your computer. Write down these questions -

1. What’s your strength? Or what are you good at?

2. What do you want to be known for?
3. What change/impact are you seeking to make?
4. Who are you looking to change/help?
5. How are you going to change/help them?
6. How are you going to differentiate yourself from the
rest?

Write down the answers to all these questions.

The answers will help you stay aligned with your brand in
whatever you do.

The answers will help you stay motivated and do the

work.

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NICHE
A niche is a focused, targeted area that you serve
particularly well.

It is small (The smaller, the better).

It is specific.

It is known to you.

It is one thing.

Suppose you have around 20 competitors in a particular

niche. In that case, you can choose that as your niche
because other people are running their business in that
niche and finding opportunities. (I have learned this from
author David C. Baker)

It’s (the niche) not too big that you as a newcomer can’t
set your foot in it. Also, it’s not too small.

So, you have a chance to grow your brand and find

opportunities in that niche.

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NICHE (EXERCISE)
1. Make a list of 5 topical interests and passion areas.

2. Identify problems you can solve. Choose one or two

problems that you can solve confidently.

3. Research your competition. Try to find out the market

gap such as content quality, content topic, lack of
transparency.

4. Decide how you want to monetize. You can monetize by

selling coaching or mentorship, selling E-books, courses,
templates, selling your services, etc.

Niche Down Example - Digital Marketing (broad)

|
Social Media Marketing (sub-
market)
|
Instagram Marketing (niche-down)

Everybody can grow their account in their respective

niche, but the growth rate will not be the same for
everyone. It depends on the total amount of people
interested in a niche.

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OPTIMIZE PROFILE
By optimizing your profile, you can convert your profile
visitors to followers, fans, and clients.

Your profile consists of your picture, username, name,

bio, link in bio, story highlights, and feed.

Let’s look at an example of an optimized profile -

Username - @therahmanashiq
Name + Expertise - Ashiq | Instagram Marketing
Bio -
What you do & for whom - Helping creatives build their
personal brand on Instagram & monetize.
How you do it/authority statement - Through organic
strategies that work for everyone/ 5+ years in ‘the’ field.
Your call-to-action - DM for coaching options or book a
discovery call
Link in bio - rahmanashiq.com/links

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HOMEWORK
1. Choose a username. It should be short, memorable.
You can use your niche keyword and your name
(themarketing + ashiq) or go with your actual name.

2. In the ‘name’ section, add your ‘name + expertise/

niche.’ This is searchable. You must add your expertise/
niche to get found.
Example- Ashiq | Instagram Marketing

3. Bio 1st line - What you do & for whom

Bio 2nd line - How you do it/help them/your authority
statement
Bio 3rd line - Add a strong CTA (call-to-action)

4. Give extra attention while writing CTA. Tell them to

perform a particular action.

5. Link in bio - You can use your own website to create a

landing page and add all the links. You can also use third-
party services to include multiple links under one.

6. Use branded color story highlights to showcase your

work, client testimonials, etc.

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NICHE RESEARCH
Before you choose a niche, you need to find out the key
players of that niche. Here players mean competitors,
influencers, curators in a niche.

You can find out the players with a direct search using
the ‘niche keyword,’ or you can go through niche-related
hashtags to find them.

This is how I do niche research -

1. Follower count (Roughly)

2. Avg engagement (Avg likes+comments - Use
Ninjalitics)
3. Engagement rate (Use Ninjalitics)
4. Posting frequency
5. Content topic
6. Content style (photos, videos, carousels)
7. Content quality
8. Who they serve/how they help (check their bio)

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HOMEWORK
Account Followers Avg. Avg. Posting Content Content Content
Engage- Engage- frequency topic style quality
ment ment rate

@someone 27.5k+ 985 3.61% 6/week Instagram Carousels It’s up

to you

After niche research, you will find out the market gap.
All you have to do is fill that gap with your expertise. Use
tools like Ninjalitics to find out the engagement rate.

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DEFINE TARGET AUDIENCE
Before you start creating content, you have to find out
who you will create content for.

Everyone won’t be interested in the type of content you

create, and everyone won’t buy the services you offer.

Your target audience is your immediate inferior. That

means they are in a place where you were a few months
ago, perhaps!

Suppose you were struggling with a problem, and you

overcome it by finding a solution.

There are tons of people who are still struggling with the
same problem. You will help them overcome the problem
with your solution.

In this way, you will able to define your audience easily.

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HOMEWORK
Find out the answers to these questions to define your
target audience.

# Who are they?

1. Where are they in life?
2. What do you know about them?
3. Who they look up to?

# What do they need/want?

1. What’s their current struggle?
2. What they want to achieve?
3. What are their pain points?

# Why do they need/want these?

1. What they aspire to be?
2. Why are they facing that particular problem?
3. Why are they stuck?

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VISUAL REAL STATE

Fonts - Oswald (Headline), Merriweather (Body)

Colors - Cyan, Black & White
Texture - Grunge texture
Pictures - Self

Visuals play an important role in everything you do on

your Instagram page.

There are millions of accounts out there and many people

posting about the same thing. You are competing with a
tremendous amount of noise.

You need to think about how to position yourself

dramatically unique against everyone else to become
more recognizable and make a better first impression.

When someone lands on your page, the visuals are

immediate. It’s the first thing they notice other than the
bio, story highlights.

Depending on the visual aspect, you are going to grab

their attention or lose them. The attention span is about 3
seconds. So make it count!

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HOMEWORK
Staying on brand is so important when you are creating
content for your page. Use your brand color in your
profile picture, story highlights, and content.

Do this homework before you start -

1. Pick one font for headlines and another for body text.

2. Pick colors that go with your personality (search color

psychology on Google) or whatever you like. Choose
between 2-4 colors, not more than that.

3. You can add other graphical elements such as

background textures to stand out from the crowd.

4. For pictures, you can use your own images to stand out
or tons of free stock photo sites you can use.

Whatever color, fonts you use, try to stick with those

throughout all the social media platforms. It will help
people recognize you instantly.

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TYPE OF CONTENT
Different people like to consume different types of
content. You should try to create as many types of
content as possible to see what your audience likes and
what you enjoy making.

Single-Image: This format is best to share quick hacks/

tips, quotes, your photos, infographics/diagrams.

Carousel: You can add a maximum of 10 photos/

slides, and it’s called a carousel. This format gets more
engagement (likes, comments, shares, saves) generally.

You can use this format to create content like a story,

share how-to’s, and I think it’s an excellent way to
educate your audience.

IGTV: The videos which are more than 1 minute are called
IGTV videos. You can leverage this format to share long-
form video content.

Video: These are less than 1-minute videos and show

up on your feed like the regular posts. Use this format to
share quick tutorials, short educational videos.

Pick one format and experiment along the way. If you

are comfortable in front of the camera, do videos. Don’t
forget other formats such as stories, Live, Reels.

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CONTENT CREATION

What you love What your

& enjoy audience wants

What will give

you clients

YOUR CONTENT

Create content for your audience because they are the

ones who will engage with your content. Create content
hitting the pain points of your potential clients.

Sometimes you should create content for yourself, and

that’s completely okay. People would love to get to know
you personally. Hence share your personal story.

If you can incorporate all these three elements in your

content, then that’s wonderful. Create content keeping in
mind the end result.

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BATCH CONTENT CREATION
If you are new to the content creation game, you might
get burned out pretty soon if you try to create content
daily.

A good way to avoid burnout and post daily is by focusing

on batch content creation.

Follow this below-given schedule -

Day - 1
Write down all the content ideas. Most ideas should come
from your audience, but you can take help from sites like
Quora, Answer The Public, Buzzsumo, Feedly.

Day - 2
Write down the copy of your content slide by slide (if you
create carousels)/ script (if you create videos)

Day - 3
Design your content/ record your videos.

Day - 4
Schedule all your content for the whole week.

Voila! You have content for the whole week, and you
didn’t have to spend the entire week creating content.

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POSTING SCHEDULE
Is posting every day necessary?

My answer would be yes and no! Let me explain -

There are so many benefits of daily posting. For example,

you’ll get more exposure/reach; you’ll have more data to
make decisions. You’ll find out faster what works. You’ll
become a better content creator.

The only downside is you might get burned out because

of creating content daily. To avoid that, you can follow
my batch content creation strategy mentioned in this
E-Book.

If you post daily, there is a good chance that you will

experience faster growth. Instagram wants to keep its
users on the platform for longer times.

By posting daily, you are helping Instagram keep its

users on the platform, and that’s why the algorithm will
be on your side. And you will grow faster than usual.

If you can’t post daily, try to post at least 3-4 posts

per week and do that consistently. Consistent posting
and engagement (more on that later) will help you get
success on Instagram.

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SIMPLE GROWTH RULE

SLOW

KILLER GROWTH
CONSIS-
CONTENT TENCY
FAST
GROWTH

SLOW SLOW
GROWTH GROWTH

COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT

TRUE GROWTH
Spend time doing the right things to get fast growth

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DEFINE CONTENT PILLARS
You can stay organized & create relevant content If you
have content pillars. You can create laser-focused and
specific content for your audience If you have content
pillars.

Content pillars help you get more content ideas easily.

But how can you define your content pillars? Suppose
your niche is social media marketing.

Your content pillars would be ‘social media growth

strategies,’ ‘social media trends,’ ‘resources & tools,’
‘social media content creation,’ ‘your personal
experiences/mistakes.’

Now you have 5 content pillars. All you have to do is

divide these five main topics into sub-topics. You will
generate more content ideas from each sub-topic, and
you will never run out of content.

YOUR NICHE

YOUR 5
CONTENT
PILLARS

Save this slide and fill in the boxes as per your niche.

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ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY
You shouldn’t expect to get followers only by posting
content. When you are starting out, you have to try to get
noticed. One way to get noticed is content, and another
way is through engagement.

You have to go and engage with people actively, and then

people will come to your page.

You will need an engagement strategy to work effectively

and get the highest return. You can use my below-given
strategy-

You should be engaging at least -

3 hours per day

(people with free time)

1/1.5 hours per day

(busy people)
You can spend less or more time than this too!

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ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY
1H/(20-30) MIN
OUTREACH

You have to make connections on this platform. For that, you have to do
outreach.

Step-1: Find people who are in the same niche through search/hashtags.
Step-2: Leave a thoughtful comment on their post that resonated with
you.
Step-3: Follow the person.
Step-4: Send them a genuine DM. Don’t ever ask for a follow back. Talk
more with them to build a strong connection.

***Busy people can follow the same process but for 30 minutes or how
much they can.

1H/(20-30) MIN
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Step-1: Turn on post notifications for top creators’ posts.

Step-2: Try to leave a genuine comment as soon as they post.
Step-3: Engage with people in the stories.
Step-4: Welcome your new follower and talk more with them.
Step-5: Share some posts on your story (give a shoutout writing
something about the content) you loved most.
Step-6: Follow niche-specific hashtags, and some posts will appear on
your home feed. You can engage with them.

***Busy people can follow the same process but for 30 minutes or how
much they can.

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ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY
1H/(20-30) MIN
YOUR PAGE
Step-1: Reply to all the DMs you get and ask more questions.
Step-2: Reply to all the comments you get on your posts.
Step-3: Go and drop comments on some posts of people who are engaging
with your post.
Step-4: If you can save time after doing all of these, you can use that time
to do more community engagement and outreach.

***Busy people can follow the same process but for 30 minutes or how
much they can.

If you don’t engage, there is a chance that nobody will

even find your content. So, engage with people every day
(even if for a few minutes) consistently to get discovered
by other people.

It may seem a daunting task initially, but it will become

your second nature if you do it consistently.

If the situation gets overwhelming, take a step back and

come back with an engagement strategy that will suit
your schedule.

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CONSISTENCY
The compound effect is real. The growth is exponential,
not linear. Once you get the momentum, everything
will become much easier, and you have to build the
momentum.

To build the momentum, you have to put in the work

consistently. That means you have to post and engage
consistently to get the best result.

Consistent posting doesn’t mean you have to post daily,

but the more you post, the better it’s for you.

Posting a week thrice for 6 months is also a kind of

consistency. You get the idea about consistency, right?

End of the day, it becomes a priority thing. If growing

your brand on Instagram is a priority for you, you will
find time to post daily and engage daily.

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TEMPLATES YOU NEED
When someone asks for a follow back -

Hello “Name”, I’m really happy to meet you, and I hope you enjoy my
content. I truly hope it helps you with your career and your goals.

Me following you back won’t help your page. But I hope the lesson I am
about to share with you will:

Don’t ask for follows. They are earned. Seeking short-term vanity metrics
is pointless and will only bring your short-term results.

Focus on being genuine, coming from a place of abundance, and being

patient. This will help you in growing your page way more than me
following you back.

Hope you understand. I’d love to follow you when you earn it.

Sincerely,
“Your Name”

P.S- I got this from my dearest friend @therobbiemurray

When you get a new follower -

Hello “Name”, How are you doing? Thanks for the follow, and welcome
to the community. I’m curious how did you find my page? If you ever need
any help regarding “Your Niche,” just hit me up, and I’ll try to help you.

Cheers,
“Your Name”

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TEMPLATES YOU NEED
When you want to collab with someone -

First, build relation in the DMs and then -

Hello “Name”, We both are in the same niche and have the same kind of
audience. I found a great idea that we can use to collaborate and bring
more value to our audience. Would you like to do a collab with me? Let me
know!

When you are looking for a guest post opportunity -

See previous posts to find out whether they accept guest posts or not.
Then-

Hello “Name”, I love the content you put out and also love engaging
with them. I have a content idea that fits your page/niche. I wanted to do
a guest post on your page if you would allow me. I can send you the idea
so that you can have a look. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanks!

When you want to get featured on a curation page -

Hello, first, I want to say that I absolutely enjoy the highly curated
content you put up on your profile. You have featured some fantastic
creators who inspire me as (@someone) and some of my good friends
such as (@yourfriend).

I was wondering if I would be eligible for a feature on your page. I have

created a unique style for my page, which I believe would be a great
addition to your page. I also have several unicorn posts that have gotten
tons of shares and a good engagement rate that surely will resonate with
your audience and add value to them. I am excited to hear back from you!
Keep up the fantastic work, and have a great day!

Sincerely,
“Your Name”

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WRAPPING UP
Kudos to you if you came this far! Read this book again
and again and apply the tips/method I have shared with
you. Hopefully, you will start seeing results once you
apply these.

Remember! Starting is the hardest part. You should

give a pat on your back because you started your brand-
building journey.

There will be many difficulties, and you have to keep

going if you want to get success with your brand.

You have the necessary materials to build your brand.

Now go and crush it!

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RESOURCES
The tools and resources I have been using to create
content and run my business on Instagram.

Content Creation Software - Adobe Illustrator (paid),

Adobe Photoshop (paid), Canva (free and paid) [Affiliate
Link]

Fonts - Google Fonts (free), Envato Element (paid)

[Affiliate Link], Creative Market (paid)

Stock Image - Freepik (free and paid), Envato Element

(paid), Unsplash (free), Pexels (free), etc.

Hashtag Tool - Flick (paid- 7- day free trial available)

[Affiliate Link]

Content Scheduling Tool - Facebook Creator Studio

Textures - Freepik, Creative Market (paid), Envato

Element [Affiliate Link]

For Email List - Mailchimp

To Schedule Meetings - Calendly

To Sell Digital Products - Gumroad

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THANK YOU!!!
I am grateful to have your support in my journey and
hope you will continue your support.

I have shared my knowledge; now it’s your turn to put in

the work and build an impactful personal brand.

If you need more personalized help along your brand-

building journey, shoot me a DM on Instagram. DM me
and let me know if this book has helped you. I would
appreciate that!

You can also visit my website - www.rahmanashiq.com

Visit My Brand Strategy & Design Agency website if you

need help with branding & design - www.braviator.com

Click here to get my Canva Carousel Templates.

Cheers!
Ashiq

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