If you’re a creative, odds are that your personal brand is important to your work. Even if you’re not working in a creative field, you might be building up your personal brand anyway. In a world where authentic connection has become to pathway to success in so many different ways, knowing your personal brand and mastering how to use it effectively is more important than ever. But while building a personal brand may seem like something that should come naturally, it’s anything but easy. Just because you’re building a brand based on yourself doesn’t mean that you’re doing it exactly the right way. And if you aren’t doing it the right way, it’s very easy for things to fall flat and for you to get frustrated with the process.

Say you’ve been working on building a personal brand and things just don’t seem to be falling into place. Your site isn’t taking off, your business isn’t thriving, and/or your engagement on Instagram has taken a big fat nose dive. You are probably wondering what gives. There shouldn’t be anything hard about being authentically yourself, right? Well, not exactly. Here are four reasons your personal brand may be failing.

You Are Only Focused On Your Audience 

While it’s important for any person with a personal brand to have a good understanding of the audience they have and the audience they want, there comes a time when it’s more important to focus on the actual brand — on you. When your business is driven by numbers and statistics (and most businesses, even creative ones, are), it can be easy to get caught up in what your audience wants and forget they’re here for you and your brand. When you lose sight of that, trying to please your audience at every turn can turn into losing sight of your own brand, which is ultimately the opposite of what your audience wants.

You Don’t Know What You’re Trying To Say 

In that same vein, if you have no idea what you are trying to say but only that you want to build your personal brand, it will fail. You have to have a clear idea of your message and your audience on both a macro and micro level if you want your brand to be successful. Period.

You Are Trying To Please Everyone & Do It All

The point of a personal brand is actually the opposite of pleasing everyone. If you’re doing it right, a personal brand will be, well, personal. It will be reflective of you as an individual and therefore it will be very, very hard to be exactly what everyone else wants. What makes you unique is what will make your personal brand successful, but it is also why some people may not click with it. And that’s more than OK.

You’re Not Creating Opportunities For Engagement

Are you so focused on your personal brand coming across clearly to your customer or audience that you lose sight of actually engaging with them? Are you talking so much about you that you’re forgetting that you’re ultimately there to serve people in some way? Take a step back. Remember that you can only successfully serve other people and build a personal brand when people feel connected to your brand. Remember to create opportunities for engagement whenever possible through questions to your audience, giveaways, or newsletters.