In the age of AI, how to use one word to describe you: a complete tutorial on personal branding for young people
*▲ Above the water is the you that others can see, and below the water is the depth that supports the label: works, experiences and opinions. *
If someone were to introduce you to an important person and could only use one word or sentence, how would he describe you?
Don’t rush to answer yet. Most people will get stuck here, and that moment of getting stuck is exactly the problem this article wants to solve. Because that word is your personal brand label: the mark that others use to remember you, think of you, and pass opportunities to you when you are not present.
When I talk about personal branding in the past few years, the most common question asked by young friends is: “I haven’t achieved much yet, so why should I build a personal brand?” My answer is the same every time, and it’s just the opposite: It’s precisely because you are still young and have not yet been stereotyped that the compounding time will be the longest starting from now. You don’t need to be great to start, you need to start and then you will gradually become great.
This article is a two-and-a-half-hour youth lecture that I organized into a complete teaching that can be followed. I’ll walk you through three steps: find the label, develop the depth, and let it be seen.中间穿插我自己与国内外八位创作者的真实路径，最后给你一份 90 天的行动计画。 After reading it, you will take away not only ideas, but a starting point to start today.
Why now: Three things are happening simultaneously
Let’s first explain the background of the times clearly, because labels are not trends, they are your career insurance in this era.
It’s not that this generation is particularly pushy, but three things happened to collide at the same time. First, workplace mobility is accelerating: The era of holding one job until retirement is over. Changing jobs, slash jobs, and taking on projects have become the norm. What you need are assets that you can take with you. Second, AI has leveled execution capabilities: being able to write, do, and analyze has become cheaper, and what is valuable has become judgment, opinion, and trust, and these are in people. Third, opportunity algorithmization: work and cooperation increasingly rely on search, recommendation, and community diffusion. Only those who are seen have a chance to be selected.
For you between the ages of 15 and 29, these three things are not threats, but a time difference bonus that others have not yet realized.越早把标签立起来，你就越早从找工作的人，变成被工作找上的人。
Here is a new word that you must understand: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). In the past, the purpose of doing SEO was to let Google find you; now there are more GEOs, because when others use ChatGPT and Perplexity to ask “who is good at something”, AI will answer based on the content it has read. Whether you continue to produce quotable content determines whether you will appear in that answer. In other words, AI will not replace you, but it will amplify the gap between those with labels and those without labels: People without labels will compete with AI for the same standardized work, prices will be lowered, and no one will think of opportunities when they come; people with labels will use AI to amplify their opinions and works, win by trust and difference, and be remembered before opportunities are made public.
What is a personal brand label: the mark that others put on you in their minds
Let’s dispel the biggest misunderstanding first.很多人一听到个人品牌就后退三步：我又不想当网红、不想到处露脸、不想讨拍。 Yes, those are not personal brands.
The core of a personal brand is much quieter and more practical: it is just a label attached to you in other people’s minds. As Jeff Bezos said, your brand is how others describe you when you are not there.
为什么是一个标签，而不是一份洋洋洒洒的履历？ Because the human brain has limited memory. Others can’t remember everything about you, they can only remember one keyword.好标签的终极考验很简单：如果别人要用一个词介绍你，你希望那个词是什么？ If you can answer it, you will have a direction; if you cannot answer it, that is the first question to be solved.
The bottom layer of the label is what I call a “trust account”. Every informative piece of content, every time you do what you say, every time you help others, is a deposit into the account; every time you exaggerate, miss an appointment, or disagree with your words and deeds, it is a withdrawal. Whether your label is worth anything depends on the long-term balance of this account. It won’t make you rich overnight, but it will grow with compound interest.
Therefore, a good label actually has four conditions: clear (you can understand it as soon as you hear it), focused (narrow enough and specific enough), real (there is the real you behind it), and deep (able to withstand questioning). The most critical thing, and the hardest thing to fake, is the last one: depth.
Depth: Tags can be disguised, but depth cannot.
Nowadays, there are many people doing personal branding, and many of them do it in a superficial way: beautiful photo stickers, a few slogans or a persona that follows the trend. The problem is that shallow tags don’t last long and break down as soon as they are deeply touched. What really makes you trusted and remembered again and again is the depth behind the label that is invisible but can be felt by others.
What three things create depth? Works, experiences, opinions. Works prove that you can really do it, experience gives your words weight, and opinions are the rarest things in the AI era: abilities can be copied by AI, but opinions cannot be replaced.
I especially recommend that you design your labels into a “T-shape”: a deep straight line is an area in which you are truly specialized and can be remembered; a wide horizontal line is enough cross-domain knowledge to enable you to integrate and see connections that others cannot see. For those of you who are just starting out, don’t be impatient to know everything. First, dig into the depth that others can remember.
The source of depth often comes from your Why. Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle talks about Why → How → What: Most people introduce themselves starting with What (what I do), but what really touches people is Why (Why I do it). What people follow is why you do what you do.
At this point, the old question pops up again: “I have no experience, so where does the depth come from?” The answer is: depth does not wait until you become an expert, but starts to accumulate from “recording the process of you becoming stronger.” There are three tricks that are particularly suitable for young people. First, teach while learning: pick a skill you are learning, share how you do it every week, and build authority in reverse. Second, record the process: write down the projects, experiments, and surprises truthfully. The process itself is what others want. Third, serve you three years ago: Make content for yourself three years ago, because you have already passed the level he was stuck at.
Depth is something you grow as you walk. It requires sincerity, not perfection.
Find your tag: give focus to value
Finding labels is essentially positioning. Positioning is the foundation of a personal brand. It answers the most difficult but most critical question: Among so many people, why should others choose you, think of you, and remember you? Regarding this step, I have written another article <Building a personal brand, starting with inventory of resources and precise positioning>, which can be read together.
The classic proposition of positioning theory is that the battlefield of marketing is not in the market, but in the minds of customers. In a category, people only remember the top few in their minds. So what you have to do is not to be better than everyone else, but to be the first person that others think of in a small enough and specific enough grid.
这就带出一个关键心法：先服务最小可行受众。 Don’t pursue the largest market, first serve a group of people that are small enough that you can really impress, and serve them until they can’t help but help you spread the word, and the label will spread outward from this core. First narrow, then you can be deep; first deep, then you can be wide. You don’t need the whole world to know you either: Kevin Kelly’s “Thousand True Fans” theory is very good. As long as you have 1,000 true fans who are willing to support you, it is enough to support a sustainable personal career.
So how do you find your sweet spot? I am used to using the “Three Hedgehog Rings”: passion (things you are willing to do and will lose track of time), talent (things you can do more easily than most people), and needs (things that others are willing to pay, give time or pay attention to). The intersection of the three rings is where you should stand.
把这些收敛起来，我给你一个可以直接套用的标签公式：
I help [a specific group of people], Achieve [a result they want/solve a pain], It relies on [my unique method/experience/perspective].
For example: I help fresh designers who have just graduated and are afraid of the camera to tell their stories through their portfolios, using a method of translating their profession into human terms and putting it on the right platform. If you fill in the blanks, it is not awkward to pronounce and others can understand it, then it is a good label.
If you really don’t know who you want to serve, the simplest and most successful answer is still the same: serve yourself three years ago. You have already passed through the hurdles he is stuck on and stepped on the thunder he is about to step on. To him, you are the one who is just a little ahead and the most trustworthy person.
The first version of your label doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough to get you started. If you are a person who “knows everything but can’t choose which one”, this step is the easiest to get stuck. The
Content strategy: Use content to engrave labels into other people’s minds
Labels are not announced, but developed by content. You can’t say to others, “Please remember that I am an expert in so-and-so.” Labels must rely on the content you continue to produce to be engraved into other people’s minds over and over again. A label without content is just a slogan.
Here’s a signature technique I’ve used for years: content pillars.最常见的错误是「什么都想谈」，每篇单看都不错，读者却记不住你是谁。 Content pillars are several core themes that you talk about over and over again for a long time. They are the backbone of the content. How to find it? Ask three questions, and the intersection will be your pillar: What do I most want to talk about in the long term, what does the market most want me to solve, and whether this topic will remind me of me. At the beginning, three or four are just right; too few will look thin, too many will make them out of focus. My own three pillars are content writing, AI tools, and personal branding. Almost everything I write in the past few years hangs on these three beams.
Once the pillars are set, each piece of content is supported by three things. I call it the “triangle of good content”: topic selection, viewpoint, and narrative.
Topic selection is about talking about the right topic. Where did the title come from? The questions your audience often asks you, the pitfalls you have stepped on, your observations and disagreements, and the things you are learning. These four wells will take a lifetime to dig.
Opinion means that only you can say it.这是 AI 时代内容的胜负手：当 AI 能秒生一篇通顺的文章，资讯不再稀缺，观点才稀缺。 The content must first have your opinions, angles, and choices. AI is just an amplifier. If the order is wrong, the output is the network average.
Narrative is about telling people what they want to hear. The human brain cannot remember items, but it cannot forget stories.同样一个观点，包进一段真实经历，就从资讯变成记忆。 I often use a universal story skeleton: the original situation (put people into the story) → the turning points encountered → the insights learned → the inspiration for the readers. Your failures and turns are material that others cannot take away.
Just being able to produce is not enough. What makes content accumulate into labels is not a stroke of God one day, but discipline. The inspiration is the visitor, not the employee. Lower the threshold to something ridiculous, fix the time and scene, make a public commitment, and make “continuation” the default value. Those who can persist will win in the end because of discipline.
Finally, what makes hard work generate compound interest is the content flywheel: first post short content on your homepage to test the water temperature, write a long and in-depth article on a resonant topic, then break the long article into multiple posts, sentence cards, and illustrations and feed them to different platforms. Finally, let the long article settle in your own place and be searched for a long time. One source, multiple uses, is the strongest weapon for individual creators to fight against lack of time. I later systematized this matter into a set of processes, and also organized it into solo.tw’s 〈AI Content Production System Workshop〉: one piece of material, automatically produced in six formats, allowing you to feed all platforms by yourself.
Make good use of AI tools: make one person, like a team
This is the most contemporary part of the entire method. Let’s talk about the most important mentality first: AI is an amplifier, not a ghostwriter.
Many people use AI to build their personal brand, but the result is even more impersonal because they let AI do their thinking for them. The correct usage is: you come up with opinions, experiences, and judgments, and AI helps you speed up, rewrite, and change forms. Without you, AI will only give you a share of the network average.
I use AI a lot every day, but I stick to a ratio, which I call “70% AI, 30% soul”: 70% is given to AI (drafting, organizing, rewriting, repetitive work), and 30% is left to myself (views, stories, judgments, real relationships). Because what can be remembered and priced will always be the 30% that AI cannot copy. AI writes the skeleton, and you fill in the soul. If you want to use AI as your brand assistant in a more systematic way, I also wrote “Let ChatGPT plan your personal brand development plan for you” for reference.
Tools change every day, but the variety is very stable. Instead of chasing the latest, it is better to understand the five major categories first, and just pick one of each and be able to use it:
- Dialogue and writing: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, responsible for coming up with ideas, writing the first draft, and rewriting the tone.
- Research and organization: Perplexity (with source search attached), NotebookLM (putting information in to help you organize questions and answers). -Visual and briefing: Canva, Gamma, Midjourney, Nano Banana, making avatars, graphics cards and illustrations.
- Video and sound: Cutting/CapCut, HeyGen, you can start shooting with your mobile phone.
- Digital services: Blog, Substack, LinkedIn, this is your own place to put tags.
Don’t worry about not having a budget. In the initial stage, there are free solutions for almost every aspect: Conversational AI has a free quota, Canva has a free version, Substack opens an e-newsletter for free, and LinkedIn and blogging platforms are free. Use the free one to set up your tags first, and then upgrade if necessary.
The correct sequence of writing content with AI is four steps: You first decide on the point of view (this is the 30% that AI cannot provide) → AI produces the first draft → You inject soul (add story, tone, real cases, delete the AI flavor) → AI distributes it in a different format. Give you a universal prompt framework: role × context × task × format. If you explain these four elements clearly (who are you, what are my tags and audiences, what do you want to do, and what format do you want), the quality of AI’s output will be much worse. The more connections you have, the more like you the output will be.
There is also a bottom line of integrity that must be clearly drawn: making good use of AI is a capability, but don’t let it turn into fraud. Do not fabricate experience, do not pretend to be professional, and disclose AI collaboration honestly when necessary, especially during the study and job hunting stages. Once integrity is ruined, the label will be ruined. AI helps you express yourself better, but what is expressed must be the real you.
By the way, I have always emphasized that “the official website is your home.” Later, I used Vibe Coding (AI-assisted programming) to rebuild vista.tw in less than a week. In the AI era, even “not being able to write programs” is no longer an excuse for not operating your own land. If you also want to build a home for yourself, but are worried that you don’t have a programming background, solo.tw’s Vibe Coding Practical Workshop will help you build your own digital assets using AI without writing programs.
Digital Layout: Let tags be searched and remembered
You have clear labels and in-depth content, but if you put it where no one is looking, it means you haven’t done anything. Digital layout means placing labels strategically where the right people will pass by.
Here is a concept that should be ingrained in your bones: owned land vs. borrowed land. Owned land is your blog, e-newsletter, and personal website. The list and content belong to you. You are not afraid of the platform changing the algorithm or closing the account. The longer it is, the more valuable it becomes. Borrowed land is IG, Threads, LinkedIn, and YouTube. It has fast reach and ready traffic, but it is controlled by the algorithm. If the account is blocked, everything will return to zero.
So remember a lesson learned through blood and tears: Don’t build your home on rented land. The community is a good channel for attracting traffic, but it should not be where your assets are located. Use community to reach people, and then find ways to guide them back to where you truly belong.
Which platforms to choose? Ask three questions: where are your people, what are you good at, and how long can you last. If you are still studying or just entering the workplace, the channel with the highest CP value is LinkedIn. Treat it as a living resume that will be actively searched. As for how to operate each platform in a rhythmic manner, I have also compiled <Planning a community content strategy, starting with setting up a content calendar and setting target audiences>.
To make the tags searchable, SEO and GEO must be done together. There are five ways to implement GEO: give a conclusion at the beginning, put citable facts (specific data and sources are more trusted than adjectives), have a clear structure, continue to write the same pillar to establish topic authority, and let names and labels appear consistently in multiple places. When someone asks the AI “Who is good at this”, you will appear in that answer.
Finally, don’t forget the power of weak links. Sociologist Granovetter found that what brings new opportunities is often not the friends who meet every day, but the weak connections that we know but are not familiar with. The beauty of personal branding is to operate weak links on a large scale: thousands of people who “know you and trust you” are the source of your opportunities.
Image and trust: let people see your professionalism at first glance
You may be very interesting, but others won’t take the time to dig into it. They will use a few seconds of their first impression to decide whether they want to continue to get to know you. Image design is not about false packaging, but about letting your label be conveyed accurately and at a glance.
There are three key elements to an online first impression: a good profile picture (a clear, professional face with visible eyes), a one-sentence tag (the line in the self-introduction column, where you can understand who you are and what you can do in three seconds), and a place to stay (a link so that interested people can learn more about it).
Then use social proof to let others speak for you: testimonials, specific results, partners, external exposure, works, and community reputation. Don’t have these when you’re just starting out? Then start saving by recording every small achievement.
There’s another thing that you have an advantage in being young: sincerity and appropriate vulnerability can bring you closer. The perfect character makes people feel distant, and the sense of reality of “working hard to become stronger” is very attractive in itself. But there is a red line: the fastest thing that destroys a label is the inconsistency between words and deeds. Trust accounts last for years, and a single serious inconsistency can wipe them out. The image can be designed, but the bottom layer must be real.
Look at those people who are remembered by one word
After the theory, let’s look at eight real cases. When watching, please keep asking yourself: What is his label? How can I use this trick?
Abroad, I will list four. Justin Welsh, labeled as a “one-person company”: He was originally a SaaS sales executive. After burnout, he wrote every day on LinkedIn. He relied on the content flywheel to support a business with almost no team. In 2024, the revenue will exceed US$4.15 million with a profit margin of nearly 90%. A trick that can be learned: an insight can be monetized repeatedly in three formats: posts, newsletters, and courses. Ali Abdaal, whose label is “a doctor who creates while working”: a Cambridge doctor who ran YouTube while working as a resident doctor and rose to prominence as a “Part-Time YouTuber”. A learnable trick: Teach as you learn, without having to become an expert first. Sahil Bloom, whose label is “the person who explains the abundance of life clearly”, one trick that can be learned is to establish a memorable and nameable framework. Seth Godin, whose label is “the marketing thinker who is there every day”, has nearly 10,000 articles and has been blogging continuously for more than ten years. One trick that can be learned is to “be there every day”.
In China, I will also introduce four people. Varkey, whose label is “Reading Outpost/Turn Input into Output”, advocates “stretching the circle rather than jumping out of the comfort zone”, using off-duty time to generate new income, and only leaving the job when it is stable. Mitel Selected Reading, labeled “International News Channel on Mobile Phones,” writes international news in vernacular every day. As soon as the platform charges fees, it decisively builds its own app to recover traffic. Raymond Thirty, whose label is “digital productivity/life hacker”, uses the “3-2-1 fixed structure” to maintain predictable, low-burden long-term output. Adi, whose label is “English teaching YouTuber”, has made the same pitfalls that the audience has stepped on over and over again into a series that can be named and infinitely extended.
If we condense these eight people into four common points, we can find that: everyone has a clear label; they all follow the same funnel (free content fosters trust → own list → turn labels into opportunities); they are all long-term (daily or weekly updates will earn compound interest over several years, not overnight success); they all start from the advantages of their own industry.
I myself also learned it by changing tracks along the way: I started as an electronic engineer, worked as a product manager and producer in the Internet industry, then moved into media and e-commerce, and finally integrated all the previous accumulation into the label of “content + personal brand”. The most touching experience for me was when the boss of Taichung Communication Technology, who had read my column in Economic Daily for several years, suddenly called me to inquire about cooperation. I didn’t do any promotion to him. It was the continuous content during those years that accumulated enough trust for the “Vista” label, allowing opportunities to occur naturally at the right moment. This is the compound interest of labels.
I’m not a genius, nor did I become famous overnight. I just started early and never stopped.
Turn labels into opportunities: you can use them even if you don’t start a business
All the previous accumulations are deposits into trust accounts, and opportunities are withdrawals that occur naturally when the account is thick enough. For young people, this withdrawal is not necessarily about selling something, but more about being seen, invited, admitted, and introduced.
Opportunity is actually the natural end of a relationship, occurring along the funnel of “knowledge → like → trust → opportunity”. So even if you don’t want to start a business at all, the label still has career dividends: when applying for a job, the examiner searches for your work, and you win half the battle before you even ask; when you take a job, others come to you because they trust your label, and the bargaining power is in your hands; when you change jobs, you can take the label with you, so you don’t have to prove yourself from scratch when you change careers.
It has been condensed into the “Five Steps of VISTA” that I use every day, which corresponds to the entire set of methods today:
- V — Visioning Vision setting: self-analysis and skills inventory to see clearly where you started and where you want to go.
- I — Industry Insight Industry Insight: Understand the trends in your industry, as well as the impact and opportunities brought by AI.
- S — Strategizing strategic planning: Use SMART goals to break down the vision into executable career goals.
- T — Training Skill training: Supplement key skills needed to achieve goals (accelerated with AI).
- A — Action & Networking Action & Networking: Take action on LinkedIn, events, and real-world projects to build your network.
The first three steps (V·I·S) are to see oneself clearly inward, which is to find labels; the last two steps (T·A) are to go out, which is to cultivate depth and be seen. When your label reaches a certain level and you want to turn it into a knowledge product that can actually be sold, solo.tw’s 〈Concept Realization Accompanying Camp〉 will spend six weeks with you to turn your expertise into a product that can sustain income.
Make it 90 days: Focus on one thing at a time
Knowing doesn’t count, doing it counts. Personal branding doesn’t grow because you know it, it only grows because you start doing it and keep doing it. I suggest you break it into 90 days, three months, and three bullet points:
- In the first month, lay the foundation: decide on a one-sentence tag, three content pillars, sort out the avatar, self-introduction and a place to stay.
- In the second month, start the content: choose a home court, use AI assistance, lower the threshold to a ridiculous level, and start stable output.
- In the third month, enlarge the layout: split the long content into multiple pieces for distribution, interact seriously, and start to build an e-newsletter list.
Several key milestones can help you align your rhythm: write the first version of the tag on day 7, have the avatar and self-introduction in place on day 14, send out the first official content on day 30, establish a stable rhythm on day 60, and launch the e-newsletter on day 90.
We also remind you to avoid the most common pitfalls: tags are greedy for bigness and perfection (it is better to be narrow than wide), only tags have no depth and no own land, the frequency is too fast and the frequency is cut off, letting AI think for you, pursuing perfection without publishing, measuring success by tracking number, and ignoring GEO. To measure success, don’t just focus on tracking numbers. Look at four real indicators: list growth, whether others can tell you your tags, interactions caused by content, and opportunities that come to your door.
Before leaving, please do three things
If you only want to take away one thing, it’s this: write your first tag right now. While your memory is fresh, use your mobile phone or pen and paper to write down these three things on the spot:
- My one-sentence label: I help [who] and achieve [what] by [my unique method].
- My three content pillars: ＿＿＿, ＿＿＿, ＿＿＿.
- An AI tool I want to use first, and the first content I want to post: ＿＿＿.
Personal brand, in the final analysis, is just one sentence: let a deep label be seen, trusted and remembered. It’s not about talent, it’s about consistency over perfection and starting now. I talked about this in <Don’t wait until you’re ready to start>, and I can’t say it again here enough.
You don’t need to be great to start, but you need to start to be great. Every piece of content you post is a vote for the future. Today, cast your first vote.
If you want to complete the method in this article more systematically, welcome to solo.tw to sign up for related courses: if you want to converge your positioning, see
; if you want to have one source of content for multiple uses, see ; if you want to help yourself build a home, see <Vibe Coding Practical Workshop〉; if you want to turn your expertise into products, check out 〈Concept Realization Accompanying Camp〉.
