Is Personal Branding Still Important in 2026? James Dooley and Craig Campbell on Building Trust and Authority

James Dooley: Is personal branding important? So, Craig, obviously you've got an amazing personal brand. And you've had it for a long time as well. You was probably one of the first I seen properly scale out and build a great personal brand. So, how important do you think personal branding is?

Craig Campbell: I think in today's day and age, it's very important. You know, I personally let's say my website got wiped out, taken down, hacked, forgot it and knew it something instant, it's not going to be death for me as a business because I've got a personal brand that you know, I can go to my YouTube and make money. I can go to my social media and make money. And and you know, stuff that we we we spoke about in other um sessions. So, I think building that personal brand and building that trust and everything's been massively beneficial. It's been good for me. Um and I'm not saying I was the first person to ever do it cuz there was obviously people I looked at and and they were doing it and stuff like that, but everyone knew it seems to be want to build a personal brand and and thinks it's all easy and it's all quick, big money and all that kind of stuff. But, I I think it it's massively important to do in today's market. You see influencers out there building the personal brands and you know, they're they're making money and stuff like that. So, I I think it just creates again opportunity and and everything else. It just leads you down certain paths and it's been very very good for me, but obviously you've done it as well. I know you used to say, "I don't want to talk. I don't want to do this. I want to I don't want to do that." And then obviously in in years gone past, you started to dabble a bit more in it and obviously cranking out all your YouTube videos. Yeah. Probably only a bit two or three years you've been doing that right? Whereas before you were like, "I don't want to talk to anyone."

James Dooley: Yeah. So, I'm just curious, like I'd be curious as "Why the hell did you decide to stop? I feel like I was forced into it in the fact that I wanted to build brands. I always understood the importance of building brands. I wasn't bothered about the light being shined on me. I wanted to shine the light on the actual corporate brands and the business brands. And then one time I looked to sell one of the assets and I didn't get the multiplier that I wanted and the main reason was they didn't know who was behind it. They didn't know that they could trust me the way I had built the system. In fact, it was a negative stigma of what actually happened because when they searched me, the only thing that they could find was a video of me in Amsterdam in a coffee shop talking about SEO with Matt Diggity and a few others and we were talking about PBNs and I got asked the question on that video, "Do you think PBNs are good?" And I'm like, "Yeah, they're really powerful." Which they were really powerful and it affected my multiplier cuz they thought I was hiding PBNs and that was propping up the site. And I was like, "I don't use any PBNs for this site." And I'm like, "Well, we don't know. You're quite sophisticated in what you do." And I'm like, "There was no PBNs built for it. If there was, I'd tell you otherwise it could affect my earn out and stuff." But anyway, then just opened up the eyes almost of like online reputation management of being, "I don't want that being seen for my personal brand. It's not good for my personal brand. I want to be seen as being an entrepreneur and help businesses grow." So I thought, "I may as well just take ownership of the messaging that I want to deliver for me." Cuz if I don't start my personal brand, I'm just allowing somebody else to deliver that message. And I'm like, "No, it's you know I shouldn't be proactive with the exact messaging, exact word for word with what I want, Gemini and ChatGPT." I mean, this was it was prior to all the AI that came along but the way the AI overviews pop up and the way Google shows who I am and what I do, I want to make certain it's my messaging about me and not somebody else's.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, yeah, exactly that, yeah. I would paint a horrible picture like etc. what we spoke about I'm consistently telling lies about you and and making people think you're a monster or a whatever and I just do that for fun, but yeah, you don't want someone coming and be able to paint a certain narrative of you and I think that's also something to consider like you say could damn your could affect your earning or trust so there's so many other benefits other than making money but it could harm it cost you.

James Dooley: Yeah, I think another massive one for me is like attracting actual way players staff like people that we judge them one jobs saying I want to work with you.

Craig Campbell: Yeah. And they wouldn't have known they wanted to work with me if it wasn't for my personal brand.

James Dooley: Yeah. And you attach your brand now to any new kind of AI tool and it's going to explode. Why? Because you've already got the big followers so the minute you turn around on your TikToks on Instagram on YouTube and you promote this brand straight away you've got eyes on the new brand that you love.

Craig Campbell: Yeah. So you can go into any new business and corporate brand and with what the branding that you have from a personal point of view, boom straight away. It explodes. So you can connect the dots there and it's and it's great but I know who's watching this man so they've they're watching this now and they're saying all right, I get it. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a business owner and I want a personal brand. I've not really got any exposure. What are the first steps to building a personal brand that you say they should be maybe looking to do?

James Dooley: It really depends on what kind of budget and time and energy you've got like we've both travelled the world speaking at conferences that cost money. PR, you know, we've we've done PR we've spent the time on YouTube putting the you know, hundreds of thousands of hours into to that as well as you know, the 20 hour flights to Shanghai you know, paying for a hotel for a week or two in Shanghai as well. So there's a lot of cost that goes to that. There's obviously a lot of quick wins. You know, in terms of building a personal brand, you go on to YouTube, it doesn't cost you a huge amount of money. You get camera and you know, do all of that kind of stuff. So, it really depends on how hard you want to hit it. Like, I I built my personal brand over a probably the last 10 years. Um Yeah, probably 11. Actually, 2015 is when I gave up the agency and I thought, I want to do this. But, obviously I had to then do all those local meetups and everything, which is where I bumped into you in Chester like 2016, 2017. And then, I started to get paid at speaking events in 2018 Shanghai, which you obviously helped with. Now, I wouldn't have got and I've told this story anyway before, I think, in another podcast. I wouldn't have got Shanghai if it wasn't for you. Um because I done the event cuz I was working for a travel company in in Chester at the time. And then, I used to meet up with Andy, Drinkwater, and we used to just sit and chat And then, we're like, let's do a meetup in in B. Done that thing on that meetup.com and 16 people turned up in the first one. We were just having a beer every last Thursday of every month, which is when I was down to see them. And and then from there, we done the the meetup where I met you, which then led to speaking at Shanghai. Obviously, I'd done BrightonSEO and various other ones as well, blagging my way in there. But, then just things happened really quickly. And then, obviously being in Shanghai, you get more exposure. And then, before you know, boom, you know, you're you're doing this and you get asked to speak there and get asked to work with this brand and that brand. So, all kind of happens kind of fairly quickly for me, but I wasn't against going to Shanghai and trying out. Some I I I was unknown to Shanghai. I know you guys went for several years before me and you all spoke highly of it and I seen all the pictures and I get the all the stuff we've spoken about in other other things. You get the full one you go and take bastards and I want to go to Shanghai now and be in the tuk-tuks and get pissed up and you know I enjoy all of that experience and experience for me it wasn't necessarily anything else but you know what it was all about the networking and I think that's something else I would say to people is it's not always about uh what you know it's sometimes who you know and and you know I I got I can't even remember how I get in the back door but I know you stuck a word in to to dig you for me you know you need to get this boy on and all that kind of stuff and sometimes it's just who you know gets gets you in and and nailed on there cuz I was an unknown guy at that point so uh you know it's networking I think it's a big big thing it doesn't cost you a huge amount of money um and you know go to you know you've done networking at you know events and all that and you used to come to Chester um to do that very thing so yeah I think that networking would be that YouTube um are are kind of low cost things but obviously from the others. What would you say then for building a personal brand for getting on other people either building your own podcast and getting guests on and interviewing others or trying to to get on other people's podcasts as well to try and get in front of their following to try and start building that up.

Craig Campbell: Yeah it's hard to get on other people's podcast to leverage their following so I get uh people come to me all the time say I want this guy on your podcast I want that guy on your podcast I don't know who you are from Adam so you're not getting on mine you're going to have to earn my trust first before you you're allowed to speak.

James Dooley: Yeah. Um and and you know if you came to me and I didn't know you I'd be like no no way you're rough as toast I don't know what you're going to say um and so you're going to have to earn trust and you're going to have to make connections and you're going to have to smooth someone and you're going to have to bribe or you know whatever your angle is in uh you're going to have to work that and you can't just ping people and go I'm coming on your podcast no know, I don't know whether you actually make money or not. I don't know whether you're trustworthy or not or you you know, you're going to say stuff that that could get me into trouble or whatever. So, yeah, the podcast person's got all of that to contend with and it's the same with you. You get people going, "I want to be in your podcast." And you're like, "Well, what's in it for me?" And you know, if you've got nothing to bring to the table, no good jokes, no good banter, no good information, no stuff, so you're going to have to offer a lot of value up front and and build yourself up from the ground up. Um and I think that's that's the hard part. You can't just say, "Here's a podcast booking agency who are going to get you on all of these top-tier podcasts." It's not going to happen.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, yeah, you got to definitely build it. I think like I saw you did it a great a great way. Matt Diggity. So, when he was not known at all within the industry, all he was what he did, he hanged about on Reddit, Facebook groups. Facebook groups was probably the biggest one he was doing. And what he was doing, he was looking for questions that people had and he was going, "Could I create a blog post onto this or create a a video on this?" And he would never it would never answer the question with a with a comment, with a reply. He would always go, "Okay, I can create there's enough volume. I can create a post on this. Do it in-depth or do a video on it." And it'd always post the the actual post or the video. Once that had happened, the flywheel started to go cuz when somebody else in another group would ask a very similar question, they would share an in-depth video or an in-depth blog post. And just by literally churning out, spending several hours every single day in networking, seeing people's problems, answering those problems with a good answer, bit by bit then he started to get the trust, "Oh, you want to speak to them. Oh, you want to speak to them." And obviously from there then the rest is history where he's built multiple brands, had a nice successful conference and stuff like that. Um but yeah, it's it's crazy. But you like you said, it's difficult when you're first starting out to build a personal brand.

James Dooley: Yeah. It is difficult. If So, let me if you could only choose three platforms, three social media platforms

Craig Campbell: Mhm.

James Dooley: to do personal branding on, which three would you choose? I'm going to let's say choose for building out to be an SEO consultant. YouTube's number one. Uh yeah. That's probably LinkedIn. Um would be second. I'm not a big user of LinkedIn just because I think people talk personal Um it's very very salesy, but I think exposure-wise and numbers-wise and business owner-wise and everything, you're probably in the right place there. Um I've got to say Facebook's always been I would probably argue with myself a little bit when you know what? Facebook has been good for me personally. I don't think I enjoy Facebook as much as I used to, but Facebook I would probably say still got to be up there for me. A lot of SEOs are on Facebook. Uh you know, we look at our mutual connections and it's just outrageous. So, I'd probably say those three. What about you?

Craig Campbell: I'd say it was a bad question that I asked you. When I asked you the question then I'll begin it should just be all platforms. Like you should just with AI now, it's so easy now to be able to send the same intent but throughout all platforms.

James Dooley: I would kind of disagree on that. I don't think Instagram does much for me. Like from an SEO

Craig Campbell: what's what's really interesting, man? On Meta, both Facebook and Instagram the last 12 months have been really growing on index pages. And actually by getting the words in the images that's on Instagram can actually now start manipulating the LLMs. So, just for that reason I'd be like, "Okay, let's grab that. Let's put it into an image. Let's put the text in the status and then let's force index it." But I agree. I feel like trying to grow the audience on Instagram It's a slog, man.

James Dooley: It's a slog, yeah. think I'll tell you a funny story around that. So, obviously I had my health issues last year. I'm not going to document what exactly those are cuz it's a bit grim. Um after Cash's conference last year, I don't know why, but I just decided to put in the chat GPT has Craig Campbell uh been ill recently? Cuz everyone kept asking me how I was doing and all that stuff and it come up uh saying, "Yep, he's been ill. Um he's been in hospital, blah blah blah blah." And it was pulling from an Instagram post that I'd put when I was in hospital. So, when you see that

Craig Campbell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Uh that happened to me and it's like, "Yep, he's been in hospital and here's the proof uh or here's the source." Uh and I'm like, "Oh." So, you know, from that, your point is exactly valid, but just posting on Instagram, I just don't think

James Dooley: From a following, I get it. It's the hardest to

Craig Campbell: on the hardest one of them all. So, I I and and I also feel that Twitter's kind of toxic. I've also found it Tik Tok is not great for SEO stuff. I just think Tik Tok would work really well if you were a trying to be an influencer or maybe selling cars or selling something a bit more visual. I just think most people on Tik Tok are just like, "I don't even know what SEO is." So, um maybe AI will be different for Tik Tok. So, there's just certain platforms where I'm like, "I'm not going to spend that much time uh pushing them just for that reason alone." But, it's it's probably why it's good to use them all.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And anyone who's watching this, we hope you liked the episode on is personal branding important. If you think we've missed anything, any platform like Threads or podcasting circuits and stuff like that that you think's really important for the future of personal brands, leave a comment in the comment section. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks again, mate.