The personal brand of your company is one of the most crucial factors for its success. It is the culmination of your company’s identity, which is packaged and presented in a manner that’s attractive, pleasing, and familiar to your prospective clients.
Did you know, though, that companies and organizations aren’t the only ones in need of solid branding?
Personal branding, the art of creating a career boosting brand for yourself, is also important. Just like traditional brands, personal branding gives you a unique voice, a signature image, and a recognizable standard that your customers, readers, and fans can recognize easily. In this article, we will provide you with all the information you need to know about personal branding on social media sites.
Personal branding is becoming very important because audiences trust individuals more than companies and organizations. People are used to seeing advertisements everywhere and they believe companies and organizations speak and take action with only sales in mind.
On the other hand, personal branding allows you to establish your identity and reputation on a more personal level of interaction, which builds trust. In addition, people want to do business with other people and not with invisible corporations. Establishing a strong personal brand on the front-lines with sales teams can significantly improve your conversion rates.
Whether you use your personal brand to freelance, consult, or get more traffic to your website, it is vital to establish one to remain competitive. An online personal brand isn’t just important for sharing the things you are passionate about. Nowadays, it can play an essential role also in growing your business or landing a great job.
Approximately 80 percent of competitive jobs are found in the job market through personal connections and networking. The old days of making a perfect resume and sending it out to all job postings found online is rarely as effective as networking. Employers still ask for the formality of a resume out of tradition, but if you seek a creative job that is fun, you should use the following techniques and strategies to build a well-established personal brand.
Top 10 Tips on How to Establish Your Personal Brand on Social Media
1) Determine Your Area of Expertise
It is a wise idea to develop your brand in a very unique and specific niche. Establishing a unique niche focus will provide you with more opportunities to prove that you understand what you are talking about. While your target audience might be slightly smaller, it will be much more relevant. This also doesn’t mean you can’t have more than one focus of expertise.
Before you exclaim a single expertise on social media, you should determine what you have a passion for. This can be harder than it sounds. Instead of focusing on one passion or expertise, write a list of as many that come to mind and see if there are any through-lines between topics that cover your passion. If multiple topics represent your area of passion, you can become an expert in multiple, satellite topics surrounding it. Try to select between one to three topics.
2) Start Writing Quality Content
After determining your area of focus, it is time to build your reputation, and the most effective method to do that is by showing off your expertise.
Content marketing is the most effective way to build your reputation and personal brand online.
When people search for information online, they tend to go back to the sites that were helpful to them in the past.
If you can manage to make your website a trusted source of information online by creating quality evergreen content, then over time, you will be known as the expert in your specific field.
If you’re starting out and are not quite an expert yet, don’t worry. Instead, focus on documenting your journey towards becoming an expert. Surprisingly, you’ll find how quickly you can build a following. This is due to the fact that people will be compelled to learn alongside you. However, for you to be successful with this approach, you need to be transparent and document your wins as well as your loses.
Audiences can smell a fake from a mile away. They will quickly be able to tell whether you are trying to help them learn or if you’re solely trying to sell to them. Don’t be the latter. If you do try to sell during this phase, make it infrequent and earn the right to sell. Follow the 80/20 rule of providing good content 80 percent of the time and selling only 20 percent of the time.
It is a great idea to start your own blog and update it regularly, but it is also best to start guest blogging on other blogs. In today’s social media obsessed world, it also pays to create vlogs and YouTube tutorial videos to help your audience learn. It may be a lot of work, but it will pay off in the long-run.
3) Flesh out the Details of Your Social Media Profiles
If great content is the fuel for your brand, social media is the engine. Take enough time and build out your social media profiles, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and ensure they are consistently in line with the standards of your personal brand.
You can post updates on a regular basis and never be afraid to re-post your older quality content for your new audience to see. Just make sure to continually update the content, so it is relevant. There’s nothing worse than receiving old, unusable content.
4) Develop Case Studies
If you want to win the trust of your personal brand followers, it is wise to speak at events and create a few case studies. Work together with your past or present coworkers and potential customers to develop and present a solid narrative.
Most people love real stories more than speculation and promises. Therefore, prove what you’ve done by giving your audience understandable case studies. In addition, you should also search for speaking events in your location to give you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise as you connect with new audiences. Doing this will reap benefits.
5) Network As Much As You Can
In the real world and on social media, the key to sustaining growth in your personal brand is networking extensively.
Make sure you engage with other people in your specific field, connect with social influencers who have the right connections, and get in touch with any other person who may be valuable in assisting you to market your expertise.
One piece of advice: never ignore an influencer. The person you ignore can always be of great help to you in the future but only if you nurture the relationship. You can also attend professional networking events to connect with social influencers present in your region.
Engage in community discussions anytime you can. The more opportunities you have to connect and talk with people, the more your voice will be heard.
6) Clean Up Your Accounts
Most business prospects and potential employers may want to check you out on your social media sites before doing any kind of business with you. Therefore, it is important you behave professionally online.
If your social media accounts consist of off-brand language and or photographs, you may be forced to open new accounts or to delete all of your previous posts that can portray your brand in a negative light. If you want to keep your accounts for personal use, ensure you set your accounts to private and be selective about the people you connect with. Otherwise, clean up your accounts and create a consistent brand image between your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
7) Find the Best Platform for Your Business
According to Oberlo, the average amount of time a typical user spends on social media sites a day is 2 hours and 22 minutes, making it the best medium on which you can build your personal brand. There are so many social networks online, but most of them are not worth investing your energy and time on.
To ensure you find the best platforms that support your personal brand image, take the following factors into consideration:
- Facebook has got a heterogeneous user base. Nearly three-quarters of adults use this platform, making it a great medium for promoting virtually any brand.
- If your personal brand relies on images, then Instagram is the best option for your personal brand. It is a platform that is best for eCommerce brands, such as clothing companies and retailers. Moreover, it is specifically effective for engaging with young adults.
- Video marketing is on the rise. With most people now consuming content on their phones, it’s easy to see why video content is excelling. Instagram is now using long-form, vertical videos on its IGTV platform and YouTube is becoming more ubiquitous on all kinds of devices, which will only propel video marketing even further.
- On the other hand, Pinterest is an excellent platform to connect with women, especially for personal brands that are selling clothing or jewelry.
8) How Frequently Do You Post?
Consistent information output is the life-blood of your social media strategy, but how frequently should you post? According to research conducted by Buffer, the optimal number of posts per platform varies platform to platform:
- Facebook – post 2 times per day
- LinkedIn – post 1 time per day
- Twitter – post 5 times per day
- Pinterest – post 5 times per day
- Instagram – post 1.5 times per day
- Google + – post 2 times per day
9) Be Persistent and Consistent
According to Yankelovich research, we’re exposed to about 5,000 ad messages daily. Just develop your branding message, and deliver it again and again in the same manner. Create a consistent brand style, colors, mission, tagline, and logo because consistency is the key.
Set the standard of your personal brand! You can try out different marketing strategies to see the ones that bring the best traffic and conversions to your website. Check where your competitors are spending their money and time, then decide if you want to do the same. In order to find out how your competitors are spending their time and budget, check out SpyFu.
Note that what is effective for your competitors might not be suitable for you, depending on your niche.
10) Engage With Your Community As Much As You Can
Whether it is a local community or an online community, go out there, socialize, and give back to your community. You can sponsor a local charity race or an athletic league. Make donations to your favorite non-profit companies, or volunteer to serve on boards.
The more your community gets to trust and know you better, the more likely people will recommend your products and services.
What Are The Benefits of Establishing a Personal Brand on Social Media?
The best benefit is a large market share. Social media sites contain the largest amount of connections, and they command the most attention from their user base.
Involving yourself in them is the best way to meet new audiences and also get your brand openly viewed by other people. You can also notice that many people who use them are hooked into the mobile market.
Over the past 5 years, the number of people accessing social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook from their personal mobile phones has risen significantly. It is great news that the users are energetic, passionate, and still young.
In fact, the benefits of personal branding on social media sites will change from person to person. The connections you can build by networking with people hold a lot of potentials. The world has become smaller than it used to be 100 years ago, and we’re noticing tightening of this system with each passing month.
Secret Ingredients of Social Media Success
⇒ Appropriate Color Palette
If you check on the colors of any popular brand, you will notice they use the same colors again and again in their text, images, and even logos. Select the colors that you will use on all your social media activities. This will help your potential customers become more familiar with your personal brand.
Understanding color psychology can also help you reflect on the feelings you need to evoke from your audience. Ensure the colors you use reflect your brand’s personality, and never make the mistake of choosing colors that are not relevant to the personality of your brand.
⇒ Fonts That Match the Personality of Your Brand
Make sure that you select fonts that reflect the personality of your brand. Do you need to select a simpler font or a strong font? And should you select an elegant font?
Consider selecting three fonts: one for your title or heading, the second one for your subtitles, and the third one for your body text. If you select your colors wisely, your audience will be extremely impressed. Use your fonts consistently in all your materials. Your title should have the largest font size in your design.
⇒ Speed Things up by Using Templates
Do you have a template for all your social media activities? Is your logo designed the same every time you utilize it? Coming up with a style guide will assist you to ensure that all the elements of your personal brand perform in harmony.
The most effective and efficient way to create easy media layouts is by creating templates. Keep in mind that every social media platform has different ideal image dimensions. Therefore, ensure you cater your graphics to those dimensions, but maintain the placement of your fonts, logo, and colors consistently across your designs.
A personal brand is just like a garden. After you have laid out the groundwork and planted the seeds, you will eventually reap the benefits. Don’t forget, it still requires enough time and commitment to nurture and expand your personal brand.
As you continue to establish and develop your brand, be consistent with your efforts, be attentive to how your audiences react to your content, and build your brand until your focus is razor-sharp. Dare to be different and liven up your online identities. Maintain tight connections with the persons you wish to, and keep in mind that technology is just a tool.
Social media sites provide only a means to an end. Note that if you develop a well-established personal brand, you will definitely reap the benefits.
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Source: business2community
