Social media is an impressive platform where you can build your personal identity, establish a social reputation, and mark your presence in your industry. Building a personal brand on social media is one of the best ways to become a thought leader in your industry.
Your personal brand is what others
tell about you when you leave the room. It’s your professional reputation.
Dorie Clark
Brands often work vigorously to influence social media with
the intention to boost online visibility and revenue. They want more clicks,
more likes, and they want to create a positive user experience.
But what happens when a brand is a person instead of a
company? When it’s just you, you need to take a different approach to growing
your brand through social media. Since over 90% of customers trust information
from people they know when making a purchase decision, building personal
connections might be the most effective way to develop trust and authority with
your audience.
Here are nine ways you can use social media to make that
happen.
1. Find the Right Groups
Facebook and LinkedIn both offer great opportunities to
join groups focused on specific topics or industries. If you can find groups
that line up with your area of expertise, then you’ll be able to share that
experience and build authority around your personal brand.
Industry groups are good bets, but they might already be
overcrowded with your competitors. Instead, think outside the box and find
other groups where you’re likely to find your audience.
2. Keep the Image Consistent
Across all of your social profiles, you have to maintain
a certain consistency with your brand. When people want to learn more about
you, they may search for you on a number of social outlets. Presenting yourself
in a consistent manner helps you control their perception of your personal
brand. You can damage an otherwise impeccable reputation if one of your
profiles shows up with content or images that don’t represent you well.
3. Engage Regularly
Building a brand takes a lot of effort, and it should be
treated like a job. Every day, you should be sharing and producing content.
Adjust the frequency and types of content based on the audience presence.
We already post a lot on the social accounts for Web
Profits, but I still make time to post on each of my personal social profiles.
“A once-weekly Twitter post or monthly Instagram photo
are not going to accomplish much, if anything,” writes Michael Noice, founder
of Entrepreneur Coach. “For this reason, it’s best to focus on two or three
carefully chosen social networks and try to be active on them, rather than
posting sporadically to a half-dozen.”
4. Diversify Your Content
I recommend crafting a communications strategy for your personal
brand that includes an editorial calendar and a diverse content plan so that
you won’t resort to publishing the same types of articles every single day.
Be sure to include images, videos, articles, and even
questions. I see a lot more reciprocal engagement when I change up the type of
content that I post daily.
Another benefit is that this diversity prevents you from
oversharing your own content. Even if your own content is fantastic, your
followers will appreciate when you source and share authoritative content from
other people.
5. Study Influencers
Connecting with and even collaborating with influencers
is a smart way to build your personal brand and get yourself seen, but it takes
time. You have to develop a relationship with influencers before they’ll want
to work with you.
To be in business today, our most
important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You
Tom Peters
