To successfully create a personal brand on social media, build a brand persona, create a consistent online presence, build relationships and an efficient network, use different social media platforms, and consistently measure your efforts and improve your brand.
Personal branding is the process of creating an identity for yourself and promoting it to influence how the public perceives you.
With about 59% of the world’s population now using social media, these platforms are now some of the best places to reach audiences to promote yourself.
A strong personal brand on social media can position you as an authority, elevate your credibility, widen your circle of influence, and help you make a more significant impact.
However, creating a strong personal brand on social media is easier said than done. It involves a lot of work, including branding, creating value, marketing, and networking.
Many people attempting personal branding on social media fail at the first hurdles as they struggle to build a following. However, anyone can successfully master personal branding on social media by following specific steps.
This article will reveal these steps to “social media personal branding” success. At the end of this article, you’ll be one step closer to building a strong personal brand on social media.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Understanding Your Brand
Identifying Your Strengths and Values
Build an Audience on Specific Social Media Platforms
Become Known as a Thought Leader
Monetize Your Social Media Accounts
How to Create a Consistent Online Presence
Choose the Right Social Media Platforms
Build a Consistent and Professional Profile
Create and Curate Quality Content
How to Build Relationships and an Efficient Network
Engage with Your Target Audience
Collaborate with Other Influencers and Brands
Build Relationships Through Online Communities and Events
How to Use Different Social Media Platforms to Achieve Different Branding Goals
How to Measure and Improve Your Brand
Analyze Your Social Media Metrics
The Importance of Understanding Your Brand
Personal branding on social media is building a reputation for something you love doing and want to be known for. It involves sharing your personality, passion, and expertise in a way that brings value to people.
Thus, building a personal brand starts with finding your uniqueness and conveying your unique message to a particular audience.
Identifying Your Strengths and Values
“At the core of it, your personal brand is something you love to do that can bring value to people. So, the first step to building a personal brand online is to identify your strengths and values.”
Personal brand = something you love to do + something that brings value to people
The first part of the equation is identifying “something you love to do.”
Do you want to attract more clients and boost revenue?
To do this, think deeply and ask yourself some reflective questions. These might include:
- What activities do you find satisfying?
- What things are most important to you in how you live and work?
- What are you really good at?
- What would you do if you had all the money in the world?
Your strength would be that thing that you love doing and are really good at.
Know that you may come up with multiple answers, including things that you may be good at but do not find satisfying or things that you love doing but are not very good at.
If you do not get that sweet nexus of what you love doing and are very good at, it’s best to settle for something you may not have expertise in but genuinely love. This is because you can acquire expertise. But if you settle for something you do not love, even if you are good at it, you may burn out quickly.
The second part of the “personal brand” equation is “something that brings value to people.”
To succeed in personal branding, that uniqueness of yours must be something that brings value to people. For example, after identifying that you love wildlife photography and are really good at it, you need to ask yourself whether it’s something people are interested in.
When you’ve found unique things about yourself that people are interested in (and even willing to pay for), you’ve jumped the first hurdle of personal branding on social media.
Defining Your Target Audience
“If you try to appeal to everyone, you risk appealing to no one. Thus, after identifying your unique strengths and values to build a reputation around, you need to target your message to a particular audience.”
It’s not enough to say that you are a photographer. What area of photography are you passionate about (and will want to be known for)? Portrait photography, wildlife photography, event photography?
You target a specific group of people by niching down to one thing. Contrary to some beliefs, niching down is not limiting. Instead, it helps you stand out in a crowded market.
Know that it’s not possible or practical to be an expert on everything. So, you have a better chance of being known as the best when you niche down to a relatively smaller field.
Setting Your Personal Goals
“Goals shape your behavior, guide your focus, and help you mobilize energy for persistent effort. So, setting personal branding goals shapes how you will brand yourself. It also mobilizes and sustains the personal branding efforts required for success.”
When building a personal brand on social media, you should clearly define what you want out of your efforts.
These goals will shape how you plan to brand yourself. For example, suppose you want people to recognize your professional skills and improve your chances of discovering new job opportunities. In that case, you should pour energy into building a LinkedIn profile.
Setting goals also keeps you focused and persistent. For example, if you want to build a large audience to support your business, you’ll pour energy into growing your following on platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
You could set goals that include:
Build an Audience on Specific Social Media Platforms
Building a larger following on specific social media channels should be the first goal of every person wanting to build a personal brand. This is because every other goal’s success depends on a large social media following.
Become Known as a Thought Leader
Many people set out to position themselves as experts in their industry. You can do this by consistently sharing insights and demonstrating industry expertise until you gain substantial recognition.
Improve Your Resume
Many people set out to use their accounts to create resume-improving accomplishments. For example, a digital marketer can include statistics of how they grew their personal social media accounts in their resume.
Monetize Your Social Media Accounts
You can set out to make social media a profitable side hustle (by ultimately monetizing your social media accounts). Some ways to monetize your personal brand on social media include promoting ads and selling digital products (like e-books and online courses).
How to Create a Consistent Online Presence
Setting your personal branding goals, finding unique things about yourself that people are interested in, and defining a specific audience are all planning efforts.
“Know that even the best plans mean nothing if they are not executed. Thus, to succeed in personal branding on social media, you must execute your plans by creating a consistent online presence.”
To create a consistent social media presence, you need to:
- Choose the right social media platforms.
- Build a professional profile.
- Share quality content regularly.
Choose the Right Social Media Platforms
“It’s not practical to be everywhere (that is, have a large impact on every social media platform). If you try to be and vigorously promote your brand on all the leading platforms, you’ll wear yourself out very quickly.”
The best practice is to follow your audience. That is, use the social media networks where your target audience is. It doesn’t mean you should use only one platform. But it would be best if you were highly selective.
Another thing to consider when deciding what social media platform to use is the type of content you’ll be publishing. This is because social media platforms are not built equally, so each platform is best for a particular type of content.
For example, Instagram is one of the best social media platforms for visual content, making it excellent for those in the food, art, design, and photography niches.
Build a Consistent and Professional Profile
“Being easily identifiable and perceived as trustworthy is key to having a strong online presence. A defined persona via a consistent and professional profile ensures you’re memorable and trustworthy to your followers.”
A professional profile should be complete, as a partially completed profile may discourage people from trusting. It should include your name, a good-quality photo clearly showing your face, and an appealing headline that summarizes your personal brand.
Visual consistency is essential if you use more than one social media platform. You should use the same profile photo and solo scheme across your various accounts.
Visual consistency builds brand recognition, making it easy for people to identify and follow you across your multiple platforms.
Create and Curate Quality Content
“Personal branding is about building a reputation and making an impact by sharing your thoughts, experiences, expertise, etc. Thus, creating and publishing high-quality content people enjoy is key to building a strong personal branding.”
To build a personal brand on social media, think of content marketing. Always create and share original content that captures the attention of your target audience.
Create content that explores issues and answers questions. Information about your personal life and uplifting social media posts could be part of your content strategy.
You may also share other people’s content. But when doing this, you should add remarks that tell your followers why the content catches your attention.
When creating content, following a particular posting schedule is important.
First, it makes your life easier, ensuring you do not go too long before posting content. Also, your followers get used to your posting schedule and know when to expect new material.
If following a schedule proves difficult, there are many social media automation tools that you can use to schedule your posts ahead of time. These include Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social.
It would be best if you were consistent with your brand voice when posting content. That is, stick to the same kind of posts.
How to Build Relationships and an Efficient Network
Strong personal brands on social media feed on large followings. Excellent ways to grow your following include building relationships with your audience, collaborating with other influencers to increase brand awareness, and joining online communities to build a reputation.
Engage with Your Target Audience
Engaging your followers is one of the best ways to build relationships with them.
It’s similar to person-to-person relationships. You can hardly have a relationship with people if only you do the talking while you ignore what everyone has to say.
“To succeed online, show your followers that they are in a relationship with you by engaging them. You can do this by replying to comments, answering questions, and even respectfully responding to criticisms.”
A good personal branding strategy on social media is asking your followers questions and “listening” to their replies. You may ask them what they think about a particular issue of national/ regional interest. You may also ask them what they want to see from you.
Know that it’s important to reply to your audience as quickly as possible. 80% of your audience expects you to respond to their inquiries within 24 hours, while 5% expect a response in 5 hours. As a general rule, try to respond within 5 hours and never wait till it’s over 24 hours before you respond.
Collaborate with Other Influencers and Brands
Influencers are individuals with large followings. Thus, partnering with an influencer will open you to their large following.
“When influencers create content about your brand, their huge following see your brand. Some of them will land on your page, and they’ll follow you if they like what they see.”
Know that influencers have successfully built a reputation. People trust them and follow their recommendations. So, being mentioned by an influencer gives you authenticity, which can help you win the trust of your target audience.
A best practice when using influencers to boost personal branding efforts on social media is to use influencers and thought leaders in your specific niche.
Build Relationships Through Online Communities and Events
A social media group is a community of people interested in a particular topic. People share their expertise in social media industry groups. Thus, the groups attract people looking for help and advice.
For this reason, these social media groups are some of the best places to build a name for yourself in your niche. If you join groups relevant to your niche and consistently post content that brings value to others, you will be recognized and slowly establish yourself as an authority.
When starting off in online communities, you should avoid statements that are sales-y, as that will make people dismiss you as a “salesperson.” Just focus on providing solutions.
How to Use Different Social Media Platforms to Achieve Different Branding Goals
Social media platforms are built differently. The social media platform you need depends on your branding goals, especially whether you’ll post visual, video, short-form written, or long-form content.
Here’s how to use different social media to achieve your branding goals.
Instagram is a visual platform, making it excellent for sharing visual content like photos, videos, and descriptive texts.
Instagram is for you if you’re in a niche like photography or real estate, where it’s vital to tantalize your audiences with images. However, you’ll need to post consistently (about 1 – 2 times daily).
Twitter is a powerful personal branding tool suited for short-form written content. Interestingly, it’s a broad platform that also works very well for GIFs, images, and short videos.
Twitter allows real-time conversations, making it excellent for people whose personal branding strategy includes up-to-the-minute updates (like industry news).
The immediacy that Twitter offers its users means it requires frequent postings. The recommended posting frequency to succeed on Twitter is five times a day.
Facebook needs no introduction. Facebook has 2.95 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social media channel. It is also the broadest social media channel, as it allows sharing of various content types.
You can post anything on Facebook, from photos and news to long-form posts. Facebook is for you if your personal branding strategy includes exploring subjects in detail from time to time.
While posting consistently is also important, Facebook does not require as much posting as Twitter or Instagram. Posting at least three times a week is sufficient.
You can grow your following by inviting people to like your Facebook page. Given the platform’s popularity, there are different Facebook groups for networking and getting ideas for content.
LinkedIn is often called the “Facebook of the professional world,” as it is a business and employment-focused social media channel.
Members are usually workers and employers who create profiles and connect with each other in an online social network representing real-world professional relationships.
LinkedIn is for you if your branding goals include letting people recognize your professional skills and increasing employment opportunities.
Building your personal brand on LinkedIn also does not require many social posts. Posting once a day or three times a week would be sufficient.
YouTube
500+ hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, making it the ultimate video-sharing platform. YouTube is for you if your branding strategy is big on posting video content like vlogs.
Posting consistently on your YouTube channel also gives the best result. However, a posting frequency of one video content every two weeks works.
How to Measure and Improve Your Brand
The key to success in any effort is consistently finding areas for improvement and taking the necessary steps to improve. It’s the same with building a personal brand.
Even when following the best recommendations to create a strong online presence, you need to know if what you are doing is working and what steps to take next to optimize your efforts.
Analyze Your Social Media Metrics
Social media metrics are data points that show you how well your social media strategy is performing. Analyzing your social media metrics is the best way to know if what you are doing to build your personal brand is working.
There are different analytic tools to analyze your social media metrics. Some social media automation tools even have analytics capabilities.
Some social media metrics to analyze include:
- Reach – the number of people that see your content.
- Impressions – the number of times your content is shown to users.
- Audience Growth Rate – how many new followers join your channel within a particular period.
- Engagement Rate – the number of engagements (reactions, likes, comments, shares) your content gets as a percentage of your followers.
- Amplification Rate – the number of shares your content gets as a percentage of your followers.
- Click-through Rate – the percentage of times your audience who see a post clicks a link in it to access additional content.
Social media metrics can help you understand a lot, including what content types perform best, what connections give you the biggest boost, what day of the week is best for posting, etc.
Refine Your Strategy
Treat your personal brand as a work in progress. After identifying areas for improvement, take the necessary steps to get the desired results.
For example, you may have to create better content, post more regularly, forge more valuable connections, add a better promotional channel, etc.
Conclusion
In conclusion, building a strong personal brand on social media can be a game-changer for your career or business. By following the tips outlined in this article, you can establish yourself as a thought leader, increase your visibility, and attract opportunities. Remember to be authentic, consistent, and strategic in your messaging and engagement. Don’t forget to measure your progress and adjust your strategy accordingly. Today is the best time to start building your personal brand on social media. So, take action, create a plan, and get started. Good luck!
