What is personal branding? In its most basic form, personal branding is the practice of developing your own personal story and telling it online. One of the best ways to refine your personal brand is through your social media accounts. Having and maintaining a strong personal brand can help you in many ways, like making it easier to get a job.
Some high-profile influencers have crafted careers from their ability to create and promote their social media personas. Whether your goal is to find a job or just present a better and more personal profile for your friends and family, here are some tips for building your personal brand online.
Establish a baseline
In order to understand how you can improve your online story, you’ll want to have a good idea of where you stand. Searching for yourself can be fun and informative. You’ll want to groom your search results so that they best tell your story. If you have an unflattering picture or post that does not fit how you want to present yourself, untag or delete it.
Next, determine what you want to say about yourself. If you have a certain expertise (sports, beauty, fashion, travel), show it off! Your social media profiles are meant to provide a quick-hit introduction to you. A few highlighted aspects of your personality, work, or passions to can help you introduce yourself in a fun and relatable manner.
Learn by example
Though you want your social media profiles to be unique to you, it doesn’t hurt to get ideas from others. If there are high-profile influencers in your area of expertise or an online community to which you belong, study their techniques. You could discover new facts about your hobby that inspire you.
One way to identify trends is to search for hashtags related to your interests on hashtagify.me. You can examine what kind of keywords are related to those hashtags and what can get you the most related traffic. You can also stay up to date by liking and subscribing to articles in your areas of interest. Remember the golden rule: treat others online as you would be treated. Follow, like, and interact with pages that inspire or interest you to ensure that you get more of the content that you like and that you place yourself in the conversation. Others notice when you follow or interact with them, and may be inclined to do the same when applicable.
Keep a consistent look and feel
The goal of social media is to connect with your friends online. You should use your profile to stand out and display your personality. If you are genuine, the best things about you can stand out. The best way to ensure that your followers recognize you is to keep the same look and feel across all of your platforms.
To keep the same look, make sure your profile pictures and other imagery (i.e. cover photo on Facebook or background on Twitter) are consistent across platforms. This can help make it easier for your friends and others to follow you across platforms.
In addition, you should keep the same voice for everything you post or share across social media platforms. Think of all of your platforms as different chapters in the same story. You’ll want to link those chapters together as well- link to different platforms so that it is easier for your family and fans to find and recognize you.
Post frequently
On social media, everything moves quickly. A tweet, once read, can be forgotten in a matter of minutes (the shelf life of a tweet is about 20 minutes). Establish a frequency that works for you (which might mean you are posting less often than you’d expect), and see how people engage. Take follower interaction into consideration when deciding your post frequency.
Monitor your progress
Monitor mentions of your name on social media. You can untag from bad photos or adjust your settings to require approval to display photos you are tagged in. On Twitter you can remove tags or restrict who can tag you in photos. You can see different hashtags and how they perform.
Whatever your motivation, building your brand on social media can lead to a better overall online experience. Following these simple tips can not only help you express yourself online, but can also lead to new opportunities to explore your hobbies or to further your career. By following these tips, you can help make sure your brand online is as dynamic as you are.
