Using Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand

Branding is one of the most important aspects to building a business but is so often overlooked by most startups. Color, messaging, engagement with your audience, and the frequency of posting all have an impact on how your business will be seen by your target audience.

I have worked on marketing campaigns for start ups before where they focused on every little detail, even the color that the CEO wore in press conferences because they were that dedicated to the colors they had chosen to represent the business.

And I have worked for other start ups that didn’t have social media accounts for their business because they “didn’t believe in social media”…. In this day and age, you really NEED to have social media branding in place. It’s really not an option.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Social media is how many people have started to engage with each other and with the businesses they ultimately choose to purchase from. So if that is where your target audience is hanging out, that’s where you should interact with them!

Gaining Meaningful Engagement

1. The biggest factor for me has always been CONSISTENCY of posting and engagement with your audience. If you post consistently for a month and then not at all for a month then you will lose a good portion of the audience you gained and worked so hard to build a relationship with.
2. Next, is quality of your interaction with the followers that engage with you. Don’t just say “thanks for the comment,” ask them a question or provide feedback on what they said to keep the conversation going and THEN thank them for the comment.
3. Go out and make friends. Find people in your niche that are also posting consistently and follow them. Leave meaningful comments or share their content with your followers. This starts to establish trust and helps get engagement for your niche so it’s a win-win situation!

Be Real!

No one wants to be sold ever by anyone. Everyone likes to feel like they are engaging with real people, not sales people. If you focus all of your effort on talking about your business, it is highly likely that people will get bored with your social media easily. Brand yourself! Be real and have an authentic voice. Become an influencer and show how passionate you are about what you are creating content around.

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Ultimately, social media is the newest “word of mouth” advertising that is available and the engagement on social media seems to grow daily! Take a good, hard look at your current social media and evaluate whether or not this is working for your business or harming it. If it’s harming it, make a plan to change and start to implement it today!

Thanks for reading,

Ivy