How to Build a Personal Brand on Social Media

Regardless of your profession, knowing how to build a personal brand on social media can help you take your career to the next level. People often assume that having a personal brand on social media is being an influencer, but that is not the case.

This blog will cover the simple steps to build a personal brand on social media.

Why build a personal brand on social media

Social Media has come a long way since the early days of social media. Social media’s evolution stems from how the users are digesting the content. It has taken us this far, but how much further will it go?

Having a personal brand can help you build stronger connections, boost your relatability and authenticity with your audience and help you stand out in the crowded social space.

Personal branding becomes increasingly important when you reach senior management or even if you become an entrepreneur. Social Media activity builds trust between customers, yourself and then the business. When 82% of customers trust a company when their senior management members are active on social media, why miss out?

What is personal branding?

In a nutshell, personal branding links your online persona to the “real you”. In the same way that building a business brand represents the business at its core values and beyond. Your brand is a manifestation of “you” as an individual.

If your personal brand is up to scratch, but you think it’s time to boost your Search Engine Marketing, see how ROAR can help you here

How to Build a Personal Brand on Social Media

Once you build a personal brand on social media, you have to start pulling together your plan and deciding what it truly is that you’re trying to achieve. With these 4 top tips, you can easily identify what you need to do to build your personal brand.

• Find your platforms and niche. 

With endless streams of social media platforms and each one of them offering different content to different audiences finding out where you fit is essential.

On top of finding your platforms, you also need to consider your niche. You can’t be everything to everyone.

Don’t just be a “marketing expert”; be an SEO specialist. Make it clear what your focus is and, in doing so, make your target audience narrow but highly concentrated with the right people.

• Test your content 

All of your content should be providing value to your audience in some way or another. Whether you’re giving top tips, do’s and don’ts or overall insights, you should always consider if this reaches your ideal audience member. Does it offer them value, and can they take anything away from it?

With so many platforms, you have many content types, and some audiences will respond differently to others. So, test them. There may be content that you don’t feel will be received well, but until you test it, how can you know for certain?

Test what engages your audience. Is there a style of hook that always works well? Or questions you should ask that see higher engagement from your audience? Trial various methods and use what sticks.

Social media can require a lot of trial and error to hone in on what your audience wants to see. Mixed in with any changes to the algorithms of social media platforms can make it difficult, but with time you start to see trends.

• Build Contacts 

Whether you’re starting from scratch with 0 followers or are trying to harness your existing following, know where you’re starting and have a plan for where you want to be.

Contact building top tips:

1. Get industry friends or co-workers to share your content to increase your reach
2. Get networking – no matter where you are, there will be a networking event in your local area. Get involved and meet some familiar faces and build some new business connections.
3. Like, comment and share. Whilst you are building a personal brand on social media, so many others will be, too, so don’t forget about them.

Make your comments valuable and conversation-starting, or share content while including your views and adding the value of your own for your followers.

• Schedule 

As much as ad hoc social media posts can often be shot out of the dark and do surprisingly well, a social media schedule can help you stay on top of posting content when everything else gets busy.

Whether you post daily, weekly or bi-weekly, you may have figured out when the best times to post for your audience. Before work, lunchtime or after work, weekends? Whatever those times are, schedule them into your calendar and stick to them. After building your brand, people may expect content from you at those times, so be consistent, and in the long run, it will pay off.

Classic Errors

When you build a personal brand on social media, you can’t get it right every time. At some point, something won’t perform as well as you want, and you’ll have to regroup and shift focus. But let’s avoid some issues before they arise with these classic mistakes that most people will make.

• Plan! 

If you don’t know who “YOU” are, then building a personal brand is exceptionally difficult. So prepare yourself and plan what it is you’re trying to build. How do you want to be known?

The market leader in search marketing? Fashion blogging? Hair transplants? Whatever it may be, you have to know what you’re aiming for.

• Changing too quickly

When you start trialling a new content type or content, feel you need to allow people to get used to it before you change it. It’s easy to see dips in analytics and want to return to what you know, but it’s not straightforward – give it time.

• Sell, sell, sell!

You do not have to be selling all of the time. Especially on social media, if you’re selling more than 20%, you’re doing too much. Users are smart regarding sales, and as soon as they realise, they’ll tune out and likely not return.

• Give a little, get a little

You can’t expect to go from zero to 10,000 followers overnight (organically, anyway). To build up your followers and engagement, follow and engage with others. Pick some top content creators in your industry and, where relevant, engage.

• Too Personal 

Admittedly, the line is fine and blurred regarding how personal you get on social media with your brand. But you have to have value in mind at all times.

Does this anecdote about you making peanut butter instead of buying it add any value or context to the audience in your niche? If you’re a food blogger – it makes sense. If you’re a marketer specialising in SEO, probably not.

Suppose your personal brand is pristine and you now want to take your digital marketing efforts to the next level and increase your website’s visibility and traffic. In that case, it’s time to partner with ROAR’s search engine marketing consultancy services.