Building a Personal Brand on Social Media: Do’s and Don’ts
Learn how to build a good image on the internet and captivate your audience!
If you run your own brand, you must invest in personal brand marketing on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social channels have become essential communication tools for different businesses.
The presence of these social channels helps many brands get a few steps ahead of the competition, primarily when they can naturally interact with followers (who are all potential customers).
Would you like to build and maintain a good image on social media? Well then, let’s find out the dos and don’ts when developing your brand strategy!
The importance of a social presence for a personal brand
We exist in a time when a presence on social media is essential to the survival of a business, primarily when that business is based online.
Everyone has an online presence, from freelancers to trendy boutiques. Still, it can be challenging to establish where your company or personal brand stands regarding an online presence and whether you’re doing enough to maintain constant contact with your audience.
In short, an online presence, in this case, social media, refers to establishing and maintaining your business’s social media profiles.
Social media maintenance is crucial to the success of any business, including local brick-and-mortar locations. Having a consistent and relevant presence on social channels can help you boost your local SEO and bring new customers through the door.
Did you know that more than 70% of social users utilize Instagram to make their next purchase?
Failing to dedicate time to building a personal brand on social media is a massive business mistake, but it can be challenging to know where to begin.
Creating professional connections for your personal brand
We know learning how to promote yourself on social media is critical to surviving as a business. We also see how a strong social presence can propel our business forward. But why?
Social media builds personal brand awareness
Social media branding builds brand awareness. It’s as simple as that.
Even without intense content planning and aggressive SEO tactics (though you should plan content and implement SEO), social media can put your products and services in front of people who would not otherwise know they exist.
Social media is inexpensive unless you’re running a massive ad campaign and provides relatively quick results once you work your way into the algorithm. Once you have a firm grasp of how each platform operates and set up a content plan and SEO strategy for each, you can build your business with minimal effort.
Social channels help establish authority
When most people discover a new business through Facebook or Instagram ads, for example, the first thing they’ll do is run an online search for that business to check its reputation and look for user reviews.
They’ll probably be less likely to purchase if you don’t have well-run and updated social platforms. Of course, this is a component of running a business that can be incredibly frustrating if you’re in the early stages of building a social presence.
Sticking with your social plan and continuing to build a base will eventually pay off, establishing your personal brand presence within your business community or niche as approachable and trustworthy.
VIDEO: How to grow your audience on social media | Carla Salinas at Hotmart MASTERS
An online presence shows authenticity and transparency
While websites are a fantastic tool to connect and sell to consumers, your social profiles will give you more freedom in that respect.
If you want to get creative and show off your brand personality, social media is, hands down, the best way to do it. Followers love to see behind-the-scenes footage and feel like they’re genuinely connecting with a brand on an emotional level before they purchase a product or service.
You can use Instagram or TikTok to show off a day in the life of running your company or how you make your products. Not only does this demonstrate authenticity, but it makes for fantastic, engaging, original content.
Social media provides quick customer support from your personal brand
As your channels grow for your personal brand, you’ll probably need to hire someone to maintain them.
Social media is one of the first places your clients and customers will turn when they’re unhappy or have questions regarding a product or service. The days of sitting on hold to resolve a customer issue are long gone because social media creates a nearly instant support network.
Again, this quick connection in the face of adversity builds trust among your consumers. You’ll see your brand grow exponentially when you work on a foundation of trust.
Now, let’s discuss what you should and shouldn’t do regarding the operation of your social media channels.
Personal brand on social media: dos
Your job isn’t complete just because you’ve posted a piece of content, regardless of how good it is. Planning your social media content calendar and paying close attention to detail is a game changer for personal marketing on social media.
You also need to plan and pay attention to details. Learn more below!
Complete your personal brand social profile
You must complete your personal brand social profile on every platform you choose to have a presence on. Filling out vital information, such as the “about us” section and business contact information, helps with credibility for both users and the application referring your business to users.
Much like Google looks for content credibility when providing search results, social media platforms look for relevancy and profile completeness when suggesting your profile to others.
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Consistency is key
Remaining consistent across your social profiles without posting the exact same content will give a professional, pulled-together impression to those who follow you.
You can keep your content aligned and on the same topic, but try not to use the same imagery and text on each platform. After all, different platforms have different audiences, and you want to ensure you tailor your content to that specific demographic.
Planning content
Planning and organization are vital to establishing a good online presence. Working with a content schedule can help you with this.
Select subjects within the realm of your personal brand and identify how you can address them. Remember to do this while considering your audience’s interests and the formats provided by the selected social channel.
Keep your personal brand relevant
Another strategy to stay relevant is to monitor trending subjects and adapt them to your business universe. Google Trends and Twitter’s Trending Topics are valuable tools for this.
In addition to demonstrating that you are aware of trends in terms of world events, working on hot subjects is one way of boosting your content utilizing SEO.
Pay attention to post design
There’s little use in discussing the most relevant topics of the moment if this content isn’t well presented.
User attention span is becoming increasingly low in the online environment, and images and video content are usually responsible for attracting customer attention. Flashy colors and short, direct, and interesting texts are the main requirements for success in this area.
Remember that people interact differently with content on different platforms. You want to tailor your content to whichever social channel you post, including the captions.
Do you wish to work with memes and fun montages? Then you should be on Twitter! Do you have beautifully produced images? Make sure you post them on Instagram!
Provide unparalleled service
Cordiality and friendliness make all the difference, especially when interacting with potential clients on social media.
You can utilize resources such as emojis and gifs so that your communication is closer to what users are used to in the channel. However, you must know how to apply them so they don’t appear too artificial and jeopardize your authority.
Investing in businesses in the same industry
Which brands, businesses, or products would enhance the customer experience with your personal brand product if presented and consumed together? Think of it like this: Who will be the Coca-Cola to your McDonald’s?
Partnerships are an excellent strategy to increase your relevance in the market, create more visibility, and expand your reach since you can reach new consumers more efficiently. In addition to partnering with brands, you should also consider influencers. Even if they are small and in a niche, they can bring great returns to your business.
Personal brand on social media: don’ts
You have planned, invested, and taken good care of your customer service and the design of your posts. Now what?
It’s time to talk about what you shouldn’t do when using social media channels to boost your brand.
Do avoid spamming
We know how excited you are to share your products and services with the world, but spamming your current and potential followers with a ton of content is not the way to do it.
You want to ensure that your content and ads target the audience you need. Don’t force your content on unsuitable audiences for followers, especially if you’re running ads. An ad that doesn’t target the correct demographic is an ad wasted.
It’s important not to post too frequently, as your followers will become irritated quickly if you’re throwing too much content in their faces.
Poor spelling and grammar
We can’t stress enough how vital it is to the social success of your business to pay close attention to your grammar and spelling.
Poor grammar and incorrect spelling make it difficult for users to truly grasp your personal brand message, and it comes off as incredibly unprofessional. If you struggle in these areas, you can work with a freelance copy editor or use an app like Hemingway or Grammarly.
Failing to reply
One main thing to avoid on social media is customer frustration.
There’s no use in creating an @ on Twitter if you’re not there to answer questions when asked. If your follower took the time to leave a comment on your Instagram post, take the time to reply.
At the very least, if you’re short on time, you can like the comment and reply with a simple emoji. Remember that more detailed replies encouraging further conversation are more likely to be successful since they increase the post’s engagement.
Posting aggressive content
As we explained above, you need to know your customer base inside and out. This way, it’s easier to filter out what you can or cannot address in your networks.
Avoid posts that might sound aggressive or offensive to any part of your audience. It’s imperative to know your audience well.
In times of highly polarized political discussions, it’s also worth carefully evaluating whether you should express your personal opinion. Please proceed with caution here because it will be challenging to separate your views from your personal brand reputation once you speak up. Depending on the situation, this can have positive or negative results for you.
Failing to understand where to draw the line
Having your personal brand provides several advantages to your business, such as the facility to define the brand’s persona, for example.
However, to be successful in personal marketing on social media, it is necessary to draw the line between where your personal life starts and your business life ends. Your profile should make it very clear to your followers that they are interacting with a business account.
It would help if you respected the recommendations of each network concerning creating a specific business page and not a personal profile. Social channels separate these components to ensure professionalism and better results alignment.
Refusing to balance quantity and quality
Remember that we talked about creating a content plan and about identifying the most relevant subjects in your realm of work when building your marketing on social media. Right?
This type of organization will allow you to visualize the relationship that you’ve established between quantity and quality. Instagram recommends that you post daily, and YouTube orients content producers to have a fixed publishing schedule. However, there’s no use in padding it out. If your post isn’t relevant, engagement will be affected, perhaps even more than if you hadn’t posted anything.
Begin your personal brand journey today
We could stay on this list all day. After all, personal marketing on social media is fascinating, and several precautions are necessary to ensure you maintain an ideal image with your followers.
If you stick to the tips we’ve offered here and eventually branch out and work with a professional social media content planner, you’ll be reaping the benefits of your social channels in no time.
Social media success doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s crucial to remain patient. No matter how appealing some of the “donts” on this list might look (like posting constantly), stick to your original plan.
It’s a slow and steady process, but it works!
