Whether you have an online business or not, you must deliberately build your personal brand on social media.
I’m saying this because social media increases the amount of exposure and traffic your brand can receive.
It not only allows you to increase traffic sources to your business or to your website, but it also helps you get known by people.
One of the cool things about building a personal brand on social media is that it helps you get brand deals, collaborations and partnership gigs.
As a business owner, building a personal brand on social media simply adds to your bottom line.
You can agree with me that social media has been making celebrities out of people, those who were otherwise unknown have now become popular in their area of expertise.
Building a personal brand has never been more important than it is today, especially if you’re a freelancer or a business owner.
And since the market is growing rapidly, the competition is becoming more fierce. Therefore, the only way to stand out is to build your personal brand.
Before we go into it, here’s a free PDF that teaches you how to create an online business from scratch.
So what are the steps to take to build your personal brand on social media?
1. You Need to Come Up With Your Competitive Edge
Recall that in my last blog post, I talked about how you should have a purpose statement if you want to build a brand.
Your competitive edge sums up what you do and who you do it for, your very essence of showing up on social media.
When building a brand on social media, what matters most is that you have something to offer and you have identified the people who need that offering.
So that when you are showing up, you have something tangible to talk about.
There are a lot of people on social media who do not have any tangible message, all they do is post pictures and have a clean feed.
Think of a few social media stars you know, you’ll see that they have a message and it is not diluted or lost in the noise.
So after you’ve discovered it, you are then going to show up with that special sauce, your USP that sets you apart.
let’s take a look at a few examples.
I follow Jade Beason who is a YouTuber and a creator coach. Every time she posts content online, she’s talking about those 2 things.
One thing that never happens is to post a diluted message, she’s ever so consistent.
Another person I follow is Tatenda Henany who is a YouTuber. She shares YouTube channel growth strategies.
Whenever I come across their content, I know what to expect. Your audience is also expecting something.
2. Choose the Appropriate Social Media
The next step to take after you’ve discovered your competitive edge is to choose the appropriate social media.
But just before you do that, you want to first set a goal or determine your goal for the brand you’re trying to build.
Let’s take me for instance, some of the goals I have for my personal brand are to get brand deals, and speaking engagements, get booked more often and increase my business profits.
Now, since getting brand deals is one of them, I’ll want to show up on Instagram where I share my wealth of knowledge with my target audience.
For speaking engagement gigs, I show up more on YouTube where I speak to my audience and I create content that will get people to buy what I offer.
Also, I love to teach. This month alone, I’ve taught in 3 different places. To satisfy my craving to teach, I created a community on Facebook where I teach.
At first, my Twitter account was just for catching cruise, but now, I’ve adjusted it to fit my brand.
So your goal matters a lot before choosing the appropriate social media platforms you want to build your brand.
If your goal is to build your personal brand around a particular skill set, you need to choose the right platform.
Long Form and Short Content
How do long-form and short-form content come into play here?
When you are choosing your social media channels of choice, you want to choose one that encourages long-form content and another that encourages short-form content.
All social media platforms are based on these 2 content forms.
Long-Form Content
Long-form content is any kind of content that is typically longer than usual to create and consume.
Examples include a lengthy blog post, a YouTube video, an ebook, a tutorial, webinars or virtual events.
The benefit of long-form content is that it provides enough information for your audience and helps them find a solution to the problems that they have.
And once they see that your content is providing them with a solution, they’ll naturally engage with it and even go a step further to buy your products or services.
Another benefit of long-form content is that it helps you to express your expertise on a particular subject matter.
And by doing so, you are building thought leadership and credibility, especially if your content is well thought-out.
That’s not all, long-form content gives you an opportunity to infuse SEO into your content, a blog post.
It is easier to optimize a 2,500 words blog post for SEO than a 500-word blog post.
This will then drive traffic to your website and to your business at large.
And according to this article in SEM Rush, Long-form content (with a specific emphasis on evergreen content) often forms the backbone of your SEO strategy.
When you stack multiple successful pieces on top of one another, the results can be hugely impactful and deliver a consistent flow of traffic and leads.
Short-Form Content
Short-form content on the other hand is content that is fast and easy to create and consume.
Think of TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, stories, a short article, an email newsletter, social media content, an infographic, etc.
One huge benefit of short-form content is that they have the tendency to go viral quickly and also to get more eyes on your brand’s social media.
For instance, I post a lot of Reels on my Instagram, much more than single picture posts or carousel posts and my Reels alone get me a lot of reach.
I’ve also seen that most of my Reels do not do less than 1k views. A good motivating factor if you ask me.
This is because Instagram wants people to use their Reels much more than their counterpart, TikTok.
So they’ll reward you with views, reach and engagement if you use it.
Unlike long-form content, short-form content allows you to cover a single topic without having to go in-depth, and still go viral.
The goal of short-form content is to help you pass a single message across to your audience quickly.
It encourages you to create content that brings more eyes to your personal brand.
Listen, I created a course that will teach you how to develop a brand identity for your online business.
It covers Logo creation, Fonts and colour pairing, how to nail your target audience and so much more.
You get 70% off if you get it now. You can access the course here
3. Have a Website
What’s a personal brand without a website? If you must build a successful personal brand, having a website is a necessity.
Although when you are just starting out, you may or may not have the budget to build one.
If that is the case, you can start with simple links in bio platforms like Mainstack, Disha, LinkTree and so on.
Your social media platforms can also serve as your portfolio, for instance, your LinkedIn page, your Instagram page, etc.
Eventually, you will get one. Your clients will need to see it, they’ll want to see proof of your credibility.
Yes, a website adds to your personal brand and gives you credibility. It assures your clients and prospective clients that you are genuine and you’re here for the long term.
So quickly, I want us to look into the 2 best platforms for building a website.
There’s a war among many creators that one is better than the other, but we are not going to take sides here.
Instead, we’ll be looking at how each one works and its benefits for you as the user.
After then you can now choose your preference.
WordPress
Many of the websites you see on the internet are powered by WordPress.org.
WordPress is a content management system that allows you to build and customize your own websites.
It works with plugins and templates which are the major features that make your website become, well, a website.
WordPress is known for its powerful SEO abilities. It offers you the opportunity to infuse SEO into your website with the Yoast SEO plugins that help you carry out best practices for SEO.
You get the chance to optimize your images, text and headlines for SEO, which is one major quality of content that gets shown in search engine result pages.
WordPress has very robust blogging tools. It’s the best platform for anyone who wants to start and grow a successful blog.
WordPress is free to use, there are no upfront costs whatsoever, and the only thing you’ll be paying for is a domain name and a host from your hosting company of choice.
With powerful blogging tools and limitless third-party plugins to choose from, you’ll have full control over the outcome.
If you want more power and control over your website and you want to customize it the way you wish, WordPress is your best bet.
Squarespace
Squarespace is better for a person who is not too tech-savvy.
It is a powerful website builder with high-quality templates and is pretty easy to use too.
Squarespace is a very user-friendly, drag-and-drop website builder and you can do it without asking anyone for help.
SEO features for Squarespace are not as powerful as that of WordPress, they are already built-in with the website.
One outstanding feature of Squarespace is that it has some everyday apps integrated into it.
Apps such as Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Gmail, Hubspot, Slack, ConvertKit and so many others.
That’s a good advantage over WordPress.
It also has blogging tools, but its blogging tools are not as robust as the blogging resources that WordPress has.
Squarespace is not free and it doesn’t come cheap.
4. Develop Your Brand Identity
In my previous blog post about building a brand for your online business, I talked about building a brand identity.
Most times, when people want to get started with building a personal brand, the first thing they do is create a logo, pick colours, choose fonts and so on.
This is why there’s usually a lot of pressure on you when you want to build your personal brand.
The pressure stems from you doing the wrong things first, but here is a list of the things to do building up to the visuals.
So when you have done those things, you can then begin to start building your brand identity.
Create a moodboard
You can create a secret board on Pinterest where you have a visual representation of images, designs, colours, etc. that inspire you.
Make sure the images you are pinning are of good quality and high resolution.
And remember, you’re not saving other people’s work just to copy them but to get inspired by them.
Start Designing
All the steps you have taken building up to the point where you start creating your visuals will help you out here.
Since you already have a purpose for your brand, you know who your target audience is and you have developed your brand voice, you can start designing.
Knowing all those things will help you as you choose a logo style, pick the appropriate colours and pair your fonts.
5. Develop a Content Strategy
A content strategy is simply the plans you’ll use to distribute your content in order to achieve your business goals.
Usually, your content strategy will be tied to your business goals, which is why you must have a goal for your personal brand.
I mentioned earlier that some of my goals include speaking engagements, brand collaborations and so on.
You may be thinking that it’s going to be a lot coming up with content, but really it’s not.
I repurpose my content for all the platforms that I am on.
A YouTube video script can be easily turned into a blog post, and outlines from the post can become a carousel on Instagram.
I plan to write a blog post about how I repurpose my content so that I can show up consistently. I’ll do that soon.
Once you have developed your content strategy, the next step is to start sharing content.
Content creation is very key when you are planning to build a personal brand on social media.
If you truly care about building a personal brand on social media, you are going to have to commit to consistency.
Consistency makes you believable, it makes you trustworthy and it tells people that you know what you are doing.
Remember, you want to use both long-form and short-form content; in this case, a Blog/YouTube channel and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitter account.
Sharing content online allows you to craft an online persona that reflects your personal values and professional skills.
And you want to make sure that whatever you share is on brand and consistent with your tone of voice and your visuals.
Final Words
One thing you should understand is that building a personal brand on social media is not easy.
You will not start seeing results immediately after you start, so you have to be patient.
Other times, you’d see that those who started even later than you have grown more than you and that may be frustrating.
I have been there, I’ve gone through the frustration and all I can say is that nothing will come out of it.
Just keep your eyes on the prize and focus on your end goal.
What Next?
Check out more articles like this on my blog.