Hi fellow marketer,
This morning I was sat in a coffee shop with one of my good friends who happens to be a great graphic designer. After a few cups of coffee, he asked me what he needs to do to grow his personal brand.
So I sat down and brain dumped the strategy he should use to gain authority, develop a network and attract clients whilst generating multiple revenue streams.
Then I got home and thought maybe you guys would benefit from the advice I told him too.
So here it is.
Why Build a Personal Brand?
If you're not building a personal brand in 2023, you need to start now!
Not only is it super helpful for landing your dream career, if you're an entrepreneur or solopreneur, it can massively help boost business.
Put it this way, once you have established a decent personal brand, your network or followers will trust you and therefore trust whatever product, service or venture you decide to go down in the future.
Make sense? Great!
Social Media Personal Brand Strategy
So how do you build a personal brand on social media?
Here's how!
1/ Have an goal or call-to-action (CTA) for people who will become advocates of your brand.
E.g. a newsletter, services, a business - whatever it is, keep this in mind throughout your journey.
You'll eventually want to drive traffic or interest to this goal.
Just remember the 80/20 rule.
80% value / 20% promotion.
2/ Pick your social channels.
For a personal brand I recommend - Twitter (the best - follow me), LinkedIn and Instagram (TikTok depending on your audience).
Once you have decided which social channels is best for you and communicating to your target audience, the next thing would be to develop a content strategy
3/ Develop a content strategy
Again for personal brands, I recommend the following:
Tips & Insights - Sharing your knowledge
Experiences & Anecdotes - Highlight your journey with storytelling
Entertainment or Memes - It's good to be funny and relatable
Promotion - This is the 20% again, you need to make money
These are just suggestion based on what I believe works! You can test different type of content you see fit.
4/ Next, you should create a posting schedule
To do this, plan out your content categories for the week, e.g.
Mon:
Tips & Insights
Entertainment or Meme
Tues:
Experiences & Anecdotes
etc..etc
Once you have a plan,
5/ Start thinking and generating content ideas.
Here's some places to help you:
ChatGPT
Search Engines
Social Media - Competitors, influencers, hashtag searches, trending
News
Conversations with friends etc
You could also invest in my 33 Creative Days E-Book , which takes you on a journey through 33 different scenarios that you can draw inspiration from and use for your social media content.
6/ Schedule content
Next you'll want to schedule content for at least 14 days ahead. This helps keep your mind free of stress and focused on doing other things and not just social media.
But first, you will need to determine posting frequency. Here's a suggestion based on the social media channels I talked about earlier:
Newsletter - 1 a week
Twitter - 3-6 per day
LinkedIn - 1-3 per week
Instagram - 1 per day
Blog post - 1 per week
Of course without doing into too much detail here, you should repurpose content for each channel but it MUST BE UNIQUE for each channel.
For example
Say you created a Newsletter on 5 ways to find influencers. The newsletter should be mid length (like this one) provide tips, examples, action points etc.
You can then repurpose that newsletter into a short more to-the-point Twitter Thread
This can be then turned into a carousel for Instagram
etc..etc.. you get my point.
So you have your ideal channels, content categories, schedule and hopefully scheduled content by now. Next, it's time to grow.
7/ Copy my engagement schedule
A personal brand is nothing without community, people or engagers.
So you need to create a network of people that engage with you, like and share your stuff and help get you found online.
But to do that, you need to give first!
Do this:
Pick two 10 minute time slots per day and add them to your calendar every day.
These slots are called your 'Engage Sessions'.
Within these sessions you are going to head to each channel and do the follow:
1/ Comment on 5 peoples tweets
2/ Comment on 5 peoples Instagram posts
3/ Comment of 5 peoples LinkedIn posts
4/ DM 1-2 people on each platform with the following:
"Hi [Name], I just wanted to say that I love your content on [Topic]! Your insights have been really helpful, and I look forward to seeing more from you. Keep up the great work!"
Within no time, you will have people following you, like, sharing and commenting on your stuff too!
Do this everyday and within 30 days you would of built up an audience.
Now here are some rules to
8/ Maximise social algorithms
This will help to make sure your content YOU release is seen.
Make sure your 'Engage Sessions' are at least 1-2 hours apart from your posting schedule.
This is to ensure your content gets as much reach as possible!
Trust me, I don't have time to break it down as to why, but it works!
9/ Maximise viral content
After time, you will eventually have content that starts getting lots of reach and engagement. When that happens, it's time to include a CTA!
To do that, add a comment with a link to your newsletter, products or services.
NOTE: Don't include links on your content initially.
Remember, social media channels are designed to KEEP YOU ON that platform. If you include links away, you will be penalised.
10/ Analyse, tweak and go again
The last thing I want to mention is that if you follow this strategy, you will get results!
That being said, after 30 days, analyse what content is performing best at what time and use that to adjust it.
Thanks for reading!
If you found this helpful I would love to hear back from you. Sometimes my emails get lots of opens and clicks but I don't hear from anyone :(
Please reply with your thoughts or if you have any questions.
Also reply if you need more personalised help with your social media strategy or developing a personal brand.
Oh and share this with your friends or colleagues! If you think it would help them.
Stay tuned for more tips and insights in our next issue.
Take care!
Jack Willoughby
jackpwilloughby.com
