How visible are you? What does social media say about you?
If you read the case study about using Twitter you will know how personal branding expert @LesleyEverett was invited to write this guest blog on personal branding and social media. Well, the Internet Psychologist Graham Jones did say she knows her stuff!
It’s no good spending time developing your personal brand if you’re not visible enough…
Ask yourself, do your target market really know who you are, what you do and what you’re great at? Or indeed, do you know who your target market actually is, and are they clearly defined?
As a specialist in helping people to develop their personal brand, I always start with discovering your authentic core and then looking at how you package yourself to project that consistently in every communication. This over time adds layers to your brand and it evolves and develops into a strong brand message that others can easily familiarise with, recognise and use to recommend you to their contacts.
How easy do you make it for others to tell their clients and contacts what it is you do? A good way to test this is to ask a few colleagues/clients to describe to you what it is they think you do? An enlightening exercise….!
The likes of Twitter, Linked In and Facebook now make it much easier to spread the word about our brand so that others are clear what we stand for and can more easily recommend us. They are a great way to get our personal marketing messages across. However there are of course dangers with social media and possible damaging effects on your brand and profile. Let me explain further….
In my view there are ways of using social media that will potentially turn people off and add negative layers to your brand:
- Overtly selling your services
- Diss-ing others and making negative comments about others – even if they have done the same to you
- Setting up a string of automated messages – we know you’re not really there!
- Being ‘absent’ for a number of weeks
Things you should do to build you brand effectively on social media include:
- Have a decent and recent photo
- Make sure your profile says succinctly what it is you do and what you stand for
- Recommend others where it is due
- Link others up where appropriate
- RT comments, articles and links on Twitter that reinforce your brand and values
- Be seen to add value for others
- Reinforce your brand and what you are about whenever you can and it is appropriate to
Remember, Linked In describes what you do and Twitter describes who you are and your personality. Are the two congruent?