7 Personal Branding Tips for Your Social Media Footprint

branding tips sun icon

No matter what you’re selling, you want to show potential clients who you are and what you’re capable of delivering. Social media allows them to get a glimpse of you and your personality, enabling them to decide if they want to work with you.

But how can you stand out from everyone else offering the same product? This is where personal branding comes in, and shows everyone why they should use your services instead of the competitors.

Learn more about the easiest ways you can incorporate branding tips into your work and ensure you’re connecting with your client base before they’ve bought anything.

1. Make Time to Update on a Regular Basis

When you’re in the process of developing a personal brand and gaining a presence on social media, one of the first things to focus on is updating on a set schedule. While there are several different ways to focus on finding your voice with social media, getting a head start by updating consistently helps to grow your audience.

If people know they can expect new posts from you at certain times and what days of the week, they’re likely to come back again and again, creating further engagement. It might seem like a challenge at first, but you’ll want to pay attention to what happens when you stay focused.

By acting in a consistent manner, people develop trust in you and your personal brand. This isn’t the be-all-end-all of your business, but it goes a long way in having an audience that’s devoted to you and follows you.

2. Start Curating Engaging Content

Sometimes called reposting, curating content others have created can help expand your personal brand. You can choose to focus on different topics that drive interest to your targeted consumer base.

No matter what industry you promote, there’s various ways to curate content that can bolster your company and brand. You’ll appear knowledgeable and people who weren’t familiar with your company will take interest in what you have to say.

While sharing news and developments within the industry to your customer base, you’ll get them wanting to talk about their own experiences. This is a great way to step in and show what knowledge you have and encourage them to interact with you even more.

If people think you’re warm, witty and engaging with both your content and brand, they’re more likely to feel comfortable doing business with you.

On a final note about reposting: Always be sure to credit the original owner of the content.

3. Stay Positive No Matter What

Like attracts like, and you can’t underestimate the power of positive behavior. Having an uplifting attitude as you promote your personal brand through social media says a lot about you and what you’re capable of.

On an unconscious level, people think of positive behavior with the following traits:

  • Hardworking
  • Solution-driven
  • Capable
  • Temperance

People respect these traits in others under most circumstances. If you focus on what you’re able to offer and positive ways that your company or brand can make a difference to others, people stand up and take notice.

Focus on making all your interactions on social media positive and enjoyable. You’ll see numbers continue to grow as you drive traffic to your channels, and you’ll come into contact with like-minded individuals who have the same positive traits as you do.

4. Find Groups to Join and Be Part Of

When you’re trying to figure out how to build a personal brand, it seems demanding and sometimes impossible if you don’t know where to start. Many people feel overwhelmed and think they need to focus on too many different directions at the same time.

Even in this digital age, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of growing a following and getting brand recognition through a group. Networking events take place all over the United States and if you can’t find a group to work within your city, you can usually do so online.

Seek out a group that you feel would be a helpful place to either gain referrals or meet potential clients. As you do so, make sure to follow basic networking tips on how to connect and stay in the minds of others.

Make sure you:

  • Meet with people outside those you normally know
  • Exchange contact information
  • Follow up

Although these three steps are basic and don’t take much work, they go a long way in helping your brand grow and morph into something people know about regardless of what industry they’re in. Even if someone doesn’t have a need for your services, they can still act as a valuable referral for your brand.

Stay positive, and go with the mindset that everyone you come into contact with has the potential to become a future customer of your brand.

5. The Most Important Branding Tips: Stay Consistent in Your Voice and Tone

While working to grow your brand, you want people to feel that you’re not only consistent in how often you communicate with them on social media but that you don’t flip-flop in your tone when posting. That means you stay consistent in the way you post and how you communicate your messages.

If you normally watch your grammar and communicate to a professional audience, you avoid using excessive punction. You don’t want people to feel as if you’re only talking to one person, so you opt for posting in a gender-neutral way.

You wouldn’t go back and change all this to the exact opposite, or else you’d lose the tone and voice you worked so hard on for your personal brand. People might wonder why there’s a change in how everything reads, and they might think that there’s a miscommunication in your brand.

Unless you’re trying to reinvent yourself and looking for a different audience, don’t change how you’re communicating. It’s easier to develop trust and people will feel like they’re talking to the same person when they interact with you.

This applies even when you have a digital marketing agency doing most of the posting. How something is said the most important thing to consider, not who posted it.

6. Check Out the Competition

If you’re wondering about the best way to represent your personal brand, check out what other people in your field are doing. Look at several figures rather than just one or two, to get an idea of what works best in the industry and what people like.

While it’s important to never copy anyone outright, you can look for traits or ways of presenting information that you think is useful not only for you but your target audience as well.

Some things you can focus on include:

  • How other advertise to their audience
  • How people draw their audience in
  • What kind of consumer needs or niches they’re serving
  • How you can apply this information to yourself and your brand

When developing personal branding, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Chances are someone has already said or done what you want to do. The point is to show your potential consumer base how you understand their needs, and what you do to add value if they choose to work with you.

If people plan on comparing your competition, they’ll check out a few other professionals in your industry, but they won’t necessarily look at everyone. Armed with this knowledge, know that you can show them what you have to offer based on what everyone else is (or isn’t) doing.

7. Focus on What You Specialize In

All industries have a focus. Some teachers focus on languages or special education, just as some lawyers focus on divorce and others handle probate.

Your own industry is no different, and you’re better off picking a niche that you’d like to work with rather than trying to serve everyone. Although this seems counterproductive to many people, you’ll actually get more customers than if you didn’t.

That’s because, over time, people come to you, learning about how you work in a particular area and are skilled in it. Focusing on what you’re good at does wonders for developing a personal brand, and gives you confidence in your abilities.

Show everyone what you’re good at and put your best foot forward. Word gets out fast, and you’ll gain a positive reputation from what you do to help others.

Learn More

When creating a personal brand on social media that’s engaging, stable, and attractive to customers, you’ll find there’s no easy path to success. With time and patience, you’ll find people who are interested in you and what you can do to help them.

If you’d like to work at full speed, you don’t have to go down the path alone. Contact us, and see how we can help you with branding tips and making the most of your social media as a way to attract new customers.

Sun Icon - Digital Neighbor

Want to learn even more?

Whether you have a simple SEO question or want to have a deep conversation about your digital strategy, we’re all ears. Contact us today for a chat or to learn how we can put our digital marketing expertise to good use for your business.