Personal branding on social media

Social media adds a digital and alternative scene to the repertoire of everyday networking environments. A highly attractive media enabling a network with a high leads density and possibility to reach an unlimited audience when managing to go viral. A relevant question therefore is how to use social media for your personal success?

Personal branding

What is personal success anyway? For decades self-improvements techniques has been much practiced to reach individual success. Another perhaps more up-to-date self-help concept is that of personal branding, first used by the management guru Tom Peters.

Digital presence

In personal branding its crucial how you build your asset to distinguish you and make you unique in the competition. Your asset is defined by your digital presence, such as personal website or blog, your expertise, approach, style and so on, and created by self-packaging which results in your success, if made properly.

Social media postings

Our presence on social media has become an essential component of a digital presence. Particularly interesting is how we communicate on social media with our personal profiles and pages. Our postings and comments can make the difference.

The social media audience

The audience on social media has a high presence and the communication is direct. It’s more likely people with whom you have some kind of relation will choose you in the competition. Keep your communication proper and natural, yet personal, much like in the real world, avoiding too much selling attitude and at the same time adapted to everyone, from family, friends, working colleagues to acquaintances. Make sure to post private content only to selected segments of people or through direct messages. Through posting to “everyone”, using keywords with hash tags (#) and producing postings that go viral you can be reached by an unlimited Facebook audience.

Social media postings with personal branding in mind

Communicate always with your social media audience with personal branding in mind. Have a strategy behind what you post on social media. How do you want people to see you? What makes you distinguishable? What can you do on social media to show your audience what you stand for? How can you make an impact that make you memorable?

Be creative

There are many ways to use social media, beyond plain status postings (or advertising), to build your personal brand. Your network is notified when you join groups and events, when you like pages or are active commenting on other pages. Take for example if you were an Organic food evangelist and posted a question on a large food producer’s page about an unhealthy ingredient in their popular cookies. Your audience would learn that you are truly passionate and engaged about organic food. This is also personal branding.

Eternal words

Be responsible and conscious about how you leave your digital footprints. Remember, your words on the internet are permanent. Not only in the minds of people, but can be retrieved also in the future. So, think twice each time you post on social media. Don’t write something you will regret tomorrow! Also, spare negative comments, unless you are firm about your opinion. Don’t write something that will hurt someone in your network, unfriend instead. Don’t use power expressions, to avoid misunderstandings. Use messages to write private content. Don’t hesitate to remove or edit your posts until you are completely satisfied.

Remember, consciously or not, you’re continuously building on your personal brand!

Elena Sophocleous Toth
IT development, analysis and optimization specialist
Conicon LTD