My clients often turn to me for an advice on how to best start building their personal brand online. Many believe the only way forward is to invest in creating a narrative first, spending hours on solidifying brand key components strategically…
I believe building an online image doesn´t differ much to building (mostly unconsciously) the offline one.
Imagine, you´re invited to a party, you know very few or hardly anyone there. How do you start to mingle? With small talk, right ….the same goes for your online presence.
👉 Start by commenting content from your current followers that matches your interest, like/share and present your views. Generally, people view profiles of those who comment and/or like their posts and if what they see is to their liking, they´ll send you an invite to connect or even reach out to you in a private message ( 👀 many sales people seem to like everyone, so be selective).
🍸 Now, you´ve had your first glass of aperitif and met a few new friends…the party seems to be going well, you´re having fun, you lose up a bit and feel confident…it´s time for you to share some of your stories…
📝 That´s when you start create your first posts. Post regularly (weekly or bi-weekly) and stay relevant to your topics, use hashtags to categorize. This will help your followers (and LinkedIn algorithm) organically ‘brand’ your content in their social bubble.
The party is over but you´ve been invited to another one next week and a couple of more next months….eventually, during one of these events you will find yourself listening to your new acquaintance telling a story you told someone else some time ago…that´s when the magic happens, your content is being reshared and circulated and your personal brand is coming to life.
Now, replace the parties with (online/offline/hybrid) meetings, internal/external events (I know that´s hard😊 …do you see how many opportunities do you daily miss to naturally shape your personal brand?