A smart personal branding and social media program make it easy for people to find your needle in the haystack – whether that “needle” is you personally or your business.
There has been a growing trend in recent years to associate business owners – their personal brands – with the companies they run. This is true for organizations both big and small. This may seem like it makes it more difficult to elevate the exposure of your company, and there is some truth in that.
However, this slight disadvantage is outweighed by the fact that your personal brand is portable; you take it with you no matter what your current pursuit might be.
Personal brand, social media symbiosis
This underscores the importance of properly managing the connection between personal branding and social media. To do this you must:
- Establish your personal presence on the major social media platforms,
- Launch a website with a URL built around your name, such as SusanSolovic.com, and
- Claim the email address firstname@firstnamelastname.com.
I know that it’s not a perfect world and getting an ideal exact match for your name on all of these platforms and as the domain name for your website, might not be possible. The easiest way to lessen this problem is to start by finding the best possible domain name available for your name. That will make it somewhat easier to achieve a good measure of consistency across all the platforms where you are present.
Let’s continue to examine the importance of consistency. Not only do you want to develop a naming scheme that gives you the maximum amount of personal brand consistency across the Internet, you want consistent words and images as well.
Social media 911
Some of you may be thinking that these are minor points, but let me give you a problem I encounter almost every day: I want to credit someone who has written what I consider to be a good article and share the author’s Twitter handle. Often, the author’s Twitter handle will not be included in the biographical notes of the article – if any biographical information is offered.
In this case, I’ll try to find the author on Twitter. Usually this is fairly easy, but many times I find an individual who has two or three different Twitter accounts. If (and this is a big if) I decide to dig more deeply, I often discover that various accounts have been started and then abandoned.
When this happens I usually give up on crediting the author. That’s too bad for the person who took the time to write an otherwise good article.
However, if accounts are consistent and the person’s head shot is consistent, then it is easy to identify the right person. It also sends a unified message to everyone who visits these various profiles and websites.
Attention to brand details
If you have ever worked with a large corporation, you know how much attention they pay to the care and feeding of their brand image. They insist on certain colors, a specific logo, a style of language, etc. Why do they do this? Because it’s good business. Giving your customers and prospects any visual or verbal clues that cause them to be confused about your brand will have, in the long run, a detrimental effect on your ability to succeed.
Today, with the strong connection between personal branding and social media, we all need to exert this same level of care with regards to our brands. At the very minimum you must:
- Get some good headshots taken (check out thesetips from Steven Noreyko),
- Choose a color scheme for your brand,
- Have a logo professional designed,
- Define the “tone” you want to set in your posts and online articles, and
- Maintain your social media and website daily.
Let me underscore the last item on that list. There is nothing worse than an old, abandoned, or lapsed presence on the Internet – whether it’s your website or any of your social media accounts. To put it bluntly, they send the message that you’re out of business or even worse – dead.
Finally, the Internet is like a great big telephone book. It’s what people turn to when they want to contact you. If you have a weak or inconsistent presence, it simply makes it difficult for people to reach you. But if you a good job tending to your personal branding and social media, prospects will have no trouble finding you when they need your help.
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