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Building a Personal Brand on Social Media

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Building a personal brand on social media - #TwitterSmarter chat with Leo Morejon - January 14, 2021

In our #TwitterSmarter chats, we often discuss the importance of establishing your personal brand. However, what if you’re an entrepreneur whose social handles are separate from your business? Or what if you’re a social media manager for other brands? Many of our community members fall into one of those two categories. Since they’re superstars at developing the voice of the brand they work for, we wanted to talk about how these individuals can also develop and maintain their personal brand on social media. We invited social media marketer, Leo Morejon to share his thoughts on how to build a personal brand. Here’s a summary of our chat.

Guest: Leo Morejon
Topic: Building a personal brand on social media
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: Should entrepreneurs have a personal brand on social media?

Absolutely. As a leader, an entrepreneur should have and promote their personal brand. This brand is a reflection of who they are as a person, their policies, and beliefs. You can use your personal brand on social media to gain support not only for your business but also for social causes you care about.

However, as Kaitlyn told us, don’t get too worked up about developing your brand. It certainly helps you and your business stand out from the rest of the crowd, but at the same time, developing and maintaining your personal brand takes a lot of effort. Don’t compromise on serving your clients. Make sure you have a reliable and sustainable flow of clients before you shift your focus.

Q2: Why is it important to have a personal brand?

Your personal brand is important because every person has a unique perspective. When you share that perspective in a conversation, it helps others learn something or approach a situation from a different point of view.

Besides, social media is full of bots, spammers, and people pretending to be other people. When you authentically promote your personal brand, it’s a refreshing change, as Chelsea mentioned, and increases your credibility as a business.

Q3: How can social media managers maintain their personal brand?

It’s important to remember that your personal brand is all about you. Even if you’re a social media manager for another business and spend all day on social speaking on their behalf, it’s essential that you take off that mask at some point. When you do, be yourself. To make this process easier, consider your personal social channels as a new project—make goals, prepare a calendar, and even schedule some of your posts if that’ll help. 

As our guest explained, approach it with dedication and have a team of friends and colleagues who will support and encourage you when you’re too tired to show up on social media.

Rachel made an excellent point about how to maintain your personal brand. Identify tone and language nuances that make you unmistakably you. You can even choose a set of emojis and hashtags that you consistently use so that your handle sounds like you. It’s a good way to differentiate you from the business brand you manage.

Remember, though: If you’re trying hard to develop and maintain your brand, then it’s probably not who you are. As Chaim indicated, a personal brand should be a reflection of who you are, and not who you want to be.

Q4: Share some ways to build a personal brand on Twitter.

Good content is great and important. But at the same time, the key to building a lasting brand on Twitter is to use your content to network and make real life connections. Join Twitter chats, reply to conversation threads, and be part of Twitter communities. Not only does this help improve your networking skills, but it’s also a great prerequisite for face-to-face meetings. When you know someone well on Twitter, you’re more likely to have a good working relationship in real life. You can also check out networking tools like Upstream and Lunchclub to help expand your reach.

The biggest problem with building a brand for most of us, is that we don’t know how to establish our expertise in specific areas. This can be especially true if you have multiple interests and experiences. Lori shared a simple and fun way to deal with this.  Take three minutes to write down all of your interests and topics you’re familiar with.  Then choose the top three of those and start weaving your personal brand around those topics. 

For instance, you could be a latte loving, long-jump champion who hosts a sports podcast. Or you could be a business consultant who’s an expert in mixing herbal teas that boost relaxation. Find out what makes you uniquely you and use that to build your brand.

Q5: What are some key elements of a personal brand?

A personal brand should be unique—it should have your perspective and style. That’s what gives you an edge over the others and helps establish your authority. Above all, you should genuinely want to help improve others’ lives. Your audience needs to know that you come from a sincere place.

Aside from a unique personality, Marcy shared some more elements you should remember to instill in your personal brand. For instance, your audience should know your mission and values. Make sure that you’re also consistent in your messaging, both textually and visually. 

Q6: What happens if you don’t have a personal brand?

Without a personal brand, you lose out on the opportunities to impact others’ lives, and you won’t inspire support for things that matter most to you. 

Every tweet, retweet, and conversation is a chance for you to spread the word about yourself and the change you want to see in the world. Without it, you won’t have the power to express your voice.

A personal brand is how you project yourself to the world. As Kelli reminded us, when you don’t take that opportunity to showcase who you are, then the world creates an image of you on your behalf. 

Personal branding is giving others an opportunity to see you for who you are and who you can be. That’s why it’s so crucial.

Q7: How can you tell if you have a successful personal brand?

Measure your success through your goals. As we said earlier, approach your personal brand as a project and create goals for yourself. Then consistently measure your progress, in terms or tweet engagements, your community’s reach, and your social media value.

Masooma gave us an example of how success looks. If your social media community recognizes you as an expert in a specific field or topic and constantly looks to you for solutions and advice, then you’ve successfully established your personal brand.

Q8: Can you build a personal brand without social media? 

Yes, you can. As Andrea pointed out, personal brands have been around long before social media became so prevalent in our societies. You can still establish yourself as a successful industry leader through other offline methods like networking, speaking in events, and presenting in television and radio.

However, just because you can establish yourself without social media doesn’t mean you should.

As John mentioned, if a majority of your audience and industry prefers offline methods, then it is ideal. However, everyone has at least one social media channel. You already have an established audience here that you only need to tap into. Use that as an additional resource to widen your brand’s reach.

Well, folks. That’s all from me today. Thanks for reading and for more insights from our chat with Leo, have a look at this Twitter Moment that Joana put together. And if you’d like to be part of our weekly conversations, join us on Thursday at 1pm ET for our next #TwitterSmarter chat.

 

About me, Narmadhaa

I write all the things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: Personal blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

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