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Thursday, January 3, 2013

Effective Personal Branding Through Social Media

By Carol Hackmann

Creating a successful personal brand is a good result that all business owners want to accomplish. This is because ultimately that's how you make an impact on your target audience. However, when it comes to producing your brand via social media, a lot of people usually become confused. So, what do you have to do to get this done? The following article will provide a few detailed explanations.

Quality over Quantity: Concentrate on Quality, Not Quantity: If you look around, you'll notice one thing clearly, and that is a high level of competition amongst companies and individuals to garner the highest number of fans, followers, members, etc. While it's good to have a large number of audiences at your beck and call, it isn't the only thing. For example, if you maintain a B2B company, do not get all hot up under the collar if you only have a small amount of people following you on Twitter, in relation to others. The amount of followers that you have is not as important as the quality of the people that are following you. This rule applies to every social media platform, whether it is Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The moment you get lost in the 'war of numbers', you lose much of your valuable time. Instead, guarantee that your approach is extremely focused. Be sure that you are the only one competing for your target market. Discard the fluff. Make sure that you have the best audience available. Give them a Reason to Share: We all know that social media is about sharing; every person that engages in it shares something or the other with their friends/contacts. There is actually no social media without effective sharing, which is why you should give your audience a reason to share. Your brand building can be taken to a whole new level when you instill a strong confidence in your target audience with your approach, ultimately pushing them to share. In other words, if you're not going to give a viable reason for people to engage with you, they simply won't. You need a lot of variety going on in your offerings; your menu card should offer interesting stuff to your audience so that they feel compelled to share. The more your stuff gets shared across various social media platforms, the more effective will be the returns that you get from your brand building efforts.

This is so that you are able to create a strong impression on your audience. After you connect your Facebook page to your Twitter account, speak highly about them on your LinkedIN profile. When using Twitter, make sure you have an effective bio with a link to your website. The more that you focus on working in the social media environment, the more manageable things will be for you in the future. Spark Interest: We all are interesting in some way or the other. In terms of social media, this is something that can become beneficial. Everything that you provide within the social media environment must be an item that shows that you are a person of interest and that you provide good content. This is how you will build your own personal brand. This means that you will get followers by providing things of value. It will not matter if it is a video, picture or even an audio. As long as you continue passing along content, you will have the ability to produce a brand that people like and want to bond with. For example, look at Twitter. Why do you think some Twitterers have a higher number of followers when compared to the others? If you are one of their fans, you will see that they tweet about useful items as opposed to junk.

Practical Application: If you have decided to use social media for your branding and marketing endeavors, it is important that you actually use what you learn as you learn it instead of just getting bogged down in the theory. This means that nothing will ever work better than actually applying all of the strategies and tactics that you learn--the results will prove to you that you are doing the right thing once you actually start doing things. Engage with your target audience and understand their needs/wants, give them what they are looking for, provide them high value and build strong relationships. The more active you are with social media, the more your business will get noticed by the majority. While it takes time to build an honest presence it can still be done if you make some real and consistent efforts. If you're working with a team, then give its members the freedom to get engaged, because theoretical training is never enough.

Practical Application: You need to make sure that, if you are using social media for your branding and marketing purposes, you are actually taking action and not allowing yourself to get bogged down in a lot of theory. This means that nothing will ever work better than actually applying all of the strategies and tactics that you learn--the results will prove to you that you are doing the right thing once you actually start doing things. If you are engaged with your target market, you will be better able to understand what it needs and wants and then be able to give it to them while building good and strong relationships there. The more active you are in terms of social media the more you will be noticed by people. It will take some time to create a real presence for yourself but it will definitely happen and give you the advantage if your efforts are persistent and consistent. If you have team members that you are trying to work with, let them have the freedom to take action as well because simple theory training isn't going to help you at all. Last, make a commitment to use social media in a way in which you can help your readers by providing valuable content.
 
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