4 Steps to Building Your Professional Brand
Congratulations! You’re a new professional within your industry, and you’re now wondering how you can leverage your education and experience via social media in order to land a job. For many professionals, Linkedin is the way to go, as its resume-style profile draws young and hungry professionals who are anxious to showcase what they have to offer. However, a professional can use other social media sites, such as Instagram, to promote themselves and show potential companies that they too, can be a subject-matter expert in a chosen field.
Social Media has evolved in today’s age as algorithms are constantly changing, but to become a major player in the “game”, one needs a plan. As a digital marketer and business consultant, I have helped many brands develop their social media presence, from strategy to content, aesthetic to automation. By learning from most common struggles that professionals and small businesses have when stepping up to the social plate, the process of brand-building has been refined into 4 simple steps, which can be applied to eager professionals like you:
1. Strategy
Before diving in, you need a plan, a content strategy. A content strategy helps businesses plan for reliable traffic to their social pages. For an individual, it can provide unique value in a particular subject and generate awareness of your brand. When developing your content strategy, ask yourself these questions:
What are my content goals?
Why do I want to develop content?
Who is my target audience?
What type of content do I want to create?
Where and how often am I going to publish the content?
2. Branding
Creating a cohesive brand across multiple platforms is essential. Branding is important because it keeps yourself in your chosen field. Are you a logo designer who wants to share your logo concepts? How about a resume consultant who specializes in helping people get the job? Now think about whether your social media pages reflect that. Developing your own brand can be the reason why you have control over people’s initial perception of who you are, so when branding yourself, ask yourself:
Are my usernames consistent or similar across all platforms for easy searching?
Does my bio express who I am, what I do, where I am located, and how I can help a seeking client?
Are my posts tailored to the audience I am reaching out to?
3. Design
As a digital marketer, I consider design one of the most important aspects of adequately branding yourself. Creating your aesthetic is key to your audience resonating with and experiencing your branding to its fullest potential. This may include your overall layout of marketing materials, your brand’s voice and identity, and the kind of “vibe” that your brand is giving. When developing aesthetically pleasing content, ask yourself these questions:
What am I using to create content?
Am I following other top accounts in my industry to get an idea of what content resonates better than others?
How do I want to present the information?
What colors and fonts does my brand use, and am I using them consistently for my content?
4. Automation/Integration
Our integration process is interchanged with automation. Integration can help you as a professional streamline your brand and help automate some of the more tedious tasks when posting and/or responding to others. A social media manager such as Hootsuite or Later can help you manage your feeds and give you an idea of what your content will look like with the caption, hashtags, etc. As a busy professional, automation may just simply be scheduling your content and posts ahead of time so you can focus on other things, such as the project you're tasked to do within your organization.
As a professional, social media is an extension of yourself. It allows you to reach audiences you would not be able to face-to-face, and it can give you a competitive edge against other job-seeking, expert-toting professionals within your field. Upstart Branding specializes in the four-step process listed above for small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs, but just because you’re a professional and not a business does not mean that you cannot take advantage of the same information!
How are you #UpstartingYourBrand as a professional on social media? Let us know in the comments!
#UpstartYourBranding #ProfessionalBranding #TheHiringHub
