15 Tips For Building Your Personal Brand On Social Media — Serpstat Blog

First things first, you’ll need to figure out the best places to build your personal brand and engage your target audience.

If you’re currently running a business account on social media, you might already have a good idea about the platforms that attract key customers and prospects. Take a look at the engagement your business posts and ad campaigns are delivering on various social channels and use this data to decide where your personal brand can gain momentum.

You should also think carefully about the type of content you’ll be posting on your personal account.

Is it going to be humorous, short-form videos suited to platforms like Instagram and TikTok? Or detailed infographics and long-form articles that are likely to be successful on LinkedIn?

If you can identify social platforms that attract your core audience and suit your content strategy, you’ll be able to lay down solid foundations for growing your personal brand.

2. Maintain Consistent Branding Across Social Channels 

While there are some key differences between your official business page and personal profile, it’s important to maintain consistency between social accounts.

For example, if you have an established colour palette or visual identity for your business activity, make sure this is reflected in your personal branding. Although you’ll be aiming to build a strong personal brand that can stand by itself, you don’t want to confuse your audience and put too much distance between your personal and business communications.

The same thinking also applies to your tone-of-voice and content strategy – while your personal brand should feel genuine and authentic, you’re ultimately still directly connected to your business, so there needs to be consistency between social accounts. 

While it’s easy to overlook your social media bio, this section of your profile provides you with a golden opportunity to inject some personality into your accounts.

Don’t be afraid to incorporate humor into your social media bios, mention some of your outside interests, or showcase your personal achievements.

It’s important to highlight the link between your personal account and your business, but when people visit your personal profile, they should instantly recognise that you’re a real human – not a corporate business page. 

4. Build A Consistent Posting Schedule 

If you want to successfully grow your personal brand on social media, then you’ll need to stay active – and that means a consistent posting schedule.

Marketing your personal brand is just like marketing your business.

You need to build reach and frequency among your target audience and keep users engaged with regular, interesting content.

To help you achieve this, try setting up a detailed content calendar that dictates what and when you’ll be posting on your social accounts.

While there’s no scientific formula for an effective posting schedule, you should be aiming to post at least once a day (if not more) across multiple channels to build your profile and gain visibility among your audience.

Social media algorithms tend to reward accounts that post frequently, particularly if you’re receiving a lot of engagement, so be consistent with your activity to drive optimal results.

5. Engage Your Core Audience – And Seek Out New Connections 

One of the biggest advantages of using social media is the ability to instantly communicate with both existing connections and fresh prospects.

Use this to your advantage when you’re looking to build your personal brand. Be sure to keep your existing followers/customers engaged with comments and replies, but also aim to expand your network by engaging in different conversations across platforms.

Following successful accounts/businesses in your industry is a good idea if you’re looking to attract new followers and make connections. If you’re likely to share a common audience with certain profiles, then frequently engaging with their posts is a surefire way to reach potential customers. 

6. Guide Traffic Towards Your Business Website 

Building a distinct personal brand is great for engaging customers and growing your professional network, but make sure you’re maintaining clear links back to your main business offering.

Your personal brand should be able to stand independently from your company account, but they ultimately exist in the same orbit.

If you want to transform the engagement you’re generating from your personal brand into tangible business results, try to nudge traffic towards your website or online store. Include website links in your posts, incorporate CTAs into your content, and tag your business profile as much as possible.

(For a seamless customer journey, you should also make sure that your website is 100% mobile friendly since a significant amount of social media traffic is likely to come from mobile devices.) 

7. Utilise Cross-Platform Posting To Increase Efficiency…

If you’re working on growing your personal profile across multiple social channels, there’s no need to stretch yourself by producing brand new assets for every single platform.

The same content can be posted simultaneously across different social networks, and in fact, this is a brilliant way to improve time efficiency and expand the reach of your posts.

Plus, if you’re struggling to manage cross-platform content, there are plenty of marketing tools available online that can help you to schedule multi-channel social posts, making the process a breeze. 

8. …but Remember To Tailor Your Content To Each Channel 

Cross-channel posting is excellent for increasing the scale of your personal brand, but simply copying & pasting the same content across social media platforms isn’t going to drive optimal results.

While there’s nothing wrong with replicating content or repeating messages, every social platform is unique. Consumers engage with posts in very different ways (e.g., short-form videos on TikTok versus long-form text posts on LinkedIn), and your content strategy needs to reflect this.

Whenever you’re reposting content on different social platforms, think about:

• The length of your post/video – does it align with popular content on the platform? 
  
• The audiences you’ll be reaching – are they interested in this type of content?
  
• The tone/feel of your content – will it resonate with users on this channel? 
  

Cross-platform posting can be hugely effective, but only if you’re tailoring your posts to different social channels and audiences. 

9. Be As Honest And Authentic As Possible 

If you want users to engage with your personal brand, then you need to ensure that you’re constructing a profile that feels genuine, transparent, and authentic.

Try to avoid language that feels overly corporate or robotic – while professionalism is always key, there’s nothing wrong with using simple language that’s more natural.

You can also use your personal profile to share exclusive insights behind your business – these could be customer milestones or success stories, but they could also be struggles or obstacles that you’ve encountered.

This type of honest content can resonate massively with social media audiences and can actually be a major influence on purchase decisions. 53% of consumers are likely to consider brands that are transparent on social media, while a lack of transparency causes 86% of people to consider a competitor. 

10. Upload Relevant Content That Builds Trust 

We’ve already outlined the importance of frequent social posts, but the type of content you’re uploading is equally as important.

Firstly, think carefully about which content will be most valuable for your target audience. Look at the videos, articles, and posts that are drumming up the most engagement in your industry and try to identify why it’s resonating with users.

Secondly, always make sure that you’re steadily building trust with your audience through your social content.

Trust is incredibly important for a successful personal brand because you need consumers to believe in the authenticity and reliability of your content. To increase this trust, you’ll need to upload posts that are well-researched, relevant, and genuinely useful for your audience.

(If you’re driving traffic away from social media platforms to your business website, you’ll also need to ensure that your content is informative and engaging to keep visitors happy.) 

Social media groups bring together like-minded individuals to create online communities – and this is a great place for you to strengthen your personal brand.

Start by identifying some relevant social media groups you can join. These could be related to a specific event, industry, or product. Larger groups can be good for wide-reaching engagement, but small groups can feel more like a tight-knit community.

Once you’ve joined relevant groups, make a conscious effort to be as active and productive as possible within them. Post your own content, respond to other members, and use these communities as a springboard to attract new followers and build your reputation. 

12. Spread Your Knowledge And Expertise 

It’s easy to get carried away asking what social media can do for your personal brand, but you should also consider how you can give back to different online communities.

Social media engagement is a two-way street. If you want users to engage with your personal brand, then you’ll need to give them a reason to do so.

Try to share as much knowledge and information as possible without expecting anything in return. Answer questions on social posts, upload content that’s packed with industry expertise, and respond to any direct messages you might receive.

If you’re constantly offering help and using your platform to support others, then you’ll quickly find yourself building a positive personal brand. 

13. Share ‘Behind The Scenes’ Content From Your Business 

While you may want to keep up a polished and professional appearance on your official business profile, you can use your personal account to share engaging ‘behind the scene’ insights from your company.

Many people will be interested in seeing how a business works, and you can also use this opportunity to make your brand feel more relatable and human.

Upload videos of your workplace, post stories about your business progress, or even encourage employees to share their own experiences through social media. Not only will this help to strengthen the connection between your personal profile and your business, but it can also make for some highly engaging social media content. 

14. Create Polls To Drive Engagement 

Engagement is key to the growth of your personal brand. After all, if you want to interact with your audience and build your reputation, then you’ll need users to engage with your posts.

Polls are a great way to boost engagement on social media because they encourage direct interaction with your target audience and incentivise them to share their opinions.

You can utilise polls in a number of different ways, including:

• Asking your audience which types of content they find useful 
  
• Gathering reviews/feedback on your products 
  
• Assessing opinions on certain industry topics 
  
• Collecting data/insights that can be incorporated into future content 
  

It’s always good to diversify the type of content you’re posting on your personal account, and polls are a fantastic addition to your social media marketing strategy. 

15. Don’t Be Afraid To Repurpose Old Content 

Constantly conjuring up new social media topics or content themes can be difficult – especially if you’re posting on multiple social platforms every single day.

If you’re struggling to create fresh ideas, but still looking to grow your personal brand, then don’t hesitate to repurpose old posts that have performed well in the past.

Although you shouldn’t rely on old posts too much for social media content, there’s no reason you can’t leverage ideas that previously generated high levels of engagement. For example, you might expand on a single point from an old article, tweak a post headline, or re-use an interesting infographic or research statistic. 

Conclusion

Establishing a clear and engaging personal brand on social media offers a number of key benefits. Not only can you attract new audiences and bolster your professional reputation, but you can also utilise your personal profile to drive traffic to your main business page.

Just remember to build a solid connection between your business and personal activity, maintain an active content schedule, and focus on the social platforms that will allow you to connect with your target audience. Best of luck!