What Are The Best Ways To Use Social Media To Build A Brand?

What Are The Best Ways To Use Social Media To Build A Brandbook

Answer bypamela Weinberg, Career Coach and Personal Branding Strategist, on Quora:

Utilizing social media is critical in building a personal brand. But first, you must have a good sense of what your brand is, and to whom you would like to promote it. For instance, if you are a job seeker, you may want to promote your brand to potential employers or hiring managers; as an employee, you way want to promote your brand internally; and as a thought leader you may want to promote your brand to your industry at large.

Once you have figured out the above, then you want to think about where your audience is. Are you a fashion editor? A financial executive? A performer? Your largest audiences may be on different platforms for all of the above. The fashion editor may want to focus on building her brand on Instagram; the Finance person on LinkedIn and or Twitter and the performer on YouTube and Instagram. What’s the best way to figure out where you should put forth most effort? See where your competitors are and make sure that you are there too.

Some tips for using social media to build your brand:

Create a branded “look” for your platform. Whether it is a certain photo you use, certain color or logo, it should look like “you” and be consistent across all of your platforms.

Have a tight silo of content. If you are building your brand as a fashion publicist, make sure that your content supports that.

Keep one form of social media for your personal life. I have two Instagram accounts—one for personal life and one for business. This gives me a platform to build my brand on one and to utilize the other one to post about my personal life and other interests outside of work.

Follow others in your industry and they will follow you back. That helps to expand your reach. Bonus: comment on posts and people will likely return the favor.

When using LinkedIn for branding, make sure to post or repost articles an even create your own content. This is a great way to get more people on to your profile or webpage.

Finally, make sure to commit to posting. Whether it is 4 times a day, or 4 times per month, ensure that your social media is up to date and active so that people will continue to check for new content and to know when to expect it. I put it on my calendar and plan my content out a month ahead for my every Monday and Wednesday posts on Instagram.

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