Everybody talks about using social media for personal branding, but do you know how to do it? Here are five simple steps for developing a social media plan for personal branding.
One caveat up front: You have to know what your personal brand is before you can execute it. In a nutshell, you’re personal brand is what makes you relevant to your target audience and superior to your competitors. This post is not about branding per se, so I’m going assume you know who your audience is, why you’re relevant to them and what makes you a better choice than your competitors.
1. Define your goals, and make them measurable. Do you want to bring more people to your web site or blog? Do you want to develop more relationships? Get more speaking opportunities? Develop a reputation as the go-to gal in your field of expertise? Whatever your goals, figure them out. Then figure out how to measure them. If you want more people coming to your blog, you can measure unique visitors month-to-month. If you want to develop more professional relationships you can measure how many people your connected to on LinkedIn and what percentage of them you’ve actually met in person or talked to over the phone. Maybe the measurement is how many new people you go to lunch with each month. Whatever it is, find a way to measure it and figure out where you are now.
2. Develop a strategy. Are you going to write insightful blog posts? Record funny podcasts? Shoot short videos and post them to YouTube? Maybe you’ll hang out on LinkedIn and answer questions that people post. Whatever it is, make it something that works for you. Your strategy is how you’re going to communicate your personal brand (which means your expertise, your personality and, I hope, why you’re trustworthy). I encourage you to go with whatever seems natural to you. Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV says in his excellent, inspiring book “Crush It” that he chose to post videos because writing doesn’t come naturally to him (even his book was dictated, not written). Video allows his personality to shine through. Figure out what works for you.
3. Write a plan. OK, you’ve got some goals. You know what your approach is going to be to achieving those goals – your strategy. (And you’ve written all this down, right?) Now put down on paper what you need to do each day, each week, each month to carry out that strategy. Here’s one example of a very simple plan that would probably be fairly typical:
- Write two new blog posts each week. Share these blog posts via Twitter and on LinkedIn.
- Tweet daily, sharing at least three new links.
- Once a week answer a question on LinkedIn.
Your plan might have more or less detail than this, but this would be a pretty good start. And it gives you some specific steps to take to get started. Also, if you’re new to social media, I’m a big fan of starting modestly. It will take you time to develop some of these skills, learn the tricks for doing this quickly and efficiently, and figure out how to manage your time to fit this in with everything else in your life.
4. Execute the plan. Step 4 is simple, but it’s probably the one where most people fail. You’ve got to take action. ‘Nuff said.
5. Evaluate your progress and adjust course as necessary. After a while – a month, three months, six months, whatever – evaluate how far you’ve come and whether or not you’ve accomplished your goals. How many new professional contacts have you made? How many people are visiting your blog each month? If you’ve achieved your goals – great! It’s time to set new, more ambitious goals and work through steps 1 to 5 again. If you didn’t achieve your goals, one of these three things is probably the reason why:
Problem: You didn’t execute your plan, or you only executed it half-heartedly. For example, you planned to blog twice a week but you only blogged twice a month.
Solution: Get off your butt and execute the plan. Take action!!
Problem: You executed your plan, you’re making steady progress, but you haven’t achieved your goals yet.
Solution: Keep working it. The more ambitious your goals, the longer it will take you to achieve them. Most people give up too soon.
Problem: You executed your plan, but you’ve made little or no progress toward your goals. In this case, your strategy is probably wrong. (I’m assuming here that you’ve executed your plan reasonably well and you’ve made a good faith effort to learn and improve at the key skills involved in your strategy, whether it’s writing or shooting photos or whatever.)
Solution: Rewrite your strategy. You may need to spend some time reading case studies and other blogs, figuring out what other people did that worked or figuring out what you’ve been doing that is holding you back. Whatever the case, it’s time for a new approach.
Have more tips or ideas on developing a personal brand with social media? Have questions? Please leave a comment and share.
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In no particular order, I'm a writer, MBA, ex-journalist, blogger, geek, strategic communications pro, father, struggling novelist 
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Nice job Mark. You hit a lot of great points with this post.
Thanks, Dan!
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