What’s Your Personal Brand?

 You personal brand is what others think about you.

If you have a social media account, even one, then you have a personal brand. Don’t believe me? Here’s an easy experiment. Take a look at someone’s Facebook page, preferably someone you don’t know very well, and scroll through for a few seconds. If you don’t know the person, I’ll bet you form an opinion about them fairly quickly. If you do know the person, and haven’t seen their page, you may have a different opinion of them afterward. That’s because the decisions we make about how we manage our social media accounts send a message about who we are and contribute to our personal brand. Here are a few social media decisions that lead others to form opinions about us based on our personal social media activity.

Content.

What we post and share on our social media accounts probably contribute most to our personal brand. If we see someone posting pictures of friends and family it’s likely that these are moments they are proud and want to share with others. Alternatively, if we see someone sharing controversial material they are probably looking for interaction or argument. However it’s not just what we post but how often we do it. Many people have social media accounts but rarely post. Making the choice not to post also makes a statement about your personal brand.

Connections.

The people that we follow say quite a bit about our reason for using social media. For example, if a person has thousands of friends or contacts they are likely using their social media account to promote and want to follow as many people as possible. On the other hand, if you find someone has a low number of connections you might assume they only follow friends and family and might not follow anyone they don’t know offline.

Availability.

How easily you can be found on social media also contributes to your personal brand. Some choose to keep profiles private so individuals must request approval to see the content of their pages. Many times people choose to stay private in order to keep their personal lives separate from professional relationships. And of course there are those that choose to stay off of social media all together. In this day and age refraining from social media entirely makes a definitive statement about your personal brand.

At Milk Street Marketing we have the skills and experience to help you leverage your personal brand to improve the performance of your business. Contact Milk Street today to find out how.