10 easy ways to build a social media brand around YOU đ đ»
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The Tower Bridge in London, UK
Coming into the âsocial mediaâ world nowadays means that youâre inundated with tons and tons of information about how to succeed as a travel content creator. Everywhere you look itâs âhow to grow your account in a monthâ and âhow I made 5k in one week with content creationâ. While these are obviously GOALS, the allure of these accomplishments often had creators pushing past some essential bits of work. One of those essential bits is carving out their âhomeâ in their corner of the internet and building their personal brand.
I had an interesting chat with a few creator pals the other day in a membership that I'm part of and I immediately knew I wanted to share this with y'all. We were talking about how to deal with feeling boxed in by your "niche" when you have SO much more to say than what you've labelled yourself as being an expert on.
When I tell you that I had a visceral reaction to this LOL đ€ą
I get it, I really do. You're taught day in and day out to focus on your niche and to be known for one specific thing in order to grow, and while this is one of the best ways to grow on social media, growth doesn't matter if you're miserable.
Read that again.
If you feel like you've ran out of things to say, or you feel bored with the "tips and tricks" you're sharing day in and day out, it might be time to expand your content. That doesn't mean that you're abandoning your "niche", it just means that maybe you've outgrown it, and mayyyybe it's time to make your original "niche" one of your content pillars instead.
Weâre going to get into my top ten tips for building a brand around YOU that you actually love in a sec, but we need to talk about expansion, first.
Let me give you an example:
Let's say your niche is budget travel for women.
Maybe you share tips every week to help women travel on a budget by sharing budget properties, travel hacking, tips on saving money on flights and cheaper destinations. Buuuuut it's starting to feel stale to you and you feel like you're scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel every week trying to come up with new and unique content ideas.
Or maybe you do have a ton of content ideas that excite you but you feel like you can't share them because they don't fit into one of those topics.
This is how creativity dies, and I hate that for you so we're not doing that đ
Here's where the expansion comes in:
Let's take those above mentioned topics and group them into one: Budget travel tips.
You can still share all of those topics under the umbrella of "budget travel tips", but this leaves you oodles and oodles of room to add in other topics that are relevant to your community and that you're passionate about.
đŻââïž Now you can share that content you've been dying to share to inspire other women to travel through your personal story of overcoming limiting beliefs.
đ„ž Now you can share your personality and share some funny thoughts you've had while travelling (entertainment is still value!).
đĄ Now you can share more of your regular life when you aren't traveling and help your community get to know you and your real life.
đ§đ»ââïž Now you can build a brand around yourself, not only around your technical niche.
Because your niche â your brand.
Your personal brand is SO much more than the value you share and who you share it for. It's you. It's your personality, your story, your relatable struggles, your experiences, your outlook on life, your dreams, even your fav coffee order (yes, really)! Your personal brand can be made up of EVERYTHING and anything you want it to be.
So how exactly do you go about building a brand around yourself and still keep your content consistent and tailored to your audience?
I'm so glad you asked, because there is a delicate balance between creating a brand around yourself and your value-packed content, and expanding too far and creating a brand that's unclear and that has your audience questioning what they came for.
Here are 10 ways to integrate YOU into your content so you can begin to bridge the gap between your technical niche and your personal brand!
Use your voice over your videos!
This one may be obvious, but something I see a lot with voice-overs is a disconnect between the voice someone uses on their stories when they're at ease, and the voice they use in voice-overs. It's not that serious!! Talk as if you were telling a friend about that travel experience or product youâve fallen in love with. If that means recording a few versions to get yourself comfortable just sharing your stream of consciousness and quirks, so bet it!
Another obvious one with some nuanceâŠtalk directly to the camera in your videos!
This one is a big step for a lot of us and I totally understand the nerves when it comes to full-face, talking videos! A good way to start showing yourself in your in-feed content is actually to start with your stories! Were there any of your stories lately that sparked conversations in your DMs? Is it something you've spoken about a few times that people tend to be interested in? Download those stories and put 'em together in a reel! If you're not sure if your story post would fit well into your feed content, peep my âStory or Feedâ cheat sheet to help you decide!
Don't forget about your captions!
If you prefer to go faceless sometimes, donât forget to add your humour and way of speaking in your captions! Longer captions are less common than they used to be, but you can absolutely still show your personality in a short 1-2 line caption. Not everything has to be that deep, and it can be as simple as a joke about the piece of content, an extra thought you had about it, or asking the viewer a question in a way that sounds like you! Again, this is social media and youâre talking to your besties, get that formality junk outta here đ€ą
What do you do every single day?
Your morning routine? Your coffee order? Share that! On your stories is a good place to start, but start to think about how you could include those little you-isms in your in-feed content too! Example: film your morning routine or moments of you on a travel day and use that as b-roll footage to add text over!
Letâs talk inside jokes and life updates for a sec.
We all have inside jokes and life update sessions them with our besties, and keeping your people updated on something wild, funny, upsetting etc. thatâs happened to you that they showed interest in is an amazing way to connect with them. This is something that will generally happen naturally (as it should), but it's good to have this idea in your head so you can begin to recognize those recurring themes and parts of your life that has your community coming back for the update.
Start to think about your mannerisms and way of speaking when youâre with your inner circle.
Are you sassy? Sarcastic? Unfiltered? Goofy? BE THAT ON SOCIALS. I've had so many chats with my creator community about how they feel disconnected from their content and don't know where to go from here. One of the biggest things I've noticed is that the way they show up in their feed content is in NO WAY the same as the way they chat away on stories, in their DMs or in real life. I swear, ALL OF YOU are so much funnier, wittier, more entertaining and more creative than you give yourselves credit for. Stop hiding that in your content! I know itâs scary, but if you want your page to be a reflection of you and build a community of people that actually KNOW, LIKE, AND TRUST the real you, you have to give them all of it.
Keep a note of all of the most random content ideas or thoughts.
You know those thoughts that come to you naturally (not when youâre sitting yourself down and straining to come up with ideas)? Most of the content I see popping off, on my own page and others, are based around very unique thoughts and ideas, and I can say with absolute certainty that MY best performing pieces of content are the dumb lil ideas that popped into my head unexpectedly that I then wrote down hastily in my Notes app. Those intuitive ideas and thoughts are YOU, they are unique and they are intriguing. Use them.
Repeat yourself!
Nailing down your messaging can be tricky and take a while to do, but once you have those âsoapboxâ messages, revolve your content around them and really nail that message home! Itâs absolutely okay (and actually necessary) to repeat your messaging or reuse content ideas. Not everything has to be new, and if you want to be known for something you need to minimize the noise you're putting out through your content.
Donât ignore those comments and DMs!
Building real connections takes more than sharing your content into the void. As best you can, answer your DMs and comments with thoughtful responses. How many people do you follow that you actually slide into their DMs? Probably not a ton, right? We all have certain accounts that post things on their stories and in their content that make us go "okay I need to message them about this right NOW". And guess what? To someone else, YOU are that account. They feel comfortable enough to message YOU, when they mostly just scroll. That's huge. That's impactful. Nurture those relationships, they are everything.
On the same topic, donât force yourself to engage with your communityâŠ
At least not to the point that you start commenting basic, inauthentic comments! If itâs not genuine, it might mean that youâre tapped out of engaging and thatâs okay! Take a break and donât force engage. Come back to it when you're in the mood to be social! But if you are going to comment, make it real. Make it start a conversation. Make it like if you were talking to this person irl. After all, you wouldnât respond to someone sharing a story irl with âwow thatâs crazyâ and leave it at that lmao that just shows that youâre not really paying attention or aren't actually invested in what they're sharing! It's transparent and gives people the ick lol. Genuine engagement or nada, babes!
OUF that was a mouthful!! If you take anything away from this, I hope it is this: Your account is your home in your little corner of the internet, and it should look and feel like it to anyone that walks in. Mostly for your own comfort and creative fulfilment (super important), but also for the immense opportunity to create real connections with your community. That's what social media is all about, and it's powerful, so don't fumble it!