3 min read

Social Media And Your Online Brand

Sep 9, 2013 6:42:00 AM

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Building your personal brand through social media networks is the crucial first step in establishing an online identity, which will subsequently help boost your corporate brand.

You might be tempted to ignore social media, viewing it as a non-business pursuit best left to teenagers and journalists.But online is where your identity begins. You can’t afford to be invisible, especially as more and more people recognize the importance of being found online. Being invisible sends a message and that message is you’re out of touch.

Control Your Identity

If you don’t control your online brand, it will control you. It must be actively managed and regularly updated. As often as you change, evolve, and move through your career, so must your online identity. Make sure what’s found online is what you want people seeing. If it’s not, fix it.

Know who’s watching you! Clients, employees, teammates, prospective employers, family, friends… this list goes on. Make sure the message you send is appropriate for anyone finding you online.

Have A Strategy

A good strategy will account for your social media channels, target audience, goals and objectives, messaging, metrics, and rules of engagement.

Considering the amount of active Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, you might imagine social media branding is a straightforward process. However, it’s important to develop a strategy to create a defined personal brand so you can connect with your audience the right way.

Adopting a one-size-fits-all mentality will not work, as every link, tweet, and post must be relevant to the image you want to portray. Similarly, continuity is key to social media success. Just as personal branding is an ongoing process, social media activity should be ongoing if you want to give the world the correct impression of your personal brand. A solid strategy will help drive the process.

In addition, the unpredictable nature of social networks often means negative feedback is a possibility. Be prepared. How you respond to negativity is critical and should be part of your strategy. Actively work in the direction of not having to use it.

The Don’ts

While social media is a very effective channel for brand establishment and communication, it’s important to understand the pitfalls. Countless social media blunders show that brands can suffer as a result of mismanagement and, more often than not, a lapse in judgment.

Know the right way to engage social media! Don’t:

  • Post in all caps
  • Be inconsistent in the content and timing of posts
  • Post unprofessional comments
  • Be rude or mean
  • Be unresponsive; instead engage with your audience

Get To Work

Social media is critical to your online personal brand. The creative ways businesses establish and project their image are constantly changing. The same is true for you personal image. The evolution demands that both companies and executives develop an effective online identity.

Useful Tools

Find and use tools to help make it easier. HootSuite helps you manage multiple social media channels from one place while efficiently tracking conversations and measuring campaign results. BrandYourself is a site to improve your Google results. There are countless others. Find what works for you and use them to impact your efforts and results.

On Wednesday, we’ll talk about how your personal brand, and that of your employees, contributes to your corporate brand. In addition, we invite you to attend an event on September 27 in South Bend, Indiana on Brand Damage.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Please share them below.

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Gibson

Written by Gibson

Gibson is a team of risk management and employee benefits professionals with a passion for helping leaders look beyond what others see and get to the proactive side of insurance. As an employee-owned company, Gibson is driven by close relationships with their clients, employees, and the communities they serve. The first Gibson office opened in 1933 in Northern Indiana, and as the company’s reach grew, so did their team. Today, Gibson serves clients across the country from offices in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Utah.