Bye, Social Media!
Overwhelmed?
Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt that way while figuring out what to post on social media.
While running my brand and talent management agency, I worked in brand and social media marketing for a few well-known brands, including Hilton Hotels Corporation, DIRECTV, and Playboy. However, even the best of us – myself included – can feel defeated when navigating social media for our personal brand.
So when Johanna over at ‘Bye, Social Media’ reached out about collaborating, my immediate response was HELL YEAH!
Johanna writes a newsletter called “Bye, Social Media,” which helps solopreneurs market their businesses without relying on social media platforms and algorithms. She is not on social media, but you can check out her website, byesocialmedia.com, to learn more about her newsletter and how to sign up.
We’re in luck! Johanna has agreed to share her marketing magic wisdom about personal branding and choosing the right marketing channels to fit your personality and talents.
Here is what Johanna has to say:
If you’re building a personal brand, you’ve probably heard that creating a presence on social media is key. But, do you really need to be on social media for people to get to know you?
In the past decade, I believe we got caught in groupthink around marketing. Socials and being very active on them seems to be the only option. If everyone’s on there, that’s got to say something, no?
It doesn’t.
It Makes No Sense to Promote Yourself In a Way You Resent
Even though social media can be a great way to market your work, there is more than one way to show up online and in the world. You can connect with people in many different places on- and offline. What’s important here is that if you want to create a marketing presence that feels genuine to your audience and is a good experience for you to maintain, it makes little sense to market in a way you resent. That way, you won’t do it.
If haven’t been getting traction on socials, have been feeling uncomfortable about them, or just want something else, you can get more creative with how and where you create a personal brand. You still want to be strategic about how you market. However, it’s a lot easier when you market around your strengths and choose channels that fit you.
Two Tips to Make Marketing Easier For You
When you think about marketing your work, two things can make things easier for you:
1. Marketing to Your Strengths
Do you know what your strengths are? Are you leveraging them in your marketing? As a solopreneur, you’re doing most or all marketing for your business. Your marketing needs to be built around you and what you’re good at to conserve time and energy. Right now, we mostly approach marketing with a one-size-fits-all approach: do this, be on that channel, make it work. That’s unhelpful because it doesn’t consider that different people have different strengths and weaknesses. Following formulas is like a fish trying to climb a tree or an introvert forcing themselves to go all out at networking events.
An easier way to build a personal brand online in a more sustainable way is to identify your strengths and create your strategy around that. If you like to write, write, if you’re a people person, identify where you can leverage that skill, and if you’re a person who is a bit more reserved and needs space for themselves, then do yourself a favor and skip tell-all video confessionals. If you’re a fish, focus on finding your water.
2. Choosing and Adapting Marketing Channels to Your Strengths
Knowing what you’re good at doesn’t yet create a sustainable strategy to build a brand on the internet. However, it can help you choose and adapt marketing channels to your strengths and preferences.
Two examples for you:
Choose carefully
Let’s say you like to talk to people but aren’t an extrovert. In that case, making sales through calls might not be the best option for you. Instead of 1:1 calls where you have to force yourself to be outgoing and social on a schedule, being social with people in the group setting of an online community might be better suited for you. That way, you can interact with people more on your own terms and in a way where you feel comfortable and can provide the value that you want to share with them.
Tweak the channel to fit you
If you like the idea of writing a newsletter but are intimidated because writing isn’t your thing, you can tweak the channel to fit your strengths. Instead of writing long texts, why not send an audio or video newsletter? Just because others are writing a newsletter doesn’t mean that that’s the only way to go about it.
Bottom Line: Build Your Brand in a Way That Fits You
Building any form of platform on the internet takes time. You can’t wing that process. At the same time, that doesn’t mean you have to put yourself through months and years of misery. You don’t have to be on channels that you hate or feel like you need to pretend to be someone else to connect with people – especially not just because somebody on the internet said that’s that way to go.
You have permission to build your brand in a way that fits you, what you’re good at, and like. The benefit of that is that you’ll like marketing yourself a lot more. You’ll be more authentic in your marketing, when you lean into what you’re good at and like to do.
People have a hard time connecting to the 100,000th person who hates pretending they’re a LinkedIn influencer. They connect with who shows up as an extension of themselves. You’re giving yourself the best chances at that when you ditch the formulas and focus on your strengths and gifts.
Liked what Johanna had to say? The best way to connect with her is to sign up for her newsletter at https://byesocialmedia.beehiiv.com.
Want to collaborate? Drop me an email if you have something good you want to share.
