How To Build A Strong Personal Brand On Social Media: 10 Best Strategies For Content Creators

Know Your Audience, And Get Specific

Defining your audience is often the first step in building a social media brand. And the best part of living in a world with billions of people is that even if you target yourself as an audience avatar, you will find tens of thousands of people who will relate to your content. So, the best strategy is to select yourself as a target.

Creatives like Rick Rubin advocate using self-resonance as a metric for making art. Gary Vee gives advice that he would want if he were in his audience's shoes. In both cases, the self is the guide. Starting out with yourself as a very specific audience avatar will help you find a core audience.

As Austin Kleon puts it in his book Steal Like An Artist, "This book is me talking to a previous version of myself." Almost all advice content is autobiographical, and all authentic entertainment is self-amusing in nature.

Even expanding your reach is contingent on resonance. Later, we will discuss sneezers, who are people who spread your content. Sneezers will not share your content unless they find it relatable on a deeper level. If your educational content doesn't teach them exactly what they need or your comedy doesn't tickle them the right way, they will not find it worth sharing.

You have to make your content more than good. You have to make it exactly what they want. And it is much easier to do that if you model your audience after yourself. After all, you know exactly what you want.

Solve Their Problem In Multiple Formats

Social media platforms are everchanging. And because no individual platform is set in stone, you have to diversify your content without spreading yourself too thin. Content multiplying apps like ContentFries can help you with that. The idea is to have a problem to solve and to solve it in multiple formats.

You can solve it in short form video format, long podcasts, and even graphics with text. Remember, this applies to non-educational content as well. Suppose you're a singer. Then the problem you're solving is that your audience doesn't have good music to listen to.

Apart from making good records, you can also post TikToks featuring that music, post lyrics from your songs as graphics, and even post long videos showing behind-the-scenes footage from a music video shoot.

Consistency of brand voice can be a challenge when you're making content for different platforms. Using unifying elements like the same font and music can give your content a feeling of familiarity.

If you haven't already decided on the brand's font set, then you need to be intentional about the font you choose alongside the brand colors. All the visual elements of your content must align with the mood of your content.

Be Different From Other Creators

Selecting the visual elements can be tricky because you have to follow a few rules regarding color theory and visual design. The tricky part is that you have to stand out in order to be noticed. Standing out as a content creator starts with the substance of your content and not the font you pick. You should first make your content valuably unique** **so it doesn't get drowned out in the sea of content out there.

Then, you can pick fonts that work for you and use them consistently. Avoid using the fonts allowed by the platform itself. By definition, the platforms' font set is limited.

Using content editors like ContentFries can be helpful in this area because these editors allow you to upload custom fonts for subtitles. When your reels, TikTok, and shorts feature your signature font, they're likely to be noticed and recognized.

One of the best things about having your content recognized on the "for you" page is that it can foster brand loyalty even among non-followers. Often, viewers get exposed to your content on their discovery feeds.

They might even engage with your content but may not find the need to visit your profile and follow you. But after consuming over 10 pieces of your content, they start to notice that everything they've seen from you is high-quality. This realization can make them follow you and be more loyal to you.

Create A Content Bank

You need to build a content bank for multiple reasons, one of which is that you need to have enough free time to actively engage with your audience. Many content creators make the mistake of having no buffer content. So when they get on the content creation treadmill, they end up with no time to engage with their followers.

That, of course, is just one reason to build a content bank. A much more pertinent reason to have a content bank is that content banks help creators overcome resistance. When you start creating and posting content, you have to engage in multiple acts, so procrastination can keep you from being consistent.

Having a content bank allows you to stay consistent even if you have a bad day. Setting aside a specific day to shoot content can help you maintain your content bank. Give yourself a month to film and edit content before you start your social media brand-building journey.

Distribute Content Consistently

The quality of your content is the first ingredient of your social media success. The second is the consistency with which you post. Once you have a content bank, your next agenda item should be to stick to a posting schedule.

Stories can build brands, but there are so many stories that if yours doesn't resurface over and over, all your effort is lost. So you have to use different tips and tricks to stay consistent when posting content on your social media.

Don't overestimate your discipline when making your schedule. Give yourself a realistic schedule so you don't burn out. Have a series of soft deadlines and follow them seriously. And if you miss a day, don't be harsh on yourself. What matters is that you get back up. It can be tough, which is why most brands that have a major cross-platform presence use a secret weapon.

Get Intentional About Growth On One Platform (At A Time)

Repurposing is the secret behind the success of most brands. While Gary Vee popularized it, it has existed for a long time. Movie studios don't discard a film after it makes money in theatres. They put it on a streaming service and also sell it on Blu-Ray.

Grant Cardone took most of his sales university content and uploaded it on YouTube. Of course, repurposing can help you conserve your energy. But what is interesting is how it can accelerate your online growth.

The secret to growth is in Gary Keller's book: The One Thing. You have to start making content primarily for one platform. If you create content for all platforms, you'll not make content that's excellent for any of them. By avoiding scattered creation, you can dedicate yourself to focused creation. Focused creation will help you optimize content quality.

On the surface, it might seem like the core message of "The One Thing," which is to focus on one thing, might be antithetical to content multiplication. But in reality, it is the only way to ensure volume and quality. When you create content for one platform, your mind isn't scattered. This allows you to create a high-quality body of work.

Content multiplication apps like ContentFries will help you repurpose your primary content for other platforms. But at any given point, you must be intentional about growing on only one platform. Once your audience has grown significantly, you can cross-promote on other social media.

Find The Sneezers In Your Niche

Once you have created a substantial content library, you have to identify and collaborate with the sneezer on the platform. It helps a great deal if the sneezers are also within your content niche. So, what is a sneezer?

If something that spreads is said to go "viral," then the person who spreads it the most should be called a sneezer. That's what marketing author Seth Godin calls influential people who spread "idea viruses."

You have to find sneezers within the niche that you want to establish yourself in. If you want to launch your own podcast, then you'll find no sneezer more significant than Joe Rogan. If you want to get into the self-help market, then getting Tony Robbins to co-sign would mean the most. The sneezer must check two boxes to be effective for your social media growth.

Firstly, he must be present on the platform where you plan to grow. Secondly, his audience must overlap with your target audience. Otherwise, the sneezing isn't as effective. The best way to locate a sneezer is to look at whom you follow. Given that you're basing your audience avatar on yourself, chances are that the people you look up to are also popular among your audience.

Create Reach-Driven Content

Aside from collaborating with relevant influencers and sneezers, the most significant thing you can do for your growth is to double down on reach-driven content. At any given point, one type of content will have more virality than another type. As of the 2020s, it is short form content that gets favored the most for exposure. That might change in the future.

Regardless of when you read this post, remember to dedicate a significant amount of time to create content that gets high algorithmic reach. This practice goes beyond the content format. Even within formats that get favored by social media algorithms, some content gets better reach. And that is usually content that makes people feel something.

Be Selective About Trends

Trends have become popular because they capitalize on an inbuilt audience. An audience that is interested in a trending song, for instance, will watch your video that is shot and cut to the said song on TikTok or IG Reels. Hopping on every trend might seem like a very productive thing to do for your reach. But you must be selective about the trends you choose to join.

If your target audience is unlikely to respect a specific trend, becoming a part of it might alienate your followers. Remember that your goal isn't to build the largest following of an irrelevant and unloyal audience. Your goal is to build a brand. That takes time, consistency, and authenticity. So, you should choose trends and content topics based on what's authentic to and consistent with your brand.

Make Well-Branded Content Stealable

Finally, you must ensure that your content gets stolen. Yes, you read that right. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, your content must be stealable for you to transcend the follower count on your page.

Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan, and Jordan Peterson are a few figures who have transcended their respective pages. Clips of their content are shared by thousands of pages, making it impossible to measure the true extent of their reach.

Allow your content to be downloaded, and don't file takedown requests. Let people share, comment on, and distribute your content. Andrew Tate famously paid people to share his content, and his brand has become bigger than the sites that have removed his account for guideline violations. His content still exists on those sites because of how often people steal and upload it.

Personal Branding Mistakes To Avoid

Now that you know the steps you must follow to build a strong personal brand, let's explore the mistakes and pitfalls of personal branding that keep brands small, diluted, and powerless. Avoid the mistakes covered in this section at all costs.

Final Thoughts

You can start your personal branding journey by signing up for ContentFries, a platform that helps you repurpose content in a brand-consistent way. Regardless of whether you use ContentFries or not, you must know your audience, make content that resonates with it, and make your content easily shareable in order to build a resilient personal brand.