As a business owner, your personal brand is going to be a reflection of your business. Even if you have a company page set up, your audience will judge your actions or inactions and apply them to your business. Sounds intimidating, doesn’t it? Not if you take control of your personal brand and follow some key steps to keep it alive.
Or, if you have already taken control but are seeing little to no results, it’s time to identify where you’re going wrong.
Here’s what you SHOULDN’T be doing on social media if you’re a business owner…
Not posting
So, you have a social media account. That doesn’t impress your audience much…at least, not if all you’re doing is lurking on their posts. A ‘lurker’ is someone who has social media accounts but only uses them to scroll through other people’s content. You might leave the odd comment here or there but you’re effectively a ghost.
As a business owner, you need to be making a strategic effort to grow your business online and social media will be an important part of this. If you’re not posting, how is your audience ever going to know you’re there? How will they learn about what you have to offer or build genuine long-lasting relationships with you?
Only posting business content
Business owners are not the only ones who fall into the trap of only posting promotional or work-related content. It’s still a common misconception – especially on platforms like LinkedIn – that business professionals should only ever post “professional” content. Usually, this content falls into the category of only ever being promotional.
The truth is only around 20% of your content should be directly promotional. The rest of it should help your audience connect to you as a person and demonstrate your expertise. This is how you build a credible and relatable personal brand that will make your audience much more receptive when you do post about your business.
Posting inconsistently
An inconsistent social media presence is almost worse than none at all because it will actively work against you and your business. Infrequent posts will disconnect you from your audience and make it extremely difficult to build any credibility. You’ll never become a trusted and recognisable face if your audience only sees you every few months.
For LinkedIn specifically, you want to aim to post 3-5 times a week to keep your profile and business top of mind for your audience. However, this doesn’t mean posting for the sake of it. You want to develop a posting strategy that not only keeps you consistent but ensures your posts are always delivering value.
Forgetting to engage
Even if you’re posting consistently and all of those posts are packed with value, there’s one thing that’s still going to let you down: not engaging with your audience. Content on its own isn’t enough to grow your business online. You need to be replying to the comments on your posts and leaving likes and comments on other people’s posts.
These comments should be as valuable as your posts. Ask engaging questions and offer innovative insight. And, when you start reaching out to people in DMs, don’t pitch-slap them! Starting any conversation with a pitch is an almost instant guarantee that they won’t respond. Keep the conversation natural and genuine and, in some situations, you won’t have to pitch at all to secure the deal.