Post Control Marketing

So much of our life is impacted by our online presence today that many are managing their careers by treating themselves as a brand. Personal branding is marketing yourself and your career like a product.

Personal branding incorporates many disciplines: Marketing to create your brand, advertising to promote yourself, and public relations for reputation management and press coverage. Not a once and done project, personal branding is an ongoing process of establishing a desired image to obtain career opportunities.

Like it or not, you have an online personal brand. You might as well be intentional about managing it and invest time in a plan.

What signs are you sending on social media? Do you have a social media plan for your personal brand?

What signs are you sending?

A Career Builder survey found 70% of employers use social media to research job candidates and 54% have decided not to hire a candidate based on their social media. Not managing your personal social media can keep you from advancing in the hiring process.

On the other hand, 57% of employers say they’re less likely to interview you if they find no information about you online. Not having any social media presence or trying to keep it all private can negatively impact your career job prospects as well.

Other research says that 91% of employers today use social media to hire talent. If you don’t participate you may be missing exciting opportunities. You can’t find your dream job if you’re not looking in the right place. With these stats in mind perhaps it is time to create or revisit your personal brand and manage it through a social media plan.

The good news is that if you know how to market a business you know how to market yourself. With some tweaking the same strategies that work for forming social media plans for organizations and corporations can be applied to your own personal brand.

How to develop a social media plan for your personal brand:

Identify your personal brand objective. What is that dream job, position, or service opportunity you are ultimately seeking? List specific titles and/or companies/organizations.
Define your target audience. Who would be the decision maker to put you in that position? Develop a “buyer persona” for the hiring manager.
Perform a personal situation analysis. Conduct a social media audit of your personal social media channels. Summarize results in a SWOT graphic or matrix.
Formulate your personal brand message. Identify what you want the hiring managers to think. What messages will get them there? Establish a brand voice and set focused topic guidelines to direct your posts.
Identify key social media platforms. What social channels do you need to deliver the right message to the right people? What needs to change in your current social media platforms and which do you need to add?
List key skills employers are seeking. Search job descriptions and ads. Emphasize those skills with keyword optimization of your social media content, profiles, and digital résumés. In direct messages add personalized insights about the company or person.
Become a lifelong learner. Are you missing any important skills? Find courses, certifications, full degrees or certificates to learn those those skills and earn signal sending qualifications. Then add those degrees/badges to your social profiles.

Don’t forget the value of live connections.

Finally, keep your online personal brand, but also don’t underestimate the importance of in-person connections. Seek out professional networking opportunities and attend all you can – even when many have become virtual. That live, face-to-face connection is still important and nothing is better for relationship building.

Those conversations that occur in the hallways between sessions and in chat boxes make a difference. Since the pandemic 71% of employers are rapidly expanding their digital recruiting capabilities adding information sessions, video panels and one-on-one video sessions.

Personal connections are remembered when new opportunities arise. Whether it’s a professional conference, industry trade show or career fair, invest time building in-person relationships that can be cultivated online through social media.If you haven’t been intentional about your social media personal brand get started today.

Are you ready to search for social media jobs?

For more insights see my Social Media Career Guide: What You Can Do and Where You Can Do It and guide to Create A Social Media Plan For Your Personal Brand.

An analysis of job listings shows the most in demand skill for content marking is social media content creation. After social media strategy content creation is what social pros spend much of their time on. While results vary based on target, brand, and social platform there are best practices to follow when writing and designing any social media post that will lead to more interesting and engaging brand posts.

Write in Active Voice and Second Person.

Most experts agree active voice creates more engaging social media copy with clear, concise, action-oriented sentences. In active voice the subject performs an action by directly using a verb to show the action versus passive voice where the action verb or object is emphasized over its subject. For example, the second version of the following post copy would grab more attention with active voice.

Passive Voice: The 2 hour marathon barrier was broken by team Nike!
Active Voice: Team Nike broke the 2 hour marathon barrier!

These posts can be improved further with point of view and benefit. Instead of using first person “I” or “we,” or third person “he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” or “name” use second person “you.” Using “you” draws attention focusing the message on the audience. Conveying the message as a benefit to them will also draw interest. The example post has now been written in first person, third person, then improved with second person written as a benefit to the audience.

First Person: We made the Vaporfly shoes that broke the 2 hour marathon!
Third Person: Nike Vaporfly shoes were used to break the 2 hour marathon!
Second Person: You can run in the Nike Vaporfly’s that broke the 2 hour marathon!

Consider Audience Interests, Brand Voice and Tone

Write messages your audience will want to share because it is something their friends will like, it shows appreciation, or it is about beliefs or causes they support. And don’t stop the message at the post. When sharing a link match post message and link destination. Sending them to a home page or unrelated page causes confusion and lost sales or leads. Keep interest going with a distinct landing page that delivers your message benefit and focuses on what you want them to do. The example post above should interest a target audience of runners and their running friends and then send them to a page about the shoes and the record attempt not the Nike home page.

Home Page Link: Nike.com
Landing Page Link: Nike.com/Sub2Vaporfly

Keep brand voice and tone in mind. What is the personality of your brand – bold rebellious, modern cool, or serious classic? Write like you talk as if the brand was a person talking out loud to another person. Skip jargon and avoid boastful claims such as “top,” “best,” or “only.” Be genuine fun and helpful. Be consistent but change tone with the situation. Even a fun, casual brand should take a more serious tone with an upset customer or in a crisis. For example, during the Boston Marathon bombing releasing a post celebrating a marathon record would come across as tone death as seen below.

Original Tone: You can run in the Nike Vaporfly’s that broke the 2 hour marathon!
Modified Tone: You can support Boston marathon victims. We’ll match your donation.

Create Good Brand Design and Aha Moments.

Keep text to a minimum ensuring it is large enough to view on mobile. Use unique fonts for emphasize but limit total fonts in a single post. Ensure good contrast with text over images so they can be seen. Don’t overcrowd the layout or image with too much text making it feel overwhelming and busy. Change individual messages but be consistent in overall message including brand keywords, taglines and hashtags. Follow brand standards for colors, logos and fonts. With the example post you would follow Nike brand guidelines not Wendy’s.

Wendy’s Brand Voice: Witty and Sassy.
Nike’s Brand Voice: Powerful and Inspiring.

It’s easy to grab a generic stock or product image, but a unique image that compliments the text draws interest. Creatively connect text and image inviting the viewer to fill a gap for an “aha” moment they’ll want to share. A simple image of running shoes would be the easy to include with the post text above. Instead consider something unexpected like a back of the pack amateur runner photoshopped into the finish line scene of Eliud Kipchoge’s record breaking run.

Generic Image: (Product Image of Nike’s new Vaporfly shoes) – You can run in the Nike Vaporfly’s that broke the 2 hour marathon!
“Aha” Image: (Kipchoge’s record finish with amateur runner) – Break your own records in Nike Vaporfly’s!

Follow Rule of Thirds and Rules of Social Platforms

Good images and layouts follow the rule of thirds. This principle divides a space into thirds horizontally and vertically to place elements in a more appealing balanced way. Research shows that people’s eyes focus on one of the intersection points rather than the center where most amateurs place the subject of their image or design. Instead place the subject in one of the intersecting points to create a more dynamic, natural, and interesting visual. Also leave room for white space or negative space. This is the area between design elements that helps them stand out.

Each social media platform has different design standards and requirements. Refer to each size by pixels, file size, image type and other submission requirements. Many design tools include templates for the most popular platforms such as Canva or Adobe Spark and built in tools such as Facebook Creative Hub and Snapchat Instant Create. Most also have options to create mock ups for social media plans and presentations.

Business psd created by freepik – www.freepik.com

Finally consider post schedule. The time of week and time of day matter and can vary increase or decrease engagement based on the social media platform. To plan your social media content calendar and schedule you posts Sprout Social provides a report on best times to post from their customer base.

Best practices are a great place to start, but keep in mind that the best content is created to be unique to each platform customized to the environment and brand community. Test posts times and variations in designs and copy to optimize as you go. This can be done with simple A/B split tests. This will keep posts fresh to avoid ad fatigue.

With this improved content do you have the right strategy?

For more insight to improve content performance ask These Questions To Ensure You Have The Right Social Media Strategy.