As an entrepreneur I would like to have a bigger exposure in my professional community and my social network.
For the personal branding I am looking for some tools/platforms/help in:
- Social media campaigns management for Instagram and LinkedIn
- Blog posts writing and idea generation
- Networking
- Speaking at public events
- Produce in-person events
It looks like many people rely on do-it-yourself approach that requires a lot of time and some knowledge in PR.
Or I can hire an agent, but that can become very costly.
Are there any other options?
There are a lot of pieces to this, but I'm glad you're asking. This can absolutely be done DIY, but you're right, it's time consuming and there are a lot of pieces to keep track of. An agency will already have a process in place to manage these different pieces for you. My agency specializes in PR, branding and digital marketing, so check us out if hiring an agency is an option for you - https://redchalkstudios.com/.
For a DIY approach:
- Instagram campaigns are managed using Facebook Ads platform. As a marketer, that's a nice feature, I can manage both FB and IG campaigns in one place. LinkedIn has it's own ads platform called Campaign Manager (https://www.linkedin.com/ad-beta/accounts).
- For blogs, it's best to be consistent, but don't write for the sake of writing. Make sure to plan a content schedule that you can keep up with. For blog ideas, there are some awesome resources. SEMRush has a content idea generation feature, there are sites like AnswerThePublic where you can enter a keyword and it will populate common questions around that subject that you can answer with your posts.
- Networking is something I'm personally working on, too. Each Monday I log into Meetup, Eventbrite and Facebook and search their "Business" categories for networking events.
- Attending these networking events is also a great way to meet the event coordinators and introduce yourself as a possible event host and speaker. Also, if you do a Google search for "call for speakers" you'll find conferences/summits that are looking for speakers for their events.
- Producing in-person events takes some planning. Who is your target audience? What are the problems they face with their business that you can coach them on? How big do you want the event? And how much do you want to charge? Where are you going to have it? There are a lot of logistics. Take notes during the events you attend as to what you like about how the event is held before you start planning your own.
Hope this helps!
Ok, we have a couple of things that can be handed out and some things that are best taken care of on your own. Below are the details:
Social media campaigns management for Instagram and LinkedIn - A smart social media guy can do this on your behalf by using tools like Buffer. He/she can schedule everything on Buffer and you can give it a look before it goes live.
- Blog posts writing and idea generation - This can be outsourced with ease. A lot of content creation agencies out there that can write blogs on your behalf. 4 blogs per month will be enough for you I think.
- Networking - Easy stuff. Once you outline what kind of people you want to connect with, anyone can do it. I get this done for LinkedIn.
- Speaking at public events - You got to do this one on your own. Someone can help you with the PPT part but rest of the show is you.
- Produce in-person events - This will also be you.
The first 3 things can be best tackled by a small team after it understands your language nuances, goals, and expertise. First month will be a little time consuming but after that, it will be smooth. My team handles the same for some entrepreneurs and businesses. Below are a couple of case studies:
https://www.upreports.com/pdf/social-media-content-case-study-strategy.pdf
https://www.upreports.com/pdf/blog-marketing-examples-upreports.pdf
I hope this helps. Cheers.
The single greatest ROI you can get in personal branding is your own .com domain.
Think about it, what email would you consider as more trustworthy/authoritative?*
rm@rodrigomartinez.com
or
rodmart1999@gmail.com
Social media has changed a lot recently, mainly organic reach is dead, including on LinkedIn.
That said I am very keen on LinkedIn and Instagram but each must be used wisely.
If you're going to be blogging and don't want to waste time and money, you NEED to blog from a SEO FIRST perspective.
In other words you need to "reverse engineer" your content so you can tap into existing traffic.
I'm glad you mentioned networking and events. Definitely something you should leverage on as long as you have a story to tell (we all have stories!).
Professional coaches can be beneficial, but there's a lot you can get done on your own if you put in the time.
Why don't you book me here and I'll share some of the successful strategies that I have used myself.
Check out my reviews and recommendations here: https://rodrigomartinez.fyi.to/recommendations
*Unfortunately Rodrigo Martinez is a very common name, thus my own custom domain was taken. You might have a better chance. BTW not all registrars are created equal. Happy to share more during our call.
Success!!
I started a global marketing and branding firm 18 years ago and most of my work comes by referral and word of mouth. I think having a good online reputation is incredibly important to building a strong professional service business like mine. You have to know what digital dirt exists on you so do a Google search and social media audit to see what comes up so you do not get blindsided or surprised in a meeting. There are a few ways I can recommend to stack the deck in your favor:
* Do great work that people will talk about
* Give lots of talks and use examples from your experience, I do a lot of public speaking which leads to people talking about me
* Join networking groups to meet people who are the multipliers in your industry, they talk to everybody and know everyone
* Be active on social media so you can share your talks and content and your followers can help spread the word
* Beware of trolls who try to bait you online by posting comments from fake accounts challenging your credibility or questioning your reputation online. You have to monitor sites carefully these days. I wish that there were more checks and balances to catch them earlier. You have to take immediate action and contact the site administrators to bring it to their attention to shut them down right away if you find anything. These people are never as smart as they think they are.
Tools you can use for personal branding/PR are as follows:
1. Mention: Mention is a real time media monitoring platform. It allows you to listen to what’s been said about you on websites and social media. Enter your name in the search box and you will see what people are saying about you across different platforms, all in one place. You can react to the mentions within the tool if you have connected your social media accounts with it. Create an alert and you will get email notifications when people mention your name or whatever keywords you choose to monitor. Price: subscriptions start from $29/month
2. Buzzsumo: Buzzsumo is a great digital monitoring platform for you to find what content is popular and who the influencers are within your niche. Comparing it to Mention, Buzzsumo excludes social media posts and solely shows content from websites. With a free account, you will be able to see the top 10 most shared content (articles, videos, interviews, infographics, etc.) based on the keyword terms you enter. Search for your name and you will see how the articles mentioning or quoting you performed across the web in a second. Price: 10 results for searches with a free account. Buzzsumo Pro starts from $79/month.
3. TweetDeck: TweetDeck is an effective tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and engagement, especially when you need to manage more than 2 Twitter accounts at the same time. It can present Twitter feeds in different columns based on your needs, which allows you to monitor both your personal and company tweet feeds, participate in Twitter chats with hashtags, or follow tweets based on any search criteria all in one place. Price: Free.
4. Canva: According to a study by Buffer, tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets, not to mention Facebook and Instagram which are even more visual-oriented. It is hard to find a satisfying picture for your post sometimes, but with Canva, you can very simply create an image that perfectly matches what you are trying to say. The best part of the tool is that it provides templates with the right dimensions for a Facebook post, Facebook cover photo, Twitter post, Instagram photo, etc. which will ensure your image is presented in the right way on different social platforms. Price: free when you only use free elements or your own images. $1 apiece if you use Canva’s premium elements.
5. Feedly: Not sure what to share on social media? Feedly can help keep you on track. Feedly is a news aggregator application that helps gather everything you are interested in reading in one place. Once set up by subscribing to the publications you want to follow, you will be able to organize the content base on your preference, read them within the tool, and share them on social media with just one click. Price: Free.
6. Buffer: Among all the social media scheduling tools, we chose Buffer mainly because of its easy-to-use interface. It is a time-saving tool that allows you to update all your social channels with one click. Besides its scheduling function, Buffer also provides content suggestions on topics including marketing, inspiration, business & start-up, etc. The tool is also available on mobile. Price: Free.
7. Followerwonk: Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tool that allows you to search Twitter bios, compare Twitter users, and analyse Twitter followers with a free account. It helps you to get an idea about how well you are connected and who you should connect with. Their analysis tells you a lot about your followers (or people you follow) such as their location, active hours, interest, authority scores, and so on. With the Search Bios function, you can identify influencers within your niche and find like-minds to connect with. Price: Free.
8. UnfollowerStats: UnfollowerStats examines your friendship on Twitter. It tells you who unfollowed you, who are not following you back, and who you are not following back. What is more, you can check how active your followers are on Twitter, when they joined Twitter and the relationship between two users. This information can be helpful for you to make decisions about who to follow or not. Price: Free.
9. Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics is a measurement tool provided by Twitter. It automatically generates a monthly recap for you with the number of your tweets, tweet impressions, profile visits, and new followers. In the tweets tab and followers tab, you can see more detail about how your tweets performed and the demographic makeup of your followers. We have blogged about how it can be a helpful tool for content marketing as well. Price: Free.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
