HOW TO GROW ON SOCIAL MEDIA | 10 tips for building a personal brand on social media

[Music] I am officially coming up on my one-year anniversary of being a full-time content creator which is so crazy to say I've been on social media for about 3 years now but I went full-time in August of 2023 I can make an entire separate video on my entire path of becoming a content creator and taking content creation full-time and in this video specifically I want to talk about the best things that I learned over the past 3 years specifically around building your personal brain since I've started on social media so many people even people in my personal life have come to me and been like Aaron I want to start creating content on social media but I have absolutely no idea what I want to post if you want to get started posting on social media or maybe you've already started posting but you feel like you don't have a super clear Direction on where your channels want to go or really don't have a strong brand identity it is so important to start thinking about that now and start thinking about the personal brand that you're building which is what we're going to be talking about in today's video before we get into the 10 tips what does it even mean when I say person personal brand when I say the term personal brand it's not what do I make videos about it's what am I known for it's why does someone follow me what value do they get out of my content when they're talking to their friends about me what do they have to say about me your personal brand really defines the lens through which other people see you through your content and that is such an important part about growing on social media and building a following so with that let's get into my top tips for building your personal brand as a content creator [Music] the first tip that I have here is all related to the traditional advice of picking a niche when I got started on social media a couple of years ago this was definitely the advice that I got and to this day I feel like a lot of people still get this advice the advice that a lot of people will give you is to pick a niche if you want to grow that's definitely the route that I took I started my social media channels in January of 2022 and I started them in the personal finance space when I started posting on Tik Tok literally the only thought in my brain was okay I make videos about personal finance and because of that all of my content ideas were how to budget how to save how to invest my favorite personal finance books those were the types of videos that I was creating and did that help me grow yes however does that help you build a personal brand or a sustainable long-term personal brand in my opinion no the problem with just picking a niche especially if the niche is going to be something educational so think personal finance Career Tech these are all niches where your content can very easily turn into just textbook information that people can go and Google for example a video that I would have posted in January of 2022 was my five favorite personal finance books or how to open a Roth IRA or the 50 3020 budget method these are videos that would get views because someone that's looking to be better with their money would need help in those topics but that didn't make my audience know me and care about me and it didn't help me build my personal brand so the way that I like to look at it now and where my tip comes in is to think about an overarching theme for your personal brand rather than picking a niche since I got started in the personal Finance space my content definitely still has some of that however my overarching theme for my personal brand now is called my life but make it financially responsible so instead of me being a personal finance content creator I'm a lifestyle Creator however everything that I do is sort of through the lens of money how I make very lifestyle decisions based on money so which apartment I'm going to move into which city I'm going to move to money impacts so many different aspects of my life and I'm able to integrate that all in but the overarching theme of my personal brand has to do with me and my [Music] life my second tip for building your personal brand is that the more aspects of your life that you can share the more invested people will be into you again going back to my content in 2022 when I was making videos about how to budget how to invest that's all people knew about me was a talking head literally from here up at that time that's all people knew about me they didn't know anything else about my life and it's really hard to get people to be invested into you and into your life if they don't really know anything about you for example like I said my overarching theme of my content is my life but make it financially responsible again there's so many different aspects of my life where money touches that I can integrate into all of my content for example dating friendships moving living alone having a pet the clothes I wear where I travel my habits and routines I'm able to make videos about all of those topics and it's not that they're not correlated because again my personal brand is centered around my life and my money decisions the way that I like to think about this one is think about your all-time favorite influencers so for example some that come to my mind are like Alex Earl or Jenna pic think about everything that you know about those people and why you know it it's because they integrate it all into their content so for example with Alex Earl Alex is showing you her sisters her family her boyfriend in college she was showing you all of the ins and outs of her college life her messy room inside of her sorority you got to see so many pillars of her that you felt like you were friends with her so if you want people to be invested in you you have to open up a little bit and show them into different aspects of your life [Music] my third tip for building your personal brand on social media is to think about inward content versus outward content what I mean when I say this is inward content is focused on you and outward content is focused on your audience in order to build your following while also building your personal brand there really needs to be a blend of both again using the example of the content that I was creating when I first started my Tik Tok account how to budget how to invest how to save all of that was very outward facing a hook would use the word you in it as opposed to your hook using the word I the advice that you're probably getting when you're trying to start your personal brand is that the outward content is the one that provides value to your audience but in my opinion I think there's a way to blend the both however in my opinion I do think that there's a really effective way of balancing both so that you're still building your personal brand with that inward content while still providing value to your audience for example let's think of like a vlog Style video that someone would post onto Tik Tok or Instagram reals if you see a video of someone you you've never heard of before we're not talking about like Mega influencers here we're talking about someone who's really just getting started on their Channel if you see someone post a video that just says day in my life there's nothing enticing you to stay and watch that video that's a very inward facing video and when you're just getting started on your channel you haven't given your audience a reason yet to care about what a day in your life looks like so that's where you can get creative balancing inward content with outward content my favorite way to do this is if you do want to film sort of like a vlog style day in the lifestyle video you can film all of that footage but then the voice over that you're doing over top of that provides some type of value to your audience so whether you're talking about a problem that your audience has or how you're developing the habit of waking up a little bit earlier and giving tips to do so there's so many ways in the voiceover to still give that value but the clips are going to be more about your life another example of how I specifically balance that inward content with the outward content one of my most popular series on my social media channels is my what I spend in a week series again I got started in the personal finance bace about 2 years ago I started the series where every single Monday I post a video called what I spend in a week and I walk through all of my transactions that I incurred the week prior the reason why I started this series is because I have the habit of sitting down every Monday morning for 10 minutes and tracking all of my spending into my budget template this money habit is what helps me hold myself accountable for my spending helps me stick to my budget an outward piece of content related to that topic would be me sitting down talking to the camera saying here's a money habit that will help you hold yourself accountable for your spending and help you stick to your budget however I shifted it a little bit Inward and I started by saying here's what I spend in a week as a 25-year-old living in pitsburgh but then the second sentence in all of those videos goes this is the one money habit that has helped me hold myself accountable for my spending and help me stick to my budget over the last 2 years so hopefully that helps you see how you can balance the inward content with the outward content to give your audience value while simultaneously building your personal brand my fourth tip for building a personal brand on social media is to think about your content in terms of your signature style content but then also your platform specific content your signature style content is content that is going to be crossposted onto all of the different platforms that you choose to be on for example my signature style content gets posted onto Tik Tok Instagram YouTube shorts and Pinterest if you're just getting started and that sounds overwhelming you definitely don't have to cross poost onto all of those platforms you can pick one or two however again this is the content that you're going to be posting onto all of your channels and what this does is it helps you build a cohesive brand identity which in my opinion really enhances your personal brand so what does this signature content look like this is going to be different for everyone for me my signature content is in the style of voiceovers with Clips like overlaid I can put an example here of what this looks like when we were talking about my what I spend in a week videos this is my signature style content basically any video that is typically under a minute long again it's a voice over and then I have Clips over either like a vlog style clip or I'm just putting like Random b-roll clips over top of it to kind of like fit the vibe of the video so all of my voiceover content gets posted onto all of my channels but then the second type of content is platform specific content and the reason for this content is because honestly different platforms have different types of content that performs better so for example Tik Tok is much more casual than Instagram I would say on my Tik Tok I post a lot of videos that are me just talking to the camera maybe I'm like doing my makeup in the video it's not aesthetic at all could talk for 3 minutes I do a lot of like video replies on Tik Tok so if someone leaves me a comment I'll reply to it in a video that's very much so all Tik Tok content and that never gets repurposed onto Instagram but then on Instagram what's more popular is more like trending sound videos very short videos under 30 seconds so my signature content I try to focus on doing a couple a week and that gets posted onto all of my channels and then I'm sprinkling in platform specific content on Tik Tok and onto Instagram as well my next tip is one that has helped me literally so much and I think advice is applicable no matter what you're trying to build not just becoming a content [Music] creator this tip is to focus on building one thing for 6 months to a year before you start to expand and this doesn't have to mean you can only be on one platform when you get started on social media because like I just said we can focus on building our signature style of content and then just cross post it onto multiple platforms however but what you don't want to do when you're starting to become a content creator is you don't want to to go and start a ton of different social media channels between Tik Tok Instagram YouTube maybe start a podcast and try to do all of these new things at one time when I started on social media I was only on Tik Tok for about 14 months before I even made an Instagram account I grew my Tik Tok to over 200,000 followers again before I even had one Instagram follower I will say at the time reals on Instagram weren't as popular so the reason why I didn't start an Instagram channel was because if I wasn't going to be like crossposting my Tik toks onto reals then I knew knew I wasn't going to have any content to put on that Instagram Channel now I do think it's a lot easier to have both a Tik Tok and an Instagram and YouTube shorts and just make one video and post it onto all three but what you probably don't want to do is start a Tik Tok start an Instagram even if you have your signature style of content you don't really want to be focusing on putting a bunch of platform specific content onto Tik Tok and putting a bunch of platform specific content onto Instagram and while simultaneously trying to like make long form YouTube videos there would just be a lot going on especially if you're doing this along outside of a full-time job and you could probably get burnt out that way the way that I did it like I said I focused on building my Tik Tok for about 14 months I started my Instagram account in February of 2023 2023 from like February to November was strictly all about building my Instagram account at the time while I was focused on building my Instagram account I already had my Tik Tok systems built up so it was kind of like on the back burner at that point so last year was all about building up my Instagram I got my systems down for Instagram so now I had Tik Tok and Instagram under my belt and then in November is when I expanded into starting a podcast as well from November up until really this point in 2024 so about November to June I was strictly focused on the podcast now I'm getting those systems down and in the latter half of 2024 that's when it's my goal to really focus a lot of time and energy onto my YouTube [Music] channel my next tip for building your personal brand on social media is that you do not need 10 to 20 video ideas you need one video idea and then you need to execute on that video idea like I said I've been doing social media for over 2 years now and I still get into my head about this I have literally like the longest list of video ideas on my phone that are all really good video ideas I honestly do think to some extent that too many video ideas is a bad thing because then you're looking at this ginormous list of video ideas and none of them ever make it out of the notes app yes it can be scary if you're trying to start on social media and you feel like you have One Singular video idea because you're like okay how am I going to be consistent if I don't have a big list of ideas however just focus on if you have one idea executing on it actually filming it and more video ideas are going to come as you continue to make content next this tip is for the people who say that they want to start on social media but they have absolutely no idea what to post [Music] about the advice that I always give people when they tell me this is to think about what type of friend you are and what value do you provide to your friends so are you the funny friend are you like the shoulder to cry on friend for me the way that my friends describe me is that I am the levelheaded friend I'm the friend that is really good for giving advice my friends come to me when they need help with things like their finances that's literally why I got started in the personal finance space because a lot of my friends were coming to me at the time for help with their budgets or setting up their 401K at their first full-time job whatever value you provide your friends is the value that you will be able to provide to people that end up following you on social media the goal is to make your audience feel like they are your friends so when you think about it that way it can kind of help you decide what type of content you want to start putting out and how you're going to execute on that content and my last two tips kind of go hand inand the first one is that these spice is in the specificity and the second one is that if you try to talk to everyone you're going to end up talking to no one in regard to the first one let's go back to the example with the day in the life Vlog if you come across a video on your for you page that says day in my life and you have no idea who this person is what incentive do you have to watch that video however if you scroll past a video that says here's a day in my life as a 26-year-old balancing two jobs to get out of credit card debt or here's my 5 to9 routine after my 9 to5 as a 25-year-old who recently got out of a relationship and is trying to romanticize the solo girl life I think a lot of times people try to broaden their content so that they can talk to more people because they feel like the more specific they get the less people that it will relate to however ever the only way that you're actually going to relate to someone is if you get specific and you really allow people to see why you're making that video and why you're the right person to be making that video and then in the second point if you try to talk to everyone you end up talking to no one for example even in the niche that I got started with in personal finance there are so many different avenues that you can take in relation to personal finance for me specifically the Avenue that I decided to go down was that I want to Target women in their 20s specifically women that want to live a really big full life they want to be able to go shopping they want to still go out to eat with their friends they want to travel they want to order the $20 espresso Martini at the bar they want to have all of these 20-some experiences live the girly life while also being financially conscious I'm not trying to be the Frugal girl I'm not trying to be the penny pinching girl and if I try to do all of those things then I end up relating to no one I hope these tips were helpful regardless if you are trying to start your personal brand or if you've been posting on social media for a while and you feel like you want a better Direction I love talking about content cre so much I think this industry and this economy is so so cool I think that everyone has such a cool opportunity to build their personal brand on social media in the way that benefits you and if you want to hear more from me on this topic please leave all of your questions in the comments I would love it if you subscribe to my channel and thanks for following along

Channel: Erin Confortini

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Id: QFL0z7Bn9yw

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2024