Using content for your personal brand is a great way to share who you are, and after all, we are all content machines. To make this post less one-sided, let’s do an exercise together: When was the last time you took a photo of something and immediately shared it with your friends on social media? 🙋
My guess is that it was TODAY (and this applies to any day you read this). For me, it was my coffee this morning (hey, it looked Instagrammable).
The numbers are also there to prove that we’re just swimming in online content. Did you know that WordPress users produce over 70.5 million new blog posts and over 52 million new comments monthly?
Imagine if we translate that to all the other platforms and how much content (of all types) is produced and shared daily.
Knowing the importance of creating, sourcing and sharing content online and what it can do for our personal brands, we had a nice chat on #Bizheroes with our Paper.li community about it.
Here are some insights:
What is the role of content creation in your personal brand?
According to our community, content is chameleonic and can play various roles in personal brand building. For starters, our host Zala Bricej’s explanation talks about transitioning into content creation:
A1: Content Creation is fundamental to all brands, especially at the moment. With businesses closing everywhere, it is essential to stay in touch & we are using Video not just for business, but also for motivation. #BizHeroes
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
A1: Content creation is such a great way to show your unique personality, especially when it comes to your personal brand because it’s all up to YOU. #BizHeroes
— Squadhelp (@squadhelp) March 24, 2020
a1 it’s a madonna’s kind of mantra: content creation is one of my tools to express my personal brand. it’s important to create a tone of voice and content really helps me with that #BizHeroes pic.twitter.com/XHCxMM9DyR
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
A1) I believe #content creation is the anchor of the ship – it decides ‘who’ your brand wants to be. #BizHeroes
— Megha Shrimali (@WanderlustGirl_) March 24, 2020
As we can see, our #BizHeroes use online content strategically for many aspects of their brand including:
- For staying in touch and connecting deeper with clients
- Opening new doors and opportunities
- Represent themselves and their messages
- Show their uniqueness
How do you think the current situation affects your content and how can you become helpful to your followers with the right content practices?
As I create this wrap-up, we’re going through social isolation and quarantine due to the Coronavirus, an unprecedented situation that has affected all aspects of our lives and business. We wanted to know how our #BizHeroes were engaging in the best content practices during these difficult times.
A2: Having been in a position where I lost my business over night, I know how hard it can be. Because of this, I try to use content that helps to encourage, motivate & try to promote positivity, hard as it may be. #BizHeroes
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
A2: I’m definitely driven to help more people during these difficult times, and I’m less focused on the “income” aspect. I’m in a position where I can support existing and potential clients with coaching #BizHeroes
— Sabrina Cadini, CHLC, CBFC (@SabrinaCadini) March 24, 2020
A2) Empathy. One aspect that brand MUST have in these tough time. Humanise as much as possible. Conversations is the key. Nobody wants to venture on a dead end road. #BizHeroes
— Megha Shrimali (@WanderlustGirl_) March 24, 2020
a2 even if you have a crisis management manual to walk you through, it’s really different to imagine a pandemic state like this.
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
my content was aligned with the PT context and i’m helping some brands to deal with it. number #1 rule: to suspend the previous plan. #bizheroes
It looks like personal branding efforts have moved to be more empathic, encouraging and motivational. Many are focusing on being helpful and seeing how they can support others from their position.
What is your favorite kind of content to create/share while building your online personal brand?
Now, we wanted to gauge their choice of content. Interesting to see the many ways a personal brand can be transmitted through different types of content types.
A3: Definitely Video first, but any image based content works really well. Using eye catching posts really help people stop & take notice, in a world where posts have increased exponentially over the past few weeks. #BizHeroes pic.twitter.com/rIwqV8i2uV
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
a3 my number #1 concern goes to the website. if you have a strong identity on your website, you can just create other pieces of content aligned w/ your identity.
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
i’m a fan of content splintering: https://t.co/0as2KKYjUV #bizheroes
How are some ways in which you can repurpose or reuse content?
And a big one nowadays is that if you create one piece of content, it should be valuable enough that you can repurpose it and present it in many other platforms. As our Executive Director at Paper.li Dan Di Federico wrote in his article about building a digital presence:
Share third-party content with your own perspective. Create in-stream visuals and vertical/Story formats. Shoot professionally or even better, informal video content. Also taken from Once you create one piece of content like an article, turn that into 20 other pieces by breaking up and turning into visual sound bites.
Dan Di Federico
And here are some ways our #BizHeroes are taking the most advantage of their content pieces:
a4 think on building ONE piece of content that can be splintered in small pieces. if you have this mindset when you’re creating a blog post, it’s really easy to go on and having small pieces of content for you SM channels. #bizheroes https://t.co/0as2KKYjUV pic.twitter.com/yykuGk8tfj
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
A4: I am a huge advocate of Long Form Video. Firstly, it allows the creator to cover the topic in so much more detail, but more importantly, once created it can be seperated into bite size chucks for use on Stories, Posts & Gifs etc so increased amount for less cost #BizHeroes pic.twitter.com/ZzDuEfjgdr
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
What are the best resources to gather new ideas or inspiration for your content?
This one is pretty personal to me, I do struggle with diversifying my content creation, once I get stuck with a topic, sometimes it’s hard for me to get out. So, it’s important to get inspiration, venture out to other mediums of content and benchmark what others are doing. Our #BizHeroes shared their favorite resources for new ideas:
⭐And we love to see that Paper.li is helpful when looking for new inspiration
A5: Um.. The Social Media Daily from @paper_li is a great place to start. As well as this, respect, observe & engage with other creators, communities so that you can provide content in a way that is wanted rather than what you think is needed. #BizHeroes pic.twitter.com/vbunbmKOoo
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
a5
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
✅use twitter lists to follow some brands that can really inspire you.
✅have a curation content sheet with the best sources for your brand. #bizheroes pic.twitter.com/2DJDNJ584Q
A5: In my case, clients are the best resource for my content. Their pain points inspire me to find solutions and write about them. I also read several publications online and I find great articles to share #BizHeroes
— Sabrina Cadini, CHLC, CBFC (@SabrinaCadini) March 24, 2020
How do you measure the success of personal brand building?
Now comes an important aspect of having a content strategy for your personal brand. Is it working? How do you measure its success?
A6: As a twitter fan, I look at figures like RT’s & also connections. If you are respectful towards the people that you engage with & remain true to your knowledge, not trying to pretend that you know stuff that you don’t, it gets recognised & the numbers go up. 👆💚 #BizHeroes pic.twitter.com/U6cOPssJK0
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
a6 it depends on the platform: on twitter, i check my analytics to see how many times i’m mentioned and the number of link clicks. #bizheroes pic.twitter.com/YORyx2yNA7
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
What are your favorite tools for your content strategy, from ideation, creation to sharing?
I love me some tools, apps, and anything that could help me be better and efficient when working with content. Our #BizHeroes prefer these:
a7 my favorite tools?
— Joana Rita Sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) March 24, 2020
👂- social listening
🧠 – critical thinking
❤️- caring thinking
🎨- creative thinking
👯 – community thinking#bizheroes
A7: Twitter, YouTube & @AdobePremiere are essentially the three I use the most, although I am really considering switching to Instagram to see how it stacks up in comparison. #BizHeroes pic.twitter.com/F3TDnOMbta
— Buzzin’ James (@BuzzinDigital) March 24, 2020
Et voilá! We had a great insightful chat about content for personal branding. And let me share a secret, I will be repurposing this article and turning it into Instagram (follow us!) stories, tweets, and Facebook posts. Hmmm, a deck would be cool too, what do you think?
Thinking about branding yourself online? Try Paper.li for free!
Main Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
