Building Your Personal Brand via Social Media - 10 Quick Tips from a Skeptical Xennial
I am a proud Xennial and an introvert, born between the years that are typically classified as the Gen-X and Millennial generations. There is some debate over the exact range of this “micro-generation,” but for this article’s sake, let’s say it’s from 1977-1985. Some call us the Star Wars Generation, because we were born when the first three Star Wars films were released. Why is this important? We may not identify as a Gen-Xer or a Millennial, but we often have some characteristics of both.
We straddle two worlds: we know what it’s like to live in an analog world, but we also know what it’s like to adopt new digital technology and use it for the first time. And, we may not always be comfortable with it. We remember what it’s like to be completely unreachable, we dipped our toes into everything AOL had to offer, narrowly avoided an adolescence of Facebook and cyberbullying, and probably developed most of our significant relationships over a landline phone.
I've been helping some folks lately who have been dipping their toes into personal branding, some who are still wary of putting themselves out there so publicly. With that in mind, I thought I’d share some tips and insights from my own personal brand journey as well as working with others in the past who built their brand presence online. Bottom line: don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.
With that in mind, here are ten tidbits of advice from my own and others' experience(s):
Don’t feel like you have to follow a certain formula of number of posts, articles, reposts, and likes per week, month, etc. Think about what you can handle vs. what you’ll be satisfied with (i.e. if you can handle one post, 3 reactions, and 2 reposts per week, will you be satisfied with this?) How can you take your satisfaction level and get it to become more aligned with what you can handle?
Don’t post just to post. Ask yourself, what is your purpose for posting? Are you providing helpful information to others, promoting your business, promoting someone else’s content that resonates with you, asking for help, etc.?
Think about how personal you want to get before you post something and the personally identifiable information (PII) you may want to avoid including.
Avoid posting anything political in nature, unless you are prepared to handle the varying opinions that will certainly come your way.
There will always be someone out there that doesn’t agree with what you write or who is offended by something that you write. It’s the unfortunate reality of being so public and the current climate that we live in.
Avoid responding to anything with a sense of moral outrage - it will develop into a death spiral from which there is no return.
Consider turning off app notifications and set a time limit for checking/responding to responses to your post/article. There are some instances where you may want to turn off responses to your post.
Consider setting a timer each time you go on social media to prevent yourself from that dreaded doom scrolling. There are also apps like Refocus that you can download that will help you to set daily limits.
Take a break when you need to. Stop posting; stop scrolling. Delete the app. Change your password to something that you don’t know off-hand.
Comparison can be a big motivator for some, but most of the time, it is your worst enemy. There is a fine line between thinking you’re the best person ever and thinking you’re the worst person ever. In the end, measuring yourself based on the number of likes that you receive is never worth it. (Easier said than done, I know.)
For all you Xennials out there, I'll pick up where I started. There was a “song” that was released in 1999 called “Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen).” You may have thought it was cheesy at the time (I did), but it’s worth another listen/read 25 years after its release. So, I’ll leave you with this little gem:
"Don't waste your time on jealousy / Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind / The race is long and in the end, it's only with yourself."
So, as you enter this social media world, be kind to yourself, my friends.
