LinkedIn Learning: Personal Branding on Social Media
37m * Beginner * Course
Social Media isn’t really an area I’m well versed in even within my personal life. My sister actually set up my account on Instagram and managed it for about a year. It was only three years ago that I started using it myself and I post with no regularity. Ultimately going from that to using it professionally has been a challenge. Any course on social media management would be helpful at this point. However my main issues with social media stem from the permanency of a post. Once something has been released on Instagram it's out there and more importantly it has a place on my page. As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, I have an issue with perfectionism, in my mind I want my whole page to be perfect rows of content that smoothly flows into one another. Colours that communicate my aesthetic and differentiate between projects. The problem with this is that once you’ve posted an image if you change your mind or find it doesn’t fit in how you wanted it too, if you remove it you throw the whole page off course. I’ve chosen this course because it focuses on personal branding. I'm hopeful that it will provide me with some tips on how to construct an aesthetic that communicates my branding as a designer.
The purpose of this course is to construct a strong, authentic personal brand that’s consistent across multiple social media platforms. In order to do this I am aware that I will have to work towards posting without concerning myself too much over the overall look of the page. Instead I’ll try to focus on the posts individually portraying my branding style and hope that this consequently delivers them a better flow.
This course opened by demonstrating how to write a personal branding statement - this is something you would typically incorporate into your bio. It’s used to communicate who you are, what you do and who your ideal customers would be.
Personal Branding Statement Task:
I help ________(ideal client) by _________(problem I’m solving), which leads to _________(outcome).
I help people who want unique designs by creating custom visuals, which lead to the client having a design that matches their personal style.
Refined Statement:
“I’m always excited to begin a new project working with different individuals/groups to create a unique design tailored to their ideas and delivered visually”
Interestingly I learnt that you should update your social media networks four times a year, at three month intervals. Jennifer Jessie advised picking specific dates that you update every year, hers being the 1st of February, 1st of May, 1st of August and the 1st of November. I’ve now set my own dates in my calendar to remind me when I need to check my profiles for possible updates in the bio, details or profile/cover pictures.
Jessie also advised posting with regularity she recommended starting out at two posts a week. For me this was the most daunting task she had set so far. Fortunately she also chose to cover the benefits of scheduling posts in advance. This gives you time to adjust them if needs be and means they go out without you having to worry about posting them on a specific day. It also means you can set one day a week to schedule that week's lot of posts, utilising your time and energy into creating more content for future posts.
Whilst Facebook allows you to schedule posts in app, Instagram does not but there is an app titled Preview that schedules your posts for Instagram and allows you to see how your posts will appear in the grid format of Instagram letting you play around and adjust your future posts to deliver a bigger impact to your followers.
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