Why getting personal on social media is the best move you can make for your brand

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No matter what job title you hold, whether you’re employed by a company or yourself, you hold the power to what potential clients or customers see on social media. Social media is one of the greatest tools you can use to sell yourself to potential clients or customers. It seems unnatural to leverage your personal interests alongside your professional pursuits on social media, but let me tell you why it’s important to do so.

What you put out there is how you sell yourself.  When you’re making a choice that involves spending your hard-earned money, you want to be sure that you’re making thebest choice possible. It could be for something as large as a home or as small as where to go for dinner on your weekend trip. Either way, research happens somewhere in that consumer-process to make that choice.

Most of the time, you never get to pitch your business or brand before that choice is made, because those customers or clients do their own research and base their decision off of what they find. That’s where social media comes in. Social media gives you the opportunity to sell yourself without even saying a word to your potential clients or customers.

Show your clients or customers what matters to you. People don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to. If your social media is full of “salesy”posts, users won’t be able to connect with you or your brand. This is where content pillars comes in. At Hello Social Co., we preach using content pillars like it’s our job (well, it is). Content pillars help you narrow down what’s important to you and your business or brand. If you have five content pillars, only 1/5th of your posts should be sales-focused. The other 4/5ths of the posts should educate your audience on your area of expertise, speak to yourself as a person and as a brand and support the community you live in.

(This might look a little different for a retail brand, because product posts are definitely important. If you are a retail brand, make sure a portion of your posts promote community experiences and show off behind-the-scenes details.)

When you share who you are, your audience can know what to expect. Showing the more personal side of your business or brand helps people trust you and want to work with or buy from you. They want to see not only the product or service they’re going to receive, but the person they’ll be working with and the experience they’re going to have. When you show that side of your life on social media, it makes people feel comfortable. No one likes to go into a decision that should benefit them feeling uncomfortable.

For example: If you work in graphic design, but also have a passion for interiors, you could share pictures of interiors that catch your eye or a home project you’re working on. This helps your audience get a bigger picture of who you are as a person and can even draw in new clients or customers who have similar hobbies or interests. The truth is, people like to work with people like themselves. Usually, your ideal customers or clients are a lot like yourself, so why not show off the things that make you you?

Another example is to show off how you go above and beyond for your customer or clients. If you like to bring coffee for your clients to your meetings, share a photo of the coffee on your stories with a caption about how excited you are to meet with new clients. Potential clients will see that you not only care about the work, but also them as people and will add that to their lists of reasons why they should work with you.

What’s something in your personal life you could show more of on social media that speaks to who you are and what it’s like to work with you?