Personal Branding Chapter: How do I begin Branding Myself on Social Media?

Essence of Personal Branding

At this juncture, I believe many of us have heard about the importance of personal branding, and why we should get started on the journey of branding ourselves.

But the big question after we understand “why”, is definitely finding out how can I get started, which platform to begin, and how do I know I am on the right track.

The truth is that there is no magic behind this - we simply just decide to get started, and when we make the decision to move forward, you would realise that there are many resources out there that will help us to achieve our goal to grow.

For me, about 6 years ago, I began to start looking at LinkedIn as my ideal platform to build my personal brand even when many people aren’t onboard the platform for regular content consumption yet.

I remember sharing about business articles that will garner almost zero interest, but when I drop them a personal LinkedIn message to have coffee meetups, industry veterans such as the VP of Grab Marketing back then - agrees to have coffee with me without much hesitation.

Old LinkedIn Content That Has No Engagement

This is just one of the many points in my life that I understood this concept. If we are thinking of building our personal branding, we should take action - no matter how insignificant or minuscule our gestures are - other people are always watching and observing to see if we are the right fit for their business/collaborations etc.

Just Do It is a great mantra to abide by, if we are looking to build up traction in any field, and that is the same when it comes to personal branding - and building personal brand equity.

This is the same when my girlfriend and I decide to work hard on building a food account to kinda grow our skillsets in food photography & to share about the wonderful food that we got to try around the world - we didn’t wait till the time is right, we just got right down to working on rebuilding great food content + rebrand an older Instagram account which I had before.

This was also how World Best Foodies came to life and how we eventually grew the food account to over 6k followers and still counting so far. Feel free to drop us a note if you are looking for a growing food blogger to come and visit your F&B.

World Best Foodies Instagram

Apart from having the conviction to just do it, it is also having the steadfast determination to do it regularly - consistency despite non-results is key. It is easy to be consistent and steadfast when everything is working out well, but during the early days where we don’t see much fruits of our labour, to stay the course is hard.

For myself, I achieve a slightly major breakthrough in my LinkedIn personal branding, in the year of 2018 whereby one of my usual content (was on the topic of sales previously) garnered over 10k + views - which was quite a monumental achievement for me (I have never achieved that before prior to that content).

My first ever LinkedIn Content that has garnered over 10k + views

To get to this point, it took me exactly 4 years of consistent effort to build thought leadership content via LinkedIn, and to stay the course despite no apparent engagement success.

Today if you are thinking of beginning your journey to brand yourself and build your equity, there are only two things you need to keep in mind, in order to attain eventual success: 1. Just do it (don’t overthink); 2. Consistency is key (even when there are no apparent results).

Success metrics can differ from individual to individual - for me I measure it as level of content engagement/viewership, as well as potential number of regular inbound leads/enquiries/media collaborations.

Quote From The Life Of A Wonderer Instagram Page

As we wonder through life, always be willing to make new mistakes and you will certainly be on the right track to building the best personal branding in the 21st century. All the best!