You're not getting the engagement you want on social media. What can you do to build your personal brand?

Every brand needs a clear social playbook that defines your strategy, tone of voice, visual guidelines, audience, intention by channel and role of influencers. Until you have this, and truly understand how to follow it, being on social channels is a waste of time.

Why are you on social media? What do you intend to achieve, precisely? Is it feasible? Does it align with your overall business goals? What's the time frame? Write down the answers to these questions, and create a content strategy that aligns with them and resonates with your audience.

It is crucial to set goals and targets as that will help you stay focused and consistent. Once daily or weekly goals are set, you’re pushed to want to meet them in order to increase visibility and reach more audiences. Your goals are also going to help you craft your content in a way that communicates with your audience better. Before goals are set, research is done to determine what kind of goals are SMART and that consist of knowing your audience, strategic direction, desired results and tone of content.

If you're saying "my product/message is for everyone", you are 100% wrong. Every product, every message, every social media platform, every form of advertising media has a target audience, you just don't realize it yet. Go through your analytics on social media and look at your demographics. Get surveys taken and listen to the insights that you're receiving. What you think will work for everyone will not, in fact, work for everyone.

Having a SMART goal, helps a lot. It helps you break down what you need to do, fraction by fraction.Knowing your audience gives you clarity and insight into the kind of content to share. Content your audience will most likely resonate with. But it starts with having a goal. What do you want to achieve on social media? Then the next thing is the content. What kind of content do you want to share that'd help you achieve this. Then the most important. Who are the people that need this type of content? Why I call it the most important is because, without it,your goals (What you want to achieve) is meaningless without it. Because when you find the people who find what you share relatable,it helps the whole process interesting and worth it

Even though I don't have formal personas for my social media content, I do try to think of the real people on the other side I'd like to reach - female entrepreneurs, new freelancers, agency strategists - and what they might care about in their day to day. This helps me by giving me a gutcheck on my content. Will the people *I* want to reach engage with this?

Clarity is key. Solve ONE problem for ONE type of audience so that when they think of your 'topic', they think of you first, and most.

Being authentic is advice that is thrown around but what does it actually mean? Is it something you need to try to do or is actually the lack of trying to "be something or someone" that makes you more authentic? Remember there is only one person that has your skills, experience, values and stories. You don't need to copy anyone else. The next step is consistency. The frequency will depend on your goals, strategy and resources but it is important to stay top of mind. So no hot and cold. Slow and steady is what will win this race.

Change your mindset from promotional content to what experience/knowledge can I share that is useful to those I'm trying to reach. For example, I judge an industry awards competition, so I shared what judges are looking for and how to avoid common entry mistakes. While this information is shared in the rules, the LinkedIn post format seemed to appeal to my connections based upon the increased views, reactions and comments. It felt good to be useful.

Be consistent and intentional with creativity, your value will shine like a star propelling you to greatness as you progress in what you love doing.

Think about what’s important both to you to your audience. Consider your values and how you can align them to your target clients. Tell stories in your content that showcase your values and offer your expertise and knowledge. Always consider how you can ask your audience to contribute their views.

Don't try to be all things to all people for a start. Phrases like, "Be true to yourself" are thrown around a lot here, but you'd be much better off being useful to the people you want to reach and influence. One of the best ways you can bring this to life in social is by resisting the urge to focus only on what is happening around your content. What you post is going to reach a fraction of the right audience. It's important, but it's not massively efficient in and of itself. You need to complement your content efforts with a concerted effort to go out and engage with other people's content too. Not just scattergun, lightweight interactions, but targeted conversations in which your expertise and experience can add real value.

I create content pillars / topics for myself: remote work, entrepreneurship, female empowerment. I use these to determine what to post and keep things consistent yet interested. I also rely heavily on Canva to create simple graphics and visuals that mix up the text-heavy content a bit.

Value sharing is very pertinent. The thing is, there'd always be a hunger for value. People have problems they need solution to. Ditch out premium value. The way value works is that it flows by Input. Value is a product of input. It is the input that produces Value. When the input is taken care of, the output becomes more seamless. So focus on the input.

Social media is first of all Social, before any other thing. It's not a one-way platform, so if you wish to get the most out of social media, then you must interact with your community. Create valuable and relatable content in different formats, and engage and interact with your audience.

Post content. Experiment with different content formats and styles. Understand how your audience perceives you. Use different visual media and structure your content well.

How are you harnessing the audience you currently have? Goals & benchmarks are indicators of a desired outcome but are externally varied. Your current audience is an organic one, who chose you from what you presented. Engaging with them may help you to refine the brand you actually are opposed to defining the brand you are 'attempting' to be.

Being dynamic and strategic is the key. Don't limit your self to one thing. You want to put yourself all out and go the extra mile to expand your network and exposure.