How do you approach social media and personal branding as a venture capitalist?

You need to have a defined approach and related content for each of your goals. For example your goals may include expanding your personal brand or firm's brand, expanding your network, or creating leads / deal flow. Then figure out the audiences related to each goal and build content, articles, blogs, podcasts, POV videos, etc. that can go into social posts. Social posts and engagement may be quick, but the benefit of social media is a long game, won through consistency and clarity of focus.

Choosing your goal for your social media presence is vital. What every might be doing as marketers or as VC firms may not be the right way for you. Set aside your messaging, the end result you wish to see. Your goal should ultimately let people know you for the value you add to their lives both on social media as well as a VC firm

IMO.. engagement is key in the long run. I believe the market has solidly landed in a place where engagement comes from pushing the boundaries of transparency and genuineness just like in real life! imagine that! What this means to me in discussing "Audience definition" is it all starts with sharing something of value and pushing your own boundaries of transparency. True brand relationships and subsequently relationships w employees, investors, potential partners, etc.. comes from real people embracing your real message. Focus on the message and the right people will find you. Give first, and you earn the right to ask your relationships to reply to the occasional call to action. Pay it forward and it will come full circle in social

The easiest way is to share valuable insights: Post about trends, data, and strategic perspectives in your industry. Offer practical advice on business growth, innovation, and market shifts, helping establish you as a thought leader. Also, engage authentically: Interact with founders, other investors, and industry experts by commenting on posts, asking insightful questions, and sharing their content. Building authentic connections increases your reach and enhances your reputation.

I’ve been using LinkedIn since I was a practicing physician, and I continue to use it and share experiences, learnings, failures, and encouragement as a VC. There is so much intrigue and interest in venture capital and there is an opportunity to share what it’s like to raise capital, strategically help portfolio companies, invest in underserved founders and why, and the many other things that VC touches. There is an opportunity to build your brand but also an opportunity to shape the expectations and opportunities for our future fund managers.

Being present on social media platforms can not be the total way of increasing audience. What I have understood is every platform has its on goal and audience and thus its vital to build your choice of platforms correctly. As a marketer at a VC firm what worked for us is LinkedIn that helped us reach out both LPs and founders and the idea behind the same was to show that VC firms can be connected through LinkedIn and conversation can be built for investments. But having said that having a strong website, founders LinkedIn, twitter and emailer added wonders to the platform choice for us. Well, twitter is a great way no doubt , but my experience put its as a place that saw lot of changes in the past and building a strategy wasn't helpful.

We have found that LinkedIn is great from a more content creation/curation/personal branding perspective. But from a company and distribution perspective, LinkedIn is far from what we’d need. We’ve gravitated towards substack given it’s ease of use and distribution power/hacks.

There's content, and there's content that builds a parasocial relationship with your audience. The most memorable personal brands are the ones that portray a full fledged character - someone with depth, quirks, and even flaws. With an abundance of content online, the way to cut through is to resonate - to connect with someone on a human level. Personally I inject whimsy and character into my personal brand by interspersing VC / startup content with other things I find fascinating - from linguistic trends and etymology to observations about discourse and culture. Dialogue is also important - and sparking a conversation in your comments section is a great way to increase reach.

Content is the key and any content that build up value in human life matters. At the end its human to human marketing that is big key. If your content brings back someone to talk to you, discover you or even connect with you on social media your job is done. Remember in the world of AI, AI generated content would seem to be any easy fast choice but the drawback is that its not giving you something that is already on present. So build your own voice, create a mix form strategy and work on distribution as well. Also remember to write from your point of view than company, you build the identity to the company as a thought leader. At the end ask yourself, I am solving a question the founders or LPs are looking for and it's not available!

It's important to remember it's called 'social' media for a reason. That reason is because it is about engagement and conversations. Otherwise you're using these channels for PR push messaging.

Social media is a community building platform and your real community is your trustworthy engaging audience.Always remember you are not worth the number of followers you have, you are worth the number of reposts, shares, comments and conversations. Always be quicker in response to comments. Work on distribution as much as content and engage on other company and thought leaders as well. Collaboration is also an amazing way to community creation.

All great points... I would suggest that traditional VC stereotypes are of being fairly stuffy, exclusive clubs, where people feel judged and the power lies on the VC side of the table. Consistent and professional feels a bit too tied to the stereotype for my taste. I would argue that the next generation personality of new and existing VCs will have to be way more approachable, open, human, collaborative and raw. At the end of the day VCs are lucky to have great founders choose them. And I personally believe some of the greatest founder possibilities in the coming years are from emerging markets and from atypical founders.

It takes a village! << -- Is that copywrighted? What I mean is that at Nobody Studios we actively get our message out from everybody in the studio and in all forms without much of a filter. At this point in our journey i'll get on a call with somebody for the first time and it seems like they know our team, me, our vision, our personality, even some of the challenges we've overcome as well as our vision. And I realize now after many of these calls that my new friends are digesting many pieces of content from all of our posters in many forms (LI, TikTok, IG, newsletter, etc). So I encourage you to go fully broad and embrace many forms. Its the best way to attract the right audience (where they are) and forge the right relationships

This I maybe a bit controversial as a statement but I'd love to share it anyway. This quote is from a guest in my podcast (where we interview European VCs): "Personal brand-building for managers has zero to negative correlation with actual fund performance. We have seen this time and time again, emerging managers today are highly focused on personal brand building and establishing social media presence. Interestingly, the actual fund performance of the most vocal fund managers is constantly lower than those managers that are not quite as focused on personal brand building. It is unclear why this is the case and whether its a question of focus - but in our dataset, the strongest managers have the lowest social media activity."

In a recent Entrepreneur piece, I discuss how venture capitalists can leverage their personal business brand — working as a guide to help build trust in the investment crusade. It’s illustrated how through social media core messaging, consistency in communication activities and focused assessments of investments, focus and structure can be put in place to ensure a reputation of strength and knowledge. Your venture capital journey can obtain greater heights when positioned with sound insight and reliable counsel and solid personal and business brand-leadership strategies consistent with the firm's image. See my article in Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/why-a-good-venture-capitalist-has-a-personal-brand/450965