How to Get Started on a Personal Brand

"Everybody is a recruiter."

I heard this phrase twice this week, so it's worth paying attention to how we communicate about what we do, where we work, and who we are.

At a recent event by a cohort learning startup Junto ( Earlybird Venture Capital -backed ?? ), mega social-media influencers + business angels Céline Flores Willers and Diana Zur L?wen shared the power of personal brand with a growing community of active learners.

Here are Céline and Diana's top tips, packaged for you to go. ??

How do you tackle getting started? ??

• Find 3-4 niche topics you are interested in and consider whom you want to reach.
• Think about whom you want to be in a few years, perhaps an expert in a specific topic, and build towards that.

How do you spread the word about your company? ??

• Encourage your staff to be 'informal ambassadors' and share their experience of your company's culture.
• Doing so on LinkedIn is powerful since it is a 24/7 source of great talent.
• Make your?team?more visible and give them the spotlight and speaking opportunities.
• If you work on a great product, then personal brand is just an add-on!

What about approaches to networking? ??

• When meeting someone who mentions your company or applies,?ask how they found out about you. Stay curious.
• Start by creating a network through social media. Share who you are, what you achieved, and are proud of. Sending invites on LinkedIn works better without a message, according to their research.
• Since you put in the effort (i.e. Content is Queen!) it is more fun to have it seen by many, but remember to actually engage with the responses.

How about the technical aspects? ??

• Don't sweat the details on cadence: it's pretty simple to achieve results, based on their OMR research. Basically, 2-3 posts per week with topic-relevant hashtags suffice, provided you share something meaningful, on-point, and with a visual.
• Doesn’t matter if it goes viral: mix text, story, and topic. Learn by posting and then tweak what you do.?

What the heck to post?

• If you get stuck, go back and work on your strategy and topic definition which takes more work.
• Keep a constant creative flow, connect with other creators, and start a WhatsApp group to get cheered and inspired. Pay attention to politics and current events; connect your content intelligently to that, if appropriate.
• Have a portfolio of suitable pictures on hand; ideally, take professional pictures but fine to use a relaxed one when conveying more raw emotions or contrast 2 pics side-by-side.
• Use good headlines. Relieve pressure on yourself; posting once a week is enough and take the time to restructure your overall content.
• Make sure to add a CTA (call to action): what do you want your reader to actually do?!

?? Good luck! Check out Junto, these two awesome content leaders, and read more from me on Medium or connect with me here on Linkedin. ??

Thanks to Paul Klemm and Marius Hepp & team for the invitation to attend!