Social Branding doesn’t need to be difficult, it starts from some very basic foundations. Gunnar and I drill down to the fundamentals of it to build on. Here’s the transcript of this first part of our conversation…
Francis: Tell us, what are your top tips for a business or a person to improve their social branding?
Gunnar: My top tips are first, about being authentic. As authentic as you can be. But that can be in a way that it’s not showing the perfect way of how you could operate, but rather the most realistic way. And you can hear myself speaking with an accent because I grew up in Germany and moved to Switzerland, worked in the Czech Republic. I have a range of languages that fit into my English, and some small business professionals are even worse when it comes to that. But they build that authenticity based on that. Like Mario Bekes, who was a world record holder for the longest podcast here in Sydney. So he came from Croatia. You hear this? And he has a very strong voice in that sense. But it’s based on this way of his authenticity. He built his personal brand. So be as authentic and real instead of polished and perfect. So that, of course, is one thing.
The second thing is, when it comes to any of the profiles, I take LinkedIn for example, have it above the standard. Those small business professionals who still have below the standard type of profile, which looks like 10, 15 years ago, they will not necessarily be considered because there’s only so many different types of providers. But when this all works well above the standard, like a magnetic type of appearance on LinkedIn, on that sense. Also Facebook, Instagram, that people want to engage with. And it’s paired maybe with a lot of endorsement and recommendations and content that quickly talks about things for the target audience. Then it feels that this is a brand that I like to follow. Because it’s not just the Snapchat moment for the moment, but also over time when you realize you follow someone, most likely you follow a new person. Algorithm gets you this person more often into the feed than anyone else. So over time you will realize that they are really, with a consistent brand. And that’s really what they would like to talk about.
So that makes, that totally makes sense. So first one, be authentic. And second, check all of the others and be above and better than them, which is not so difficult because still, despite 1 billion people being on LinkedIn, there are only about between 1 and 2% actively sharing content on a regular basis. So enough room to stand out. But do it with consistency and consistency doesn’t mean do it never or once per year, but rather something that makes sense for that particular area of interest.
