Assignment 4


Unit 2: Inbound and Social Media Marketing

Assignment 4

Task 1


Report



The Importance of Personal Branding 

When you have a brand, it’s a promise that you make and are known for keeping to the person who you are asking or trying to influence (Brian Tracy, 2017).

Personal branding is about harnessing the combination of values, actions, skills and experiences that make a person unique. ‘It is directly intended to create an asset and brand equity that pertains to a particular person’ (Karaduman, 2013). A successful personal brand is niche, focusing on one particular area of achievement in order to establish a person as a recognised leader in their field. In an age where social media dominates, opportunity has risen for people to leverage these new, digital platforms to promote themselves as brands at a low-cost. With social media blurring the lines between our personal and professional lives, it has become more important to emphasise an individual’s credibility and authenticity through crafting a personal brand. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an employee, growing a positive and influential personal brand is an important step for anyone who wishes to take control of their business, career or reputation.

How to Use Social Media for Personal Branding

When developing a personal branding strategy, it is important to only push content which reflects your set of values as an individual and your particular area of expertise. This will help you to build trust with the people you are trying to influence. The next important step in order to grow this trust is consistency. Tactically, this means using the same type of images and style of language across all different platforms to ensure that your personal brand appears authentic and unchanging. This also means regularly posting scheduled content, which can be done with the help of second-party apps like Buffer and Hootsuite (Digital Marketing Institute, 2019). Posting content infrequently and sporadically will only lead to disengagement with your personal brand. Tracking mentions of your name on social media, which can be done using tools like Google Alerts, is an effective way to monitor your personal brand. Responding to mentions, by leaving a comment or replying directly to a person, is a good way to build a positive rapport with the online community you are trying to connect with. A third example, is posting content which refers to another influential brand or person or links back to their original content, such as providing the link to another person’s blog or podcast in your tweet. This is a successful way to network with other established brands that share a similar ethos and associate your ideas and content with theirs, which can also attract that brand’s following to you.

Examples of Using Social Media for Personal Branding

Gary Vaynerchuk is someone who has utilised social media to build a successful personal brand. ‘The best personal brands come through authenticity and transparency, and Vaynerchuk has loads of both’ (Tam, 2013). Vaynerchuk maintains a consistent brand identity which always conveys his authentic personality. He does this firstly by having the same username handle, GaryVee, across all platforms, making him easily searchable. He also uses the same style of infographics on each social media platform, which always contain a short, bold clip of text combined with an image or video of himself; as well as, maintaining the same informal and charismatic tone throughout all his communication. Vaynerchuk’s personal branding success also lies in is his ability to recycle and re-edit content to fit the framework of each online channel. For example, Vaynerchuk will take a one minute clip from a longer YouTube video, combine it with a captivating headline, and use this edited content as an Instagram post. Vaynerchuk also saw the potential in his YouTube video content being re-repurposed and reformatted as a podcast, allowing those on-the-go or commuting the opportunity to listen to his content with ease. 

Reference List


Brian Tracy (2017) The Importance of Personal Branding | Brian Tracy [Online], Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3B7OeEHGRo [Accessed 5 August 2019].

Karaduman, I. (2013) ‘The Effect of Social Media on Personal Branding Efforts of Top Level Executives’, Science Direct [Online], 6 November, Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042813039608 [Accessed 4 August 2019].

Digital Marketing Institute (2019) 10 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand on Social Media [Online}, Available at: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/2017-11-09-10-steps-to-building-your-personal-brand-on-social-media [Accessed 4 August 2019].

Tam, T. (2013) ‘How Gary Vaynerchuk Built His Personal Brand’, Radical Marketing [Online}, 30 July, Available at: https://www.radical-marketing.com/gary-vaynerchuk/ [Accessed 1 August 2019].

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Assignment 5

Unit 2: Inbound and Social Media Marketing Assignment 5 Task 2 Script Introduction   From my presentation, I have selected four of the best examples of content marketing that could be used for a travel related website. Recognising examples of best practice is important in order to understand how best to capture the consumer’s attention and drive more sales of your service or product. Comparing these to the other examples that I gathered and analysing their strengths against their weaknesses, is reflective of an important process you can use to develop a successful content marketing strategy. Example One The first example of best practice that I have chosen are the YouTube videos by the Luxury Travel Expert. They use stunning visuals, in both the thumbnail stills and video cinematography to grab the audience’s attention. Not only are these videos professionally shot and well-executed but they have a dreamlike, otherworldly quality which captures t...
Read more

Assignment 3

Unit 2: Inbound and Social Media Marketing Assignment 3 Task 1 Report Introduction This report aims to analyse the inbound marketing strategies of IKEA and MADE.COM. Approach to Inbound Marketing IKEA is a long-established furniture retailer who has developed an effective inbound marketing strategy. One of the first examples of their approach was adding a social sharing component to their 2014 online catalogue (Oyos, 2013). IKEA also created region-based business accounts on Instagram, enabling the company to promote discounts, giveaways and events specific to that area and market. IKEA frequently offers free, ungated content to customers in the form of inspiration boards on Pinterest and their Home Tour video series (Duncan, 2019). It is clear that IKEA recognises the importance of generosity when sharing valuable online content. MADE.COM shares a similar approach by also offering free content in the form of informative blog posts under the topics...
Read more