The Best Advice for Building A Personal Brand as A Small Business Owner

Some small business owners don’t want to be the face of their company because they worry it will hurt their ability to sell it later on down the line. But as a fine, old Southern gentleman once said to me, “You don’t not buy a dog because you know you’ll outlive him.”

If you’re planning on selling next year, I understand the hesitancy but if your business sale is years away, it’s time to start thinking about your personal brand.

Why You Need a Personal Brand

A personal brand helps you stand out from all the noise because you’re putting a human face on your business. Here’s what you’re competing with:

• Facebook has 1.71 billion active monthly users (yes, that billion with a B) and 1.13 billion daily active users
• There are 77 million Instagram users in the US
• There are 400 million users on LinkedIn
• YouTube has 1 billion active monthly users
• Reddit boasts 36 million user accounts
• Twitter has 313 million active users, with another 500 million that don’t log in each month. The total number of users is 1.3 billion.

Facebook alone receives 4.5 billion likes a day. If you love live data, check out how many tweets are posted daily. And that’s just the two big sites. If you want to get noticed and stay top-of-mind, you need to make an impression and here’s how to do it:

Blog the Good Blog

Establish your voice by creating a company blog. Share personal stories and tie them into business or industry wisdom. Connect with people and invite them to connect with you.  Build an audience by writing about things your audience finds helpful and cares about.

Comment on Other Blogs

“Blogmenting” or commenting on blogs can help you share your knowledge and lend support to other bloggers. Select blogs that are popular with your ideal customer. Don’t plug in sales pitches or turn the conversation to your blog. Look for ways to be helpful.

Guest Blog

This works the same way commenting does but gives you more of a spotlight. Again, the key here is to be helpful, not salesy. Here’s some advice on how you can find the best opportunities.

Participate on Quora, mosaicHUB, and other Question and Answer Sites

Question and answer sites help you assist other people by answering their questions and showing off your expertise. Always be transparent about your affiliations and your company. For instance, if someone is on Quora asking about the best small company in your town, don’t answer without disclosing you work there or own it. People will appreciate the transparency.

Create Weekly Tips

If you’re not a blogger this is a really easy one to do because it takes minutes. You can create weekly tips in a quick audio file, video, or image quote. Share them across social media using hashtags and measure your reach. Watch what topics resonate most with your audience.

Publish to LinkedIn, Medium, or Huffington Post

These are big blogging platforms now with large audiences and even the Huffington Post has now opened up to nearly anyone interested in blogging for them. The beauty of these sites is that they get a lot of eyes and there are people out there who will be very impressed that you post there, but ignore them. You’re doing this to share your wisdom and be helpful to your ideal customers. Keep that in mind.

A Final Word on Improving Your Personal Brand

These suggestions are great for getting your experience and message out there but they won’t do you any good if you don’t optimize your content for search engines and concentrate on building an audience. Use social media to share and promote but don’t go overboard on your own self-promotion. Before posting ask if you’re being helpful to your ideal customer. Finally, as you build an audience find ways to engage them through things that keep you connected like content giveaways or an option to sign-up for your newsletter.

Statistic Sources:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-social-media-facts-statistics-know-2016/

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-numbers-a-few-amazing-twitter-stats/

https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/

Christina R. Green teaches small businesses, chambers, and associations how to connect through content. Her articles have appeared in the Associations North (formerly Midwest Society of Association Executives’) Magazine, NTEN.org, AssociationTech, and Socialfish. She is a regular blogger at Frankjkenny.com and the Event Manager Blog.

She’s a bookish writer on a quest to bring great storytelling to organizations everywhere.