Personal Branding and Social Media

When you start using social media, the first thing you have to do is build your brand. This is about letting people know who you are, your values and your lifestyle. In order to build rapport with your potential customers, you need to let them know who they are really dealing with. They are more interested in knowing about you and whether they like and trust you than your product.

The first thing they might look at is your appearance. They will look at your style. Is it classic and tailored or artistic, smart casual, formal, business-like, elegant, modest, sophisticated, sporty or sexy? Years ago I worked in a GP surgery seeing private clients. I always dressed in suits and tried to be very 'professional'. It wasn't me and I didn't like having a suit and a desk between me and my clients, it felt like a kind of power imbalance that I wasn't comfortable with. I swapped my suits for casual arty clothes and the surgery for my home and my business skyrocketed. What I learned was, that to be successful, I had to be myself. I don't agree that we should try to impress our audience, I believe that we should be authentic. Having said that, it is good to pay attention to colours and what they say and how they make you feel. Blue is about authority, red power, gold success, purple wisdom and spirituality and browns are about being grounded, solid and trustworthy. I know one highly successful designer who wears the most outrageous clothes to stuffy business meetings and she gets noticed and she stands out from the crowd. She gets away with it because she is being true to herself, it wouldn't work for everyone.

The second thing that will come across to people is your self esteem, whether you are online or in person. Or maybe this is the first thing. If you are thinking positive thoughts and have a good sense of yourself, then it doesn't matter what you are wearing or how you look, it will shine through you. Anyway, if you do truly care about yourself, you will choose clothes that look good anyway. Monitor your thoughts and chuck out the negative ones, they are no good for you or your image. Meditation is a good way of connecting with that part of yourself that knows you are ok. A sparkling self image will give you a bigger edge over your customers than any shoulderpads! Sky high self-esteem is contagious too, your prospective customers will be attracted to you if you are empowered!

Your confidence is about what you do, but your self-esteem is about who you are. If you have good self-esteem you won't need to pretend to be confident, and in fact you will be more likely to be able to admit that you are not confident about things that you need more practice or knowledge at. This is ok. People will come to trust you more if you are honest with them and with yourself. If you try to copy someone else it will be evident. Have the courage to be honest. Please don't confuse lying with confidence, lying comes from feeling not good enough and you will soon get caught out.

Lastly, your faith in yourself and your game plan will draw your customers to you.  If you are enthusiastic, positive and motivated, your customers will want to buy some of that too. No matter where you are in your life, you can work on all of these factors that affect how you are seen. Keep mindful and keep working on your image, you are your brand. Think about the qualities in others that would make me want to buy from them.  Then think beyond that.  Ask yourself what the qualities are that would turn you into a loyal customer? They may not be the same. Become that person who has loyal customers, become attractive by staying true to yourself and by loving yourself now. In doing this, you will attract the  kind of customers that you really want.

So ask yourself, what kind of slippers do you want to work in?