Personal brand building online: 5 actionable tips for women

Women have a reputation for not being assertive enough, and is apparently why we earn less than men. Whether or not this reasoning is sound, I think there’s a difference between being too shy and not wanting to impose on people.

That’s why I’ve compiled this list of 5 tips to help you with building your online brand without spamming people. If you’re trying to launch your own business, go freelance or just want to raise your personal profile, then this is a great place to begin.

1. Create a Twitter account in a particular niche. and focus your tweets in that area. This could be: #startups, #SEO, #womenintech, #sustainability. Take your pick based on what you’re excited about and run with it! If your account is too broad you’ll find it hard to drum up followers (unless you’re famous!).
2. Keep your online profiles relevant and updated. It’s better to have fewer profiles and keep them current, than to try to be on every platform and risk sacrificing quality. Remember, if you’re a designer then go for visual platforms like Tumblr and Pinterest, if you’re into networking then LinkedIn is your best bet, and lots of writers will be lurking on word-based Twitter.
3. Set up automated social media sharing on your blog (if you have one) for your various channels, to save time when publishing a new post. If you use a user-friendly CMS like WordPress, this should be as easy as clicking a few buttons and filling in your social media accounts to automatically share new posts when they’re published. If you need help setting up your WordPress site there are lots of tutorials online.
4. Schedule in tweets and posts for the future using free software such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or Buffer. Posting regularly is better than once every few days or weeks, and people will be more likely to follow you, but keeping up can be a time suck. Scheduling will allow you to use the time you save more wisely on building your brand in other ways.
5. Give genuine compliments to people online. If you want people to help you build your brand (which I hope you do!) then charm them in the same way that you would in real life. Give people genuine compliments about what they’ve done, or do them a favour and share their work. That way, you will build authentic connections with other likeminded people online, and your “presence” will grow!

I hope you find these tips help you to build your online brand. If you need someone to write blog posts for you or your company, I can help. Drop me a line to discuss how we can work together.

Image: Abigail Keenan, Unsplashed