Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
I lost count on how many personal brand and branding “gurus” populate Instagram and other social media platforms these days. It’s out of control.
I am not saying by any stretch of the imagination that brands are not important or that there aren’t any serious and good professionals in the world of branding. I work in brand strategy and with brands.
I just happen to think that the vast majority of the “expert advice” out there, which tells you to be a content creation machine and hustle until you get people’s attention, is plain wrong.
Here is just a short analogy with the objective of putting on the table some “food for thought.”
How many times have you seen Robert De Niro on social media? How many times have you seen Keanu Reeves on social media? Ok, and Christian Bale? Ah, I see, not much.
And Daniel Day-Lewis? What did you say? Even less? Correct.
I am already hearing someone out there saying that these actors do appear on social networks because of the photos and videos other people take of them but they do not appear much on social media, of their own will, because they are not young.
Alright. And how many times have you seen Scarlett Johansson on social media? (Posting herself or her agent/manager posting for her, not photos and videos taken by other people). Right, I thought so.
Hopefully, we are on the same page here when I say that the aforementioned actors are within the best ones in the world. Yes, they are famous, but you most likely know them because of the work they have done in the past. Their indirect presence on social media, and media in general, is a consequence of their actual success at work.
Look, the best personal branding of any professional is his or her own work.
That simple. If you’re really good at your job, in your sector, industry, and profession, just do the job. Show what you know or can do. If your work has to do with a service, for example, help others in real life over and over again and you will see what will happen in time.
Play your strengths. Focus on your strength. That’s your best personal brand.
Don’t have any specific area of strength or specialty? Train! Study! Practice! Experiment!
Develop that strength and specialty.
But listen, dedicating yourself to appear more and more on social media is not going to make you a better professional.
I hear you, yes, there are very talented actors that are also directly on social media, meaning, they have their accounts and they regularly post. No one is implying that if an actor has social media accounts and uses them, they are poor professionals. These are not mutually exclusive events.
It is curious; however, that many of the ones who have accrued several sought-after industry awards and accolades are the ones who, generally speaking, focus the majority of their time on being the best in their trade, honing their talent and skills for the next job.
“But what about the many that achieve fame without being great at what they do?”, you may ask. There are plenty of reasons why that happens, it’s not that trivial and linear. Anyway, this is not an in-depth analysis on fame acquisition; however, if building a serious and respected personal brand is not your objective and you only want notoriety and “fame,” just make as much noise as you can, create sensationalist and controversial content for no reason. Scandals will be your best friends. There you go, “#instafamous” instantaneously. P.S. no brains or real talent needed…just saying, not that it was asked.
Of course, you need to have a brand strategy in place if you are planning on developing a serious and consistent brand over time, but that does not mean you will build your brand by working every day on “branding.” Your personal brand will get built by making your work better tomorrow than it is today.
Going back to our analogy and to finalize, do you have any idea how much time and effort Daniel Day-Lewis and/or Christian Bale put in, or have put in, to prepare for any of their characters and roles?
How much time and effort do you put into reading, studying, researching, and practicing?
Ok, therein lies the answer to many of your questions.
So, where to focus that personal brand that you want to consistently build? Hopefully, we now know where…and what it takes.
