Welcome to our Founders Series, where we aim to give advice, answer questions and provide solutions for people starting their own businesses. If this sounds like you, read on! We've got plenty of content on a wide range of topics, all to help you grow and succeed as a founder.
While our previous blog focused on building your marketing team for business growth, that doesn’t mean you can’t play a hands-on role in how your company is perceived online. This is where your personal brand comes in.
82% of people are more likely to trust a company when their senior executives are active on social media. And by applying strategy to your personal online presence, you can achieve more than just trust – think credibility, differentiation and leads. After all, people follow people.
Unsure how to craft a solid personal brand yourself? Here’s five essential tips to help refine your output and add a sharper edge to your business’ wider marketing strategy…
Carve out what makes you unique
In a crowded marketplace it can be difficult to cut through the noise to differentiate your business. So what’s your most powerful USP? You. Showcase your personal story, the roots of your business, your unique market knowledge – or preferably a combination of all three.
Fasthosts recommends: Guide your approach by tapping back into your current and potential clients’ needs – refer back to your competitor analysis to make sure your output is both valuable and diversified from other founders.
Deliver a consistent experience
Choose one or two platforms that are relevant to your typical audience. Run a B2B business? You might want to pick LinkedIn and craft a marketing email list with communications addressed directly from you. Have a cheeky B2C brand? Get active on Instagram and X. Remember to set an output frequency that is both achievable and consistent, whilst maintaining your TOV across platforms.
Fasthosts recommends: Keep yourself on track with guidelines that establish clear rules for your style, and a content calendar to streamline your efforts.
Engage your audience with the right content
Remember, there’s a human on the other end of your communications. Honesty, authenticity and individuality go a long way to forging meaningful connections. Inject this into relevant industry content by combining your topical commentary with expert opinions and lived experiences that both benefit the reader and add believable value.
Fasthosts recommends: To maximise audience engagement, get the reader involved with a poll or by asking for advice in the comments – and don’t forget to give them a light push towards your business with a genuine call-to-action.
Harness email marketing
Email marketing can be a great way of reaching and nurturing current and potential clients directly. Start building a mailing list by encouraging website visitors and/or service users to provide contact details in exchange for valuable content, directly from the founder.
Remember to package it with an aura of exclusivity so readers won’t want to miss out, i.e. ‘Expert advice and industry insights – completely free’.
Fasthosts recommends: Sign off newsletters with your signature and a picture of yourself, adding a face to the name and a personal touch.
Track, tweak and repeat
To reap the long term rewards from your personal brand you should monitor and measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Again, utilise your marketing team here – analyse social media performance, email engagement rates, newsletter sign ups, PDF downloads and so on. Find out what’s working and what isn’t, tweak it, and then repeat the process.
Fasthosts recommends: Stay attentive to socio-economic changes and market fluctuations too – these can greatly influence what your audience will find value from.
It’s time to tell your story
Ready to showcase the person behind the machine? With a clear understanding of how you want to sound, how you want to be perceived, and why you and your business can benefit your audience, your personal content will almost write itself.
Now for the last piece of the marketing puzzle – building a thriving online community. Find out how in the third (and final) blog in our ‘Optimising Online Presence’ series.
