Instagram has over two billion users. While it’s a common place for any ordinary person to go and interact with their friends, it’s also a great way to build a personal brand.
Instagram influencers exemplify the heights of what personal branding can bring: popularity, a wide network of contacts, brand deals that rake in money, etc.
If you want to become an influencer, you’d do well to wonder how to build a personal brand. Building a brand is the best way to take your social media strategy from socializing with friends to becoming an influencer.
But how exactly does it work? This article will walk you through some social media tips to build a brand.
Define Your Aesthetic
If you want to stand out on Instagram, you have to create and define an aesthetic. Instagram is all about visuals — which visuals do you want to represent your personal brand?
Learning about the basics of color theory is important to understanding your aesthetic. Do you think analogous or complementary color schemes suit you more? If so, which colors are you going to lean towards?
Instagram is most famous for pictures of people. If your brand is built around pictures of yourself, make sure you understand various poses and trends within the world of Instagram. Make sure you line up your clothes with whatever sort of lighting and scenery you have going on.
Not all Instagram aesthetics are based around images of people, however. If you’re a photographer, designer, artist, etc., your aesthetic might be based around objects.
Make sure each of the objects you produce are similar to each other with enough variation to distinguish between them. Light them in a way that showcases your aesthetic, rather than hiding it.
While almost all of your aesthetic on Instagram will be focused on visuals, make sure that your captions fit your aesthetic as well. Are your captions long, explanatory, and descriptive, or shorter and more mysterious?
Figure Out Your Audience
It might be tempting to try to target a broad audience. After all, if you’re trying to amass a large number of followers, why not target the biggest amount of people possible?
However, this is a flawed mode of thinking. Targeting a large number of people with your personal brand is a surefire way to put out content that’s stale, boring, and generic.
Instead, pick a specific subculture and target it. The internet has given birth to many fandoms, communities, and identities. You need to figure out which of these relates closest to what you do.
Appealing to a specific group of people will ensure that your content is clearly defined, unique, and unified in an aesthetic. It will also raise the chances that someone from this community sees your post and really loves it. From here, these people are likely to talk to others in their community and recommend your content.
The internet has allowed people to connect with more people about their niche interests than ever before. By going for something that feels obscure, you might be accessing a network that includes tens of thousands of people.
Once you’ve risen to the top of one subculture, you can look to integrate into others. However, if you come down from the top and try to appeal to multiple at once, you’re going to flop.
Stay Consistent
The only way to make sure that people see your content and get to not just see your content, but recognize you as a brand is to post consistently.
Make timeline posts twice a week, and several story posts every day. This will keep your current fans happy, and make them more likely to share your content with their friends.
Taking a long time between posts can kill your momentum. New people might flock to your page, but then think you’re no longer around because of the lack of posts.
It’s also important to make sure that you get promoted by Instagram’s algorithm. Sometimes, the only way to ensure that this happens is to post as much as possible and hope that one of them gets picked up.
Posting consistently on social media also increases the chance that you’ll pique one person’s interest, and start a social interaction in the comments that can help boost your popularity.
Posting consistently will get you feedback, which you can use to develop your personal brand.
Give Yourself A Boost
However, you can still do all of the above tactics without ever getting off the ground. Instagram is built to promote those who are already successful. If you don’t have a certain amount of likes on your post, you’re not going to reach new followers.
Since it’s hard to see which posts one’s friends like on Instagram, it’s important to work with the algorithm as much as possible. But how does a relatively new brand work with the algorithm?
This is why it’s a good idea to buy yourself real Instagram likes if you’re in a rut. It’s a great way to give yourself the opportunity to communicate to a wider audience. No one will be able to experience your wonderful message and brand if they can’t see it in the first place.
Previous models of advertising were all about paying for a spot. This could be a sport on TV or on a billboard. However, in the world of the 21st century, advertising is much more social.
Many people don’t realize it, but social media advertising is just as much about buying spots as anything else. There’s nothing wrong with buying yourself some likes to get your posts seen. It’s just like older forms of advertising.
Learn How To Build A Personal Brand
Anyone looking to become an Instagram influencer should learn how to build a personal brand. The best way to do this is to define an aesthetic, figure out an audience, post consistently, and boost a bit by buying Instagram likes.
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