How to use social media to build your personal brand

How SME leaders can use social media to build trust, show up consistently, and turn visibility into business value

The relationship between brands and their customers has changed over the last decade or so. There is now an expectation from customers to see the face behind the logo. A quality product is only half of what consumers buy, they also want to know what the face behind the logo stands for. 

If done well, a strong personal brand is a great way to build genuine connections with a target audience, ensure customer loyalty, and provide business opportunities beyond the confines of the original business. 

Although you might attract hundreds, thousands, or even millions of followers, personal branding on social media isn’t about being famous (e.g., a meme account); it’s about providing value in relation to a product or service.  

Here are some tips for how to use social media to grow your personal brand.  

Choose your platforms 

With so many social media platforms, it can be tempting to use them all, but you don’t necessarily need to. Think about what you’re trying to achieve and the type of content you want to post as some platforms focus on specific formats. Critically, always focus on the platforms where your target audience hangs out. Otherwise, you’re just posting for likes. 

Leadership coach Romain Muhammad, who has a following of over 33,000 on Instagram, says: ‘Where you post depends on your purpose, what you’re trying to achieve, and the demographics you’re trying to reach. 

‘Personally, my core platforms are Instagram, TikTok, YouTube for long-form, LinkedIn, and Substack. I do cross-post from Instagram to Facebook because the audience is there and the effort is minimal, but I’m not building natively for Facebook.  

‘X is somewhere I’ve just never really been. It never felt like the right environment for the kind of conversation I want to have, so I’ve never forced it. And I think that’s important.  

‘Don’t be on a platform you hate just because someone told you to. You need to be somewhere you can actually show up authentically. Know who you’re talking to, find out where they spend their attention, and commit to that. One platform done brilliantly will always beat five done inconsistently.’  

Have a content plan 

Showing up regularly is vital to growing a personal brand on social media. Consistent posting beats occasional viral posts and you’ll improve your trust, reputation, and credibility through regular content that your audience can connect and resonate with.  

Post a range of content to grow different elements of your personal brand. Examples include: 

• Educational content to build authority: how-to guides, tips, and templates. 
• Story content to build connections: behind the scenes, your business journey, your failures, successes, and challenges. 
• Opinion content to build recognition: industry observations, predictions, thought leadership, and trends. 
• Community content to build relationships: questions, discussions, polls, and surveys. 

Have a plan for your content to keep on track, stay consistent, and make sure it happens. You could dedicate certain days to specific types of content. For example, educational posts on Mondays, behind the scenes videos on Tuesdays, community questions on Wednesdays, and so on.  

Repetition of content is important for reinforcing your message. ‘Don’t assume you’ll get any views or engagement the first time you do anything,’ advises Melissa Blackwood, founder of The Skate Sanctuary. ‘Not everyone will see every post so assume you need to share the same thing many times.’ 

Fight the fear of video 

Video is a powerful content format on social media. Studies show that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it on video, compared to 10% when reading text, so posting videos can be an effective way to grow your personal brand. 

Some of those with the strongest personal brands post videos of themselves talking directly into the camera. For many people though, this is a scary prospect and they struggle to get over the fear of doing it.  

Romain Muhammad regularly posts these types of videos which attract thousands of views. Asked for his advice on getting over the fear of posting them, he says: ‘You just have to post. Record it, post it, and don’t listen back. Don’t watch it back. Just put it out. Because if you watch it back when you’re still in that place of fear and self-consciousness, you will find a hundred reasons not to post it. And that’s the trap. It’s like a mountain.  

‘Once you get over the cringe factor, once you get over the fear of judgement and what people will think or say, you’re good. That’s it. That’s the whole secret. The fear doesn’t go away because you prepare more or because your lighting improves. It goes away because you post enough times that you stop caring.’ 

Melissa Blackwood also posts videos talking directly into the camera. She agrees that ‘speaking into the camera is difficult’ but says “it gets easier with practice”’. To help, she imagines she’s having a conversation with one individual. ‘I aim to speak to one person about one thing with one solution.’    

Track the right metrics 

You might be picking up lots of followers, but is that really making a difference to your business and your personal brand? 

To measure whether your social media activity is working, focus on statistics that demonstrate your content is resonating with the people you want to reach.  

Romain Muhammad says many people track the wrong things on social media.  

‘Follower count tells you almost nothing useful on its own,’ he advises. ‘The metrics that actually matter start with reach on your best content, because that tells you what your ideas are worth to the algorithm and to new audiences.  

‘Watch time is critical, especially on video. If people are dropping off in the first three seconds, the content isn’t landing. Reposts and reshares tell you whether someone valued your content enough to put their name behind it and share it with their own audience.  

‘Comments, genuine ones where people are actually engaging with what you said and not just leaving an emoji, tell you whether you’re starting a real conversation. And then there’s audience breakdown and demographic segmentation, which a lot of people overlook.  

‘Knowing exactly who is watching you, their age range, where they’re based, and how they found you tells you whether you’re actually reaching your target audience or accidentally building one you can’t monetise.  

‘Ultimately, the metric that ties all of this together is conversion. Can you trace the journey from someone engaging with content to becoming a client? If you can, you understand the commercial value of your content.’  

To find the data to track, social media platforms provide analytics although you might need to pay to get full access. You can also use tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Social Status.   

Mistakes to avoid 

Romain Muhammad shares common mistakes to avoid when building a personal brand on social media: 

• Not having clarity in your positioning, goals, ideal client, who you’re talking to, and your message. Without that, everything else is just noise. You can post every day, have great production quality, hit every trend, and still build nothing, because nobody knows what you stand for or who you’re for.  
• Trying to be for everyone. If your content could belong to anyone, it belongs to no one.  
• Inconsistency. Not just because the algorithm punishes it, but because inconsistency signals that you don’t fully believe in what you’re building yet. People can feel that.  
• Waiting for perfection before posting. Your brand is built in public. It’s meant to evolve. The people who win on social media aren’t the ones with the most polished captions or the best lighting. They’re the ones who showed up, said something real, and kept going.  

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