As an agency owner, you’re constantly on the hunt for ways to promote your services.
You already have an all-singing, all-dancing agency website and regularly populate your agency’s social channels with helpful content every week, but you know that prospects today crave a human connection.
image source: Twitter
This is where growing your personal brand comes into play. Putting a face to your agency can help develop deeper client connections, build credibility and trust, raise brand awareness, and secure loyalty - what’s not to like?
In this blog, we’ll explore how you can create a personal brand to promote your agency on social media from scratch. But before diving into the article, make sure to check out our video with agency owner Desiree Martinez on how to grow your agency with personal branding on YouTube.
While it can seem daunting putting yourself out there, the benefits of growing a personal brand on social media far outweigh the negatives.
image source: Twitter
As highlighted in Jessie’s Tweet above, building a personal brand can:
Here’s the thing. According to Nielson, only 33% of buyers trust messages from a company while almost 90% of customers trust recommendations from someone they know.
When you become a credible part of the community, clients will instantly have an increased level of trust for you and will be more likely to book your services over another anonymous agency.
Building a brand from scratch is difficult. However, building a personal brand from scratch is often slightly easier because you already have a few crucial details ironed out: namely, your personality and the “image” of your brand (hint: it’s you!).
First things first, you need to set up your profile on the social channels you want to use. While you don’t have to go all out with fancy branding, it does help to have a few professional elements up your sleeve. For this part, you need to think about:
Your profile picture
It might be a scary thought, but using your face as your profile picture will help clients connect with you. We’re far more likely to resonate and feel drawn to another human over a logo or a generic picture.
Ideally, your profile picture should:
For example, Hannah Nieves's Instagram profile picture is clear, professional, and bright.
Your bio
On most social channels you have a very limited amount of space to make an impression. So, it’s important to nail your bio so that you can reach the right people and effectively demonstrate who you are in as few words as possible.
When writing your personal social media bio, consider:
Once you’ve secured your personal profiles and polished them up with a professional picture and an engaging bio, it’s time to think about what you’re going to share content about.
Think about:
Answering these questions will reveal some key topic areas that you’re most knowledgeable on (and that you enjoy). By keeping the topics you write about on social media to a minimum, you have more chance of becoming an expert in that area.
Tina Walczak regularly posts tips for creatives.
image source: Instagram
The type of content you promote will be different from your agency content because it’s coming from you as a person. While your agency's social profiles might share your company’s latest blog post or an update from the team, you might share more personal things from your own channels.
Content types you might consider include:
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image source: Facebook
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image source: Instagram
Your personal branding doesn’t need to be as polished as your agency branding (the main selling point is you), but it can help to have a cohesive design in place to make sure you’re consistent across all channels and are recognisable in multiple different places.
Having personal brand colours and graphic elements will help instil trust and will go a long way in making you a go-to expert.
Tyler Narducci uses a distinct colour scheme on his personal social channels. Above is his Twitter profile and below is his branded Instagram page.
Consistency is key, even if you’re posting from a personal account. People will expect you to show up in their feeds and they’ll come to look forward to your posts if you do it right.
Once you’ve decided on the type of content you want to focus on, you can map out what, when, and where you’ll post each week.
Your schedule might look something like this:
Not only does creating a schedule hold you accountable, but it also makes it far easier to create content. Instead of scrabbling around every Monday because you “need to post something in the next hour”, you can build out content in advance and schedule it using a social media scheduling tool like Sendible.
image source: Twitter
Now you’ve got your accounts set up and a schedule in place, it’s time to focus on growing your following and generating engagement on your social channels.
Here are some top tips to get you started:
Don’t try to be everywhere at once. Instead, choose your top 2-3 channels and dominate those. Start by identifying the platforms you’re already getting engagement on or that your ideal clients are hanging out on and focus on those. You can always branch out to more channels once you’ve established a presence on a couple.
Surround yourself with like-minded people and follow other experts in your industry. You’ll be able to see the kind of content they’re sharing, which will reveal trends and the interests your target audience might have. Even the most prominent experts like Neil Patel choose to follow others:
As well as posting personal stories and your own content, share content created by others. This is a great way to get on the radar of influencers and experts and expand your reach. Make yourself stand out by adding your own personal touch to the content you share, like your own opinion, or a word of congratulations.
Here's an example of Shane Cicero tweeting a resource put together by another expert in the field.
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Engagement fosters engagement. Make your followers feel special and heard by responding to the comments and replies they leave you. Not only does this spark exciting conversations, but it can also broaden your reach as your comments will show up in the feeds of their own followers.
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Emma Barrera makes a habit of replying to comments on her Instagram posts.
Experiment with sharing different kinds of content and see what works best with your followers. Try videos, photos, Stories, threads, and links to content. Dig into your metrics to find out what kind of posts get the most engagement and make sure you post more of that.
Not all social media platforms are equal, and some content performs better on some than others. For example, videos have a higher average engagement rate than images and links on Facebook, while Twitter users are predominantly there to keep up with the news and latest trends in their favourite industries.
Instead of sharing the same things to each platform, think about repurposing content into different formats for each channel. For example, you might turn a Live Q&A into:
Don’t be afraid to get personal (this is your personal brand, after all!). Share videos that include your face and publish your own personal thoughts to separate you from your agency. Make sure you’re comfortable with your thoughts and opinions being connected with your agency, though!
Megan Grant’s Instagram page is full of Reels and videos that show her face.
The most successful personal brands make it very clear that they’re also agency owners. Make sure your followers know about your agency and that you are the person running it. This makes them far more likely to hire you for your services and recommend you to people who are looking for an agency like yours.
Chris Donnelly makes it clear that he’s the founder of Verb Brands in his Twitter bio.
Agency owners understand the need for a personal connection with clients - consumers today want to put a face to a brand, and will often only invest in brands that they feel a connection with.
Personal branding is the perfect way to do this. It helps you establish trust and build relationships with prospects and existing clients while building your expertise in your industry.
Grow your personal brand with our library of resources and templates for agency owners.
Leverage Sendible’s extensive integrations to create, schedule, publish, and engage with your posts seamlessly.
