Was talking to a close friend about getting started on social media as a solopreneur recently.
Basically, they’re in the process of starting a business and want to get their solopreneur marketing efforts going.
They’ve been following me on LinkedIn and Tiktok, and seeing some of the benefits it can bring (clients, leads, partnerships, friends, etc.).
As you know, I preach to anyone and everyone how beneficial it can be to build a personal brand online. Not only super valuable for a business, but really for anything.
Think of it this way.
Right now you might be trying to start a new solopreneur business. Or working in a corporate job. Or trying to build a community.
But you won’t always be.
Yes a good presence online can help you right now – and you can also bring your following/personal brand wherever you may go in the future too!
Maybe you get a new job in a new industry, or sell your business to start a new one, or who the heck knows what.
If you have 10k+ followers on LinkedIn, or Tiktok, or wherever, you can leverage it no matter what – for that new biz, or job, or anything.
That, I think, is the biggest reason to start/grow a personal brand. Yes, it will benefit you now, but it will also compound and grow and help you in anything and everything you do down the road too.
Quick semi-related example: when I first started Visto, we were in the b2c space (business to consumer – as opposed to b2b (business to business)). We built our brand and my following in that b2c space. Three pivots later, and now we’re back to a point where we’re doing some selling b2c, and I can leverage that b2c following I have on social media again.
Boy am I happy I never stopped posting content!
You get my point.
Just get out there, start creating some basic content, and I guarantee you’ll reap some rewards.
This week I also got lucky and snuck myself into an interesting webinar hosted by Immigration Canada.
As you know, I’m a Canadian immigration lawyer and sometimes the government runs these sessions to try and get feedback from the public to help design new programs.
A friend of mine works at a big organization that got some invites, and she snuck me onto the list.
Pretty sweet.
The problem is that Immigration Canada (otherwise known as IRCC) has been pretty useless over the last few years.
They’re the only organization I know of that’s still lagging behind and blaming Covid for it…
Anyway, one of my biggest problems with them is that nothing they do is consistent or reliable. At least not in the last few years.
Random program updates, bad tech, slow processing times, inconsistent messaging.
It sucks, especially for the aspiring immigrants and their lawyers trying to help them navigate the process.
It’s the opposite of what I preach to people who ask me about creating content online.
Which is to provide value, and be consistent.
Very few people build big audiences overnight, because it’s very hard to go viral and also hard to keep all of those newfound followers engaged if you do go viral.
The safer, more reliable way is to post. content. consistently.
A slow build of reliable content that people like and come back for more.
Think about it like this: let’s pretend that every time you posted on LinkedIn, you’d get 1 new follower. Just go with me on this one.
1 post = 1 new follower.
If you post once a month, it’s going to take a damn long time to get a significant number of followers.
But if you post once a day, you’re going to grow your following much quicker. So why don’t more people post more often, or at least often enough?
If you don’t post, how are people going to find you and your awesome work?
Like most things in solopreneurship, if you don’t go take action on it, it probably won’t happen on its own.
Have a great day, don’t miss out on my awesome daily updates and solopreneur tips here, and keep grinding.