Personal Branding Done Right – AMA with Sam Downs
Sam Downs is the President of SLD and Company. She was named as one of the LinkedIn top voices for 2019. Sam helps businesses with content strategies, people who understand the importance of building a personal brand online. She is a customer acquisition and engagement specialist.
Personal branding is the art of differentiation. It is how you differentiate yourself from others.
For example, “Pam wanted to create content, but she was very intimidated by an up-and-coming platform called LinkedIn. Now, as soon as she got out of her comfort zone and started to create content like sales tip videos. But the best part of her was her personality and truth be told that was missing in her content. She was very scripted, like a robotic sales call. Once she stopped using the script, she started to show her personality. She was funny, authentic, confident, and eccentric. Once she began to showcase her real personality, her content and her following blew up overnight.
That Pam is me in the third person.“
Your brand is more than just your appearance. Many people think it’s like your glasses, the cool hat that you wear at work, your fonts and colors, and various other things. Yes, that does have a factor in it, but your brand is what makes you tick. It’s about you.
Breaking Down Personal branding
There are 3 major entities that define your brand:
- Your core values: Three things define your brand and from a moral standpoint as well. What do you want people to remember you?
- I want people to know that I’m real and genuine. I talk about real-life things that have happened in my past, what defines me as a person, and what makes me tick.
- What do you want the people to know you for? I want people to know me for being helpful to others and take that initiative because that’s what I love to do.
- A judgment-free zone: My inbox, my comment section, everything is open. Because I’ve made committed many mistakes throughout my life, I want people to know that they can be you know they can share their personal stories with me.
- I want people to know that I’m real and genuine. I talk about real-life things that have happened in my past, what defines me as a person, and what makes me tick.
- Your uniqueness: I want you to ask yourself, “what makes me different?” and express that uniqueness. You have your share of experiences, your past, and the challenges that have made you who you are today. Talk about that. You know you have failed in life, yet you’ve turned them into real-life lessons and implemented those learnings. You know you are funny, quirky, and creative. Express it and follow your uniqueness throughout your content. To truly stand out and set yourself apart from the rest.
- The company you work for and a product and service that you sell: If you own your own business, you kind of learn the lines here between personal branding and company branding. But it has a lot to do with one another. The reason is that when you’re selling a product or working for a company, people will associate your brand with that company and the product.
You’re selling it’s just how it is, especially if you have it plastered all over your LinkedIn. All that good stuff, so ask yourself does the company you work for has a bad reputation in the market, and you don’t want to be associated with them. Then having maybe not now but having an exit plan is probably the best thing for you.
You sell and endorse a product that you don’t believe in. That’s huge, and if your company and your values are to provide impeccable customer service, then you have to follow through with your commitments to your clients. In the age of social media, the consumer has much power in the market. Therefore, one bad experience can affect your brand and your company’s brand. So, you need to know and believe in the product you’re selling. You also have to stand by your company’s values and build a good reputation.
In that sense, so implement these three points while you’re putting yourself out there. You know you’re building a community. There was a time that we did not mix business and pleasure in personal life. It was us who didn’t do it. We only really celebrated our wins and not our past failures. We were fake. Content should make sense, and today we consume differently. We consume based on emotion because we are all humans. We long for real connections.
What real people want is authenticity. To be truly authentic is not to be like the rest; just celebrate what makes you unique. Your followers will genuinely get to know you. When people watch my content, they genuinely get to know me as a person. It is how you place your unique footprint on a personal brand.
AMA with SAM Downs
The following is excerpts from the AMA session with Sam.
Do you schedule your posts?
I free schedule. Yes, if you are trying to do it from a company standpoint, then yes, I would preschedule my posts. But, for me on my page, I like to just whatever is on my mind whenever I feel like for that day. That’s what I put out there. Maybe I’ll have an idea or a topic for the next few days. But I like to be a freestyler because it comes sincerely.
How do you measure the effectiveness of your personal brand online?
It depends on what your long-term goals are. But especially on LinkedIn, they have great analytics tools like the inside of the platform that helps you measure your views, comments, and other metrics. Having excellent comments to like ratio is a great way to track your metrics and to see what people are engaging with and what people like.
How can one blend both online and offline activities to build a personal brand?
The thing is maintaining your core values, uniqueness, and the brand with which you are associated. You have to walk the talk. You have to portray that online and offline. Then when people come up to you, and they start to know you, they already know what you stand for, and it’s like more of a more comfortable introduction.
When you’re trying to help them so is it essential to have a personal brand website or not at all?
If you want, you can do other platforms, but I don’t think so. I ran a business for almost three months without even a website. So it doesn’t matter because if you’re effectively putting out content on platforms that you’re focused on. You don’t need a website.
How do you build a brand from scratch where you put valuable content every day in the community? Any lessons that you have learned in your journey?
I was very scripted at first. I would try to plan out every single word that I would say literally. Once I stopped doing that and by just being myself and let it just roll and go with the flow. Then I started getting a better following. People began to know me. While building your brand from scratch is think of three things, i.e., identify your core values, your uniqueness, and your offering.
How important is it to stick to your niche, or can you just talk about anything you feel like without affecting your plan?
Barring socio-political issues obviously yeah, of course. I’m not about niches. If you are on a platform for a particular reason with a single goal in mind, then it is okay. But if you want just to build genuine relationships, I don’t see a problem of you know sticking off the script and going off-script in talking about sales, travel, sports. If really whatever you want to talk about, you should be free to talk about, of course.
How can I make my character reflect in my writing?
Most often, I feel like they lack emotion, or they are overexposed. Better to have a mix of words and emojis. So I think if you just do it in a friendly easy to read format people to like it. Too much of emojis and other makes it unprofessional. It becomes unappealing to the eye. So, just try to format it like how we would see it like a blog post or an article. Just try to let it flow. Short sentences, right spacing, and make your points clear.
What do you think about Instagram as a platform for personal branding? Is it way too informal?
It depends on your goals. If you’re just trying to put yourself out there on the internet for fame and maybe just become a brand ambassador along the way. Then, possibly Instagram would be a great one to focus on, but if you want to generate leads and you want to build like professional relationships, I would stick to LinkedIn and other platforms, of course. But, Instagram is a hard one to decipher unless I don’t know who that person is personally.
An average executive profile is different from a high-level CXO level executives profile. What personal branding strategy will you follow?
It’s a certain level at C-level executives that will be different. But, what I’m talking about like an average person’s, they will not be able to share each and everything daily. I will try to separate myself. For example, if Bill Gates is trying to create a personal brand, we all know that he works for Microsoft. So that’s already clear, but I think once he separates himself from the company and just tries to showcase his personality and what he stands for personally. Then that is key and building a personal brand. It separates yourself even though corporate branding goes hand in hand with your branding. You have seen their business and their brand separately.
Is Linkedin the only available platform for building authenticate personal brands, or are there other possible better platforms that are still available for personal branding?
I said with your goals in mind for me, it was LinkedIn, but for other people, maybe YouTube, Tik-Tok, Instagram, Facebook, and various other platforms. But if you’re really in the b2b space, I would try to focus on LinkedIn. Then, just try to focus on getting the hang of it. Whatever is giving you the most results because I would stick with that one and recycle through your content.
