Having a personal brand sometimes feels like your life is free gain. It can feel like you have to trade your privacy for the sake of appearing authentic and available online.
Giving up every little part of you has nothing to do with building a strategic personal brand. That's not at all what I mean when I say "less of them, more of you", or when I ask you to be who you are. It simply means allowing your personality to shine through in whatever you say and do.
It's about speaking from the heart about the things you're passionate about. It's certainly not about sharing anything and everything you're uncomfortable with sharing.
So how do you maintain that boundary? How do you walk that line between authenticity and privacy?
The most obvious step is to actually define those boundaries.
Think about everything that might come up in your social media journey. This might be the obvious - questions over sharing babies and children, talking about arguments with your partner, or discussing illness and death in the family.
How will you address those things? Do you have a hard and fast rule, or will you give yourself the grace to decide on a case-by-case basis?
Plenty of people choose to never show their children's faces. I personally never discuss my family or my relationships, beyond acknowledging birthdays and anniversaries. For me, it was my choice to live a semi-public life, not theirs.
The less obvious might be questions about your process or your sources, or how you create your products. There is a line between sharing knowledge and giving up trade secrets to potential competitors. Do you know what your line is?
I'm more than happy to share thoughts I have about creating content for example; the actual steps involved in my Soulful Brand Experience? Well, you'll have to pay for that privilege, of course!
This boundary not only keeps your business safe, and maintains your privacy, but it also means you can stop trading knowledge for followers. Remember, educating isn't the only way to add value, after all.
Most importantly, is to remember that, as my lovely friend Rubbi at Wild and Form Digital says, you control social media, not the other way around.
At the end of the day, whether you have a personal brand or not, you get to make the final call about what is and isn’t made public. You actually don’t owe your audience anything!
Until next time, be kind to yourself and create something remarkable!
Laura x
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