"I miss seeing YOU in your posts."
Think you can get away with posts that only illustrate your badass expertise?
Think again, folks.
While recently chatting with a keynote speaker, we ended up steering the conversation towards her social media content.
She’s not a newbie to the industry - she’s well established and has a terrific brand that’s been built piece-by-piece over the past 8 years.
For the year or so that I’ve known her on a professional and personal level, she’s been posting image content that reflects her expertise, and been visually punctuating these stories with images of her speaking from the stage.
Although the photos are wonderful, that’s pretty much it.
On several occasions when I’ve run into her at events, I’ve mentioned that although this expertise-driven content she was posting was awesome, and the photos of her speaking from the stage are powerful and a huge piece of the pie, she’s positioning herself in her online content as the superhero authority, with no trace of a personality beyond the work.
All business all the time.
But, every time I’d bring that up, she would brush it off and say that that’s not the intent of her feeds, and that she wants to keep all of the posts in this expertise-driven lane…
...until she finally realized that that was hurting her brand.
During our latest conversation, she mentioned to me that a close friend of hers expressed a very interesting opinion about her most recent social media content:
“I miss seeing YOU in your posts.”
After that comment, it had her re-thinking her entire strategy around the types of posts that she’s sharing online. Now, I could’ve done the whole “I told you so” thing, but I decided that there was no need to grandstand…
...but dammit, I did tell her so - several times - and let the record state that here! :)
Regardless, the point is that regardless of where you are on your business journey or your level of success, don’t forget this very important piece to building a growing community of advocates, referral partners and clients:
When you share your human side with those you serve, that offers them an entry point into your world.
Your human side reminds your audience that despite how much of a rock star you are to them, at the end of the day, you still put your pants on one leg at a time.
By breaking the fourth wall between you and those your serve, you’re giving them permission to know you beyond the work, which is an amazing opportunity for your audience to connect.
This type of connection leads to a heightened sense of rapport, which, ultimately, leads to them trusting you.
Once people trust you and are emotionally invested, that fandom will more likely develop into a paying client, or someone motivated to refer their colleagues to you.
Keep that in mind the next time that you put up your 37th speaker photo in a row on your Instagram feed.
Turning to you…
How comfortable are you creating content that reveals other aspects of your life outside your area of expertise? Do you find it difficult, invasive, or uncomfortable?
I can help you with that.
I have a program dedicated to helping people figure out the stories that they need to share in order to create a memorable and referable online presence.
Want to talk about it?
Set up a time to chat and we can take it from there.