119: {Solo} 5 Reasons Why You Need a Strategy

Are you interested in building your personal brand and business on social media? If so, you are going to need a strategy to be set up for success. If you don't have a strategy, you might as well be throwing spaghetti against the wall. 

In this conversation, I emphasize the critical role of strategy in building a personal brand and growing a business. I discuss the importance of consistency in content creation, engaging with others, and establishing oneself as an expert in a specific field. I share my personal experience and insights on how to effectively use social media platforms like LinkedIn to connect with audiences and foster relationships that can lead to business opportunities.

takeaways

• You need a strategy first and foremost
• If you don't have a strategy, it's not gonna work
• Being consistent is key
• Engagement leads to more engagement
• The law of reciprocity exists in a very big way
• Focus on one topic that you're the expert at
• Don't think you have to have it all figured out
• Start showing up consistently
• Use scheduling tools to maintain consistency

And have fun with it too! Don't forget to subscribe and share! Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Caroline Pennington (00:01.656)
Today I wanna talk about something that has been, I'm fired up right now about, and that is my favorite S word, which is the word strategy. So if you are deciding to start your personal brand, your business, you wanna grow your business, you need a strategy first. So whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, wherever you wanna start showing up, start growing your business and growing your personal brand, you need a strategy first. If you don't have a strategy, it's not gonna work.

you're gonna experience burnout, you're gonna start sitting in there looking at the screen and saying, okay, what do I have to say today? And it's not gonna work. So if you don't have a strategy, you're not setting yourself up for success. That's the biggest regret and mistake I made when I started this journey two years ago, is I didn't have a strategy. So a couple things that will help you build out a strategy are number one, you need to be consistent. For me on LinkedIn, that looked like Monday through Friday,

8 a.m. I was showing up on LinkedIn. So for me, anything that you see of mine on LinkedIn is pre-scheduled. Saturday mornings, I typically have the creative juices flowing and I have the time to sit down for one hour and create content scheduled out for the upcoming week. So whatever it looks like for you, I would highly encourage you to do that. Maybe in the mornings when you have silence, no kids, no dogs, no carpool, all the things.

Or maybe it's an hour, maybe one evening that you've got some time you can maybe take a break from Netflix and actually create your content. So what happens when you start being consistent online is you train your audience that they start expecting you to show up at that time. So my audience on LinkedIn knows that I'm gonna show up every single day, Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. And I use the scheduling tool

within LinkedIn to make sure that I stay consistent. Because trust me, there's plenty of days where I do not feel like showing up. Maybe I'm in a bad mood, maybe I didn't sleep well, maybe it's raining outside, I don't know, whatever fill the blank. Just know that you're not alone. If there's plenty of days you don't feel like showing up online, I'm here with you too. But being consistent using that scheduling tool helps me to stay forefront of everyone's minds in my audience on LinkedIn.

Caroline Pennington (02:28.014)
And so being consistent is key. Also being informative and elevating yourself is the go-to professional in your field, which will create you as the expert, which what happens then is you supercharge the no-like trust factor. And so people don't have to, when clients and potential prospects come your way, they don't...

need to have your elevators feel of what you do, what you're an expert, who you serve, they already know because they've been following along for a certain amount of time or maybe they're even new to your network and they already know because you've been building your personal brand. That's one thing I did not do in the beginning of this whole journey is I wasn't clear about that. So get really clear about that and with the information that you put out there, start elevating yourself as the go-to expert. And even if it's something that you might think is silly or maybe people

won't want hear about, they do. They all want to hear from you. So start showing up. So back to strategy. So being consistent is huge. Giving engagement is huge. So if you want engagement, you need to give engagement. The law of reciprocity exists in a very big way on LinkedIn. Of course, people do not have to come back and comment and engage with your stuff. But the likelihood if you go out and engage with their content.

is very high, they're gonna come back around and engage with your content. So give information, give engagement to other people. What will happen is you'll start building relationships with these people online too. And that can translate into honestly, a real friendship, a business partnership. Maybe they are connected to someone else in their network that can help you out for referrals or whatnot. So literally the sky is the limit when it comes to that. All right, so we're showing up consistently. We're engaging with other people's content.

We are also being consistent with our messaging. So you don't want to be all over the place with what you're talking about. You want to focus on one topic that you're the expert at. Maybe you're a lawyer and you want to talk about relevant things that are going on in the legal field right now. Maybe you're an accountant and want to talk about tax deadlines. That's all okay. When I first started my LinkedIn journey, I was a headhunter. I had a corporate job and I worked at an agency.

Caroline Pennington (04:50.663)
And so what I did was I talked about stuff like why you should never accept a counter offer, the appropriate rounds of interviews based off of level of position, those types of things. And I've gone through three pivots on LinkedIn since starting my LinkedIn journey. So don't think you have to have it all figured out or that maybe you're doing a couple different things, you're not. If you're new or listening to this podcast right now and you've got a couple different things going on, that's totally okay too.

So I hope this was helpful. I am really passionate about this topic, about having a strategy. So if you have any questions or want to talk further about this, send me a DM.