What Is The First Step Of Building A Personal Brand?

One of the most challenging things I have experienced was writing a bio for my social media accounts. There is a space for telling your story with limited characters. You have to fit in this space with all your identity. You have topics like occupation, expertise, education, hobbies, marital status, kids, etc. Even these topics downgrade you. You are more than a bio, but this is not a choice. It is like meeting someone at a party. You have two or three sentences to describe yourself. If you feel comfortable, it means that you have practiced a lot and sharpened your introduction in time with lots of feedback. Also, you always have a chance to optimize your story according to the audience. You introduce yourself differently for a job interview or kid’s parents’ day.

In your social media bio, you have an opinion about your audience according to medium choice. For example, if you are on Linkedin, there are professionals. If you are on Facebook, friends, and family is over there. What about Twitter? Everyone is not an audience. There is no feedback mechanism for writing a bio. You can not measure the effect and optimize your story.

On top of all that, you have to find a balance between expressing yourself and impressing others. Therefore, anytime you tell stories, you cut some parts of the stories and add new pieces. We want to be seen as exciting, but we still need some part of the actual stories. Then, of course, you have to downgrade yourself a bit, as I mentioned before. The question here is how much? Have you ever heard that you are a different person from your social media after meeting a friend from social media first time? It means you downgrade yourself much.

On the other hand, you can have a chance to exaggerate your stories. For example, after taking a six-month guitar course, you can confidently write down “ Guitarist” for your bio. If you have a DSLR camera, why don’t you describe yourself as a “ street photographer”?