Building a strong personal brand requires both an online presence and in-person connections. When you blend the two you grow your audiences know, like and trust faster and deeper. When you share more of yourself online, people get to know you, what you stand for, who you are as a person, but when you start networking and connecting with those people in real life too, the trust building is magnified and the bonds that are formed grow stronger.
The two complement each other and enhance credibility, reach, and authenticity.
With personal branding you need to strike a balance. You need to ensure your time on both online and in person connections is spent wisely. There is a risk that comes with focusing solely on one medium e.g. losing authenticity in-person or missing reach online.
It’s also important to keep a consistency across online and offline interactions. You want to be fully yourself in both worlds, so that trust is fostered. This is why it’s vital to be yourself and never try to be something/someone you’re not. It’s easy to fake it online, but then when you take the connection in person you’ll get found out, there will be a disconnect and all trust will be lost.
Here are some strategies that can help you blend your online and in person personal branding worlds:
Online Strategies:
- Build an Engaging Digital Presence: Make sure you are active on the social media platforms you choose to be on. So many people we see for example, have a LinkedIn profile, but they aren’t maintaining it, they don’t post regularly or engage on it. They could have connections that are ready to start a conversation with them, but they wouldn’t know because they aren’t active on the platform.
- Humanising Your Content: Show more of you in your content. When sharing your thoughts on a business subject share them with a picture of yourself, share your thoughts and points in videos, share behind-the-scenes posts, and use storytelling to create relatable online content.
- Consistency Across Platforms: It’s so important to align your visuals, your tone, and your values across all digital platforms. When someone searches for you on Google it will bring up all your channels, do they all align, could they easily recognise that they belong to you, do they know what you stand for?
In-Person Strategies:
- Networking Events and Conferences: When you head to in person events your mission is to make meaningful connections and represent your personal brand face-to-face. Listen to who’s in the room, start conversations with different people, ask them interesting questions to get to know them more – Be more interested in others, than interesting to others, ask more questions. Dress how you would dress for your personal brand and the event you’re attending, what would people expect to see you wearing in person from how you come across online?
- Public Speaking Opportunities: Speaking at events can establish expertise and foster trust. Put yourself forward, or say yes when speaking opportunities are presented to you. This might terrify you, but say yes, then figure out the rest afterwards. You can always utilise online tools, ask peers, practice your talk on family/friends to make the talk go really well – Just don’t pass up opportunities like this because in the moment you’re scared. Public speaking can help 10X your personal brands reputation.
- Personal Touch Points: The power of in person networking is in the follow-ups, handwritten notes, or personal emails which strengthen relationships. Most sales/business deals/client acquisition’s/job offerings DON’T happen after one meeting with a person. Plug people into your online brand, then keep in touch with them after a meeting.
How to Bridge the Gap Between Online & In Person:
- Leverage Content from Real-World Experiences: Share insights and photos from events online to show activity and engagement. Tag people you met at the events into your posts, shout about people you had interesting conversations with, refer the connections you meet onto others online who could help them.
- Encourage Online-to-Offline Connections: For example: Hosting meet-ups for your online followers or invite online connections to networking events. Mix things up, get your other connections talking, you never know where any connection will lead any of you.
- Use Online Tools to Prepare for In-Person Success: You can use online tools like LinkedIn for researching attendees before you head to events or there are apps available that can help you to manage your connections. Never miss something you spoke about at a previous event with a connection again, record the key points in the apps, then briefly catch up on them before the next meeting they’ll be at, people will be impressed you remembered a key fact about them/their life.
Actionable Tips:
Create a checklist for integrating online and in-person strategies. For example:
- Share key takeaways from events on social media.
- Send a follow-up message to connections after meeting them in person.
- Use consistent branding materials (e.g. business cards matching your online visuals).
There is a real power in combining your digital presence with real-world connections to help maximise your personal branding results. Don’t just hide away at home or in your office behind your screens, get out into the world and bring your personal brands to life!
It will also help your mental health too. In a world where everything is online and we don’t actually have to interact with any other humans, life can become very isolating and we often don’t surface from our comfort zones and push ourselves. When we get brave and move in person we break through this comfort zone and we connect with other humans and often build real friendships along the way too.
We want to leave you on a simple task – to evaluate and refine your blend of personal brand strategies. And to consider blending your online world in person.
If you’re unsure how to do this and need guidance, reach out to us at Quirq. We’ve been blending our online branding with the in person world since day one, and we can help you do the same.
Big thank you to Lincoln Business Club which is featured in the image above, they have made blending our online world with in person very welcoming and are a very supportive group. I’m sure you’ll have lots of supportive groups like this near you too.
