This week we’re focusing on the world of AI and how as a small business owner, or employee, you can effectively use AI to help you create and enhance your personal brand, without losing authenticity.
As a small business owner or employee you haven’t got the time to spend all day on your personal brands, this is something you’ll be juggling alongside lots of other tasks and life in general. Because you are limited time wise, using AI as a kind of personal branding assistant is a great idea. But, the power of a personal brand is the personal element to it, it’s your unique voice, look and spin on things that will set you apart from your competition.
If you simply use AI to copy content and generate images, then you won’t stand out, you’ll blend in even more. So you want to make sure you’re using AI in the right ways, which we’ll go through with you below:
Use AI for Idea Generation:
The best way to use AI in our opinion, is to use it for idea generation and gaining clarity on your personal brand and who you’re speaking to.
Chat GPT for example is a great tool you can use to dive into what you want your personal brand to focus on, who do you want to speak to, who’s your target audience, what platforms will they be on, what content do they like to see and engage with.
It can then help you to generate a simple personal brand strategy you can follow, it can also help you generate a simple content plan taking away the stress of having to come up with content ideas every day. So you can focus on creating the right content for your target audience on the platforms that they are on.
AI can be a powerful tool for brainstorming topics, headlines, and outlines. This helps save you time and sparks creativity while ensuring the content remains authentically yours by adding your personal insights and touches.
Never Copy AI-Generated Content Directly:
While AI can create draft content, using it verbatim can lead to a lack of originality and a robotic tone. Personal branding is all about showcasing your unique voice, experiences, and perspectives. Your messaging needs to be delivered by you, you are your personal brand!
You also have the individual stories within you, you know who was there, what emotions you felt, what happened. AI cannot replicate these stories, and it’s stories that connect with your ideal audience more powerfully these days. It’s also your stories and experiences that again sets you apart in a crowded online space. Simply copying AI will never help you stand out.
Maintain Your Personality and Tone of Voice:
If you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably read a few others I’ve written, you know by reading this blog that the wording I’ve used, the tone of voice, the way it’s set out etc it’s been written by me. It’s not copied, therefore it’s personalised, and I always write things as I’d say them, it’s got my personality behind it.
AI often defaults to a neutral tone, it won’t use your own vocabulary, phrases, and humour which make it feel more personal and aligned with your personal brand.
Fact-Check Rigorously:
AI gathers it’s information from the internet, we all know that anyone can upload information to the internet, so facts and figures may not have come from an accurate source. It’s so important to double-check any facts or figures generated by AI to maintain credibility and trust with your audience.
You don’t want to try to come across as an industry expert and then share something that is so wrong, that believe me, your audience will pick you apart for – not to try to scare you, just to make you aware.
Balance Automation with Authentic Engagement:
So we’ve established that AI is great for idea generation and that we’re not going to copy straight from AI. It’s also good for scheduling posts, analysing metrics, or automating responses, but make sure you pair it with genuine interactions to build trust and meaningful connections.
Some things can be automated, especially if you deal with the same questions coming through day in day out, you can automate some general responses, but then escalate the questions up when it needs a more personalised touch. With your personal brand you want to be as humanised as you can be, so the least automated responses you can manage the better, but again we’re all busy people so you might need to from time to time.
What I personally hate to see with automated engagements is when people use AI to respond to their audiences comments or comment on other people they are following. There is no personal touch here, you can tell when an AI robot has left a comment on your post vs when an actual human has.
It pays to spend one hour a day responding and commenting on your audiences content, it does take time and consistency, but it will pay back so much better than AI will, in the genuine relationships and connections you build.
Avoid Overuse:
AI should complement, not replace, your creative process. It’s an assistant that can give you a hand with your personal brand, not create it all for you. Leaning too heavily on AI can lead to a diluted brand voice, so use it strategically to enhance rather than take over your content creation.
I personally believe that creating the content, sharing your unique stories and spin on things is the fun part, as is connecting with your audience, having real conversations with people. So don’t let AI have all the fun, you do these parts and use AI for the more “boring” side of things, the strategic, idea generation, spreadsheet side.
AI is currently quite a new tool, the more we use it, the more it will advance and change. At the moment it can’t replace our human side to personal branding, but realistically who actually knows what it will be capable of in the future.
With the technology in the AI space moving at a rate of knots, it’s important to start learning about it now, and find ways to enable it to improve your life. If you don’t start using it, playing with it’s functionality and seeing how it can help you in your business or industry then you will be left behind.
Have some fun with AI, like I have with the AI Caz images in the featured image to this blog. No I won’t be using the AI headshot in a professional capacity, but it’s been great to learn more about the technology and to turn it into a content discussion point for my audience. It actually created quite a stir in people on LinkedIn, people love to share their opinion on topics like this, let them. It drives your engagement through the roof. Check out the post here:
Caz’s AI Headshot LinkedIn Post
Myself and Toby spoke about utilising AI to help create your personal brand in this weeks Brand You Podcast episode. If you’d like to listen you can find it here:
All that’s left to say is, when are you going to try some of the above and implement AI to help you create or enhance your personal brand?
If you don’t want to leave it to the “robots” to work on your personal brand, we’re humans at Quirq and we can help you create and enhance a magnetic personal brand too. Get in touch with us to discuss how we can help you stand out online.
