A question we get asked a lot at Quirq, when people come to us with personal branding queries is:
How many personal posts should they share, before they share a business post?
People want to get the balance right, they know they need to share business posts and to make the ask, but they’re unsure how many of those they should do compared to personal posts.
An easy rule of thumb to think about when it comes to this is the 3:1 ratio, 3 personal posts to 1 business post.
What we mean by a business post is really a sales post, or a lead generation post, a post in which you’re asking for something from your audience. Too many posts asking for things and people switch off. It’s why a lot of companies content that we see being shared today is rolling by our eyes like tumbleweed. People don’t want to be sold to every hour of every day.
This is where personal branding comes into action. People want to see and hear about humans, they want to nosey into business owners lives and see behind the scenes to what they’re up to. People are sick of companies promising things with their branding, they now want business leaders they can get behind who have a mission they can support and communities they can be a part of.
When we say personal post, we don’t mean you can’t talk about your business and all you need to share all day is selfies of you going about your life, potentially with your kids or dogs. Your personal posts can have a tie in to your business, or tell a story about your business, after all you are your business and it’s a big part of your life. But the posts need to be about you in conjunction to your business, and they can’t ask for a sale at the end of them.
Offer your audience stories about how you got started in your business and why. Give your audience value by sharing a tip from your industry or from life lessons you’ve learned along the way. Share something you love to do outside of work like a hobby, of course you can share how that makes you better at your job/business within that story, but again you’re not asking people to buy anything from you, you’re offering value and building rapport with your audience.
In order to generate a sale or a client, people need to know, like and trust you. People need to see that you believe in what you do and why, they need to hear your passion, see your work ethic and be able to get behind what it is you’re doing. Only then will your sales posts get seen and will people take action on them. The know, like and trust comes first. When every other post is a sales post, people don’t know why they should buy, they don’t believe in what you’re selling and they don’t believe in you. A sales resistance goes up and they scroll on past all your future content.
You want to make your personal posts engaging and also create conversations from them still. You can do this by telling stories and adding calls to action in your posts. But these calls to action are conversation starters, not buy my product click the link below. What do you want to know about your ideal audience, tell a story that resonates with them and then ask them questions that relate to what you want to know. When you ask questions and start conversations in non-selling posts, when you do then have a sales post and you ask them to take an action from it, they’re primed to do that from your personal posts, they know and like and trust you, so they’re more likely to take the action of reaching out for that business chat or click to buy what you have to offer.
If you’re getting tumbleweed on your current posts, audit your content. Take a good look at what you’re sharing from the point of view of your ideal audience. Are your posts too sales focused, do you share the same thing again and again, are all the images you share with your posts corporate graphics, or do you show your face? Can you switch your content up and use the 3:1 ratio? Try it for a couple of months, if your content isn’t getting the traction you want it to get now, what have you got to lose by trying this approach.
As always we’re here to help with your personal branding content, so reach out if you haven’t got the time yourself to audit your content or create your own personal brand. Our team do this for a living, sometimes you have to let the experts help if you want to become visible and create content that connects with your audience.
