Learning how to rebrand yourself on social media can be an extremely important process in today’s digital world. If the current image you’re portraying on your social media accounts doesn’t contribute to the brand identity you want to develop, you could be missing out on endless opportunities.
After all, your personal brand, or the identity you use to connect with potential partners, colleagues, clients, and employers, is made up of more than just your personal website or portfolio.
An effective personal brand is multi-faceted. It shines through in everything you do, both online and offline, from creating the ultimate resume, to connecting with people through social channels.
Your social media accounts can be some of your personal brand’s most valuable resources. Social networks don’t just give you an avenue for interacting with your target audience.
They also act as a platform where you can showcase your unique personality, drive emotional connections, and demonstrate thought leadership.
This complete guide on how to rebrand yourself on social media will walk you through everything you need to know to make your social media channels more powerful, and impactful.
Why learn how to rebrand yourself on social media?
A strong personal brand can be an incredible tool for virtually any professional.
The right brand is how you highlight your unique skills, attributes, and capabilities to the people whose attention you most want to cultivate.
In the employment world, a good brand can mean the difference between getting the job of your dreams, or struggling through your career. In the freelance or entrepreneurial landscape, personal branding helps you to connect with and convert clients.
While there are many factors that make up a strong personal brand, from your website or portfolio to your resume, and how you present yourself to others in person, social media is a big component.
Around 70% of employers now use social media to screen candidates. Additionally, most people will use your Facebook page, Instagram bio, or LinkedIn account to learn more about who you are.
If your social media profiles aren’t generating the right results for your career, a rebrand could be the key to your success. Rebranding is an opportunity for you to take control of your online presence, and influence how your target audience sees you, and your skills.
Updating and changing your personal brand on social media allows you to:
Enhance your image
Your image on social media, from the profile pictures you create, to the visual content you share, has a strong impact on your brand. You can use social media to make yourself more memorable and visible in the eyes of your audience.
Share your message
An important part of a rebrand is making sure you send the right message to your target audience, positioning yourself as an expert or leader in your space. Your social accounts are a great way to draw attention to this message, and your personality.
Stand out
While blogs and websites are great for refining your personal brand, social media gives you a way to consistently stand out and connect with your customers. It’s an excellent way to differentiate yourself from other professionals in your space.
Build emotional connections
Within 10 minutes on social media, oxytocin levels start to rise. This makes social networks the perfect place to create emotional connections with audiences. You can use them to develop trust, and showcase credibility to your audience.
Strengthen your presence
Rebranding on social media gives more credibility to the brand you’re building elsewhere, both online and offline. It’s an opportunity to consistently draw attention to the attributes you want to share with your customers, clients, or employers.
10 steps to effective social media rebranding
Rebranding can be a complex and time consuming process. It’s not something anyone should dive into without careful planning and consideration. However, learning how to rebrand yourself on social media effectively can pay significant dividends.
If your current brand isn’t delivering results, updating your presence on social media is a great way to shape the perception of others.
While it will take time to cement your new brand in the minds of your audience, the more effort you put into sharing the right type of content, cultivating your profiles, and connecting with different audiences, the more benefits you’ll uncover.
Here’s how you can start rebranding your social media accounts.
1. Audit your social presence
The first step in effective social media rebranding is examining your current social media presence, and determining how the channels you use are influencing your reputation. Look at all of the social accounts you’re currently using online, and make notes about your old brand.
Examine:
Your brand voice
What does your current tone of voice portray to your audience? How does your personality shine through in the words and phrases you use across social media? Is your language consistent, or variable? Do you seem friendly and professional?
Your image
How do you present your brand visually across your social media accounts? What do your profile pictures, banners, and other visual components say about you to potential employers, clients, or customers?
Your key attributes
How will people identify you based on your social channels? What are the key characteristics, traits, or attributes that shine throughout your online presence? Which trends or patterns show up across your content in terms of topics and themes?
2. Research competitors
It’s not just major companies that have competitors in today’s world. Whether you’re trying to build an image as an SEO expert, leading graphic designer, or sales guru, you’ll also have competitors in your industry.
Look at people you consider to be a thought leader in your space, and think about how they define themselves on social media.
What kind of language do they use to connect with different audiences? How do they commit to building brand awareness, and what type of content do they share? It may also be worth taking a closer look at the social channels other professionals in your industry are using.
You may find that you’re not active on some of the most important platforms for your industry, particularly if you haven’t invested fully in your personal brand before.
3. Define your target audience
Who do you want to reach with your personal brand? Like any brand, your personal identity has a specific purpose. It’s there to help you connect with the people who are most likely to benefit you, your career, and your future.
When you’re figuring out how to rebrand on social media, it’s important to consider exactly what kind of people you want to connect with.
If you’re a student, you might be focused on capturing the attention of admissions officers and employers looking for interns. If you’re a freelancer, you might want to reach a specific niche of potential clients.
Job seekers might want to position themselves as a thought leader to employers in their industry.
Once you know who your target audience is, you can create profiles highlighting their goals, pain points, behaviors, and demographics. This will help you to define what kind of content you should produce, what image you should build with your online profiles, and what language to use.
4. Establish your USPs
Now you’re finished researching your audience and competitors, it’s time to start thinking about the kind of brand you want to build. An excellent personal brand should constantly draw attention to the factors that make you attractive to your new audience.
With this in mind, ask yourself what you want to be known for in your space. What specific qualities or values do you want to draw attention to with your content? What kind of expertise do you want to show when you’re posting on Facebook groups and creating social content?
Your unique value proposition, or unique selling points, should be based both on your strengths and your knowledge of your target audience.
For instance, if you’re trying to connect with employers in the graphic design world, you might draw attention to your artistic skills and experience working with business partners in the graphics industry.
5. Craft your message and personality
Using your understanding of your strengths in your chosen industry, you can begin to build a core message and personality for your personal brand.
While your core personality should be evident in everything you do and produce as a professional, social media can give you an excellent opportunity to strengthen your narrative.
Think about how you’re going to use the power of social media to tell your potential employers, and customers about who you are as a person.
What kind of language are you going to use in your social media posts? What types of content do you want to produce? Are there any mission or vision statements you can share across your social channels?
Gary Vaynerchuk consistently identifies himself as a “Creator” and “Investor” across all of his social networks. What kind of words or concepts do you want people to link to you?
6. Establish goals
Setting goals for your rebranding journey is an excellent way to make sure you get the most value out of the process. Based on your new mission statement, and your knowledge of the brand identity you want to create, determine what you want to accomplish on social media.
Think about whether you’re simply drawing attention to your new persona to improve the consistency of your branding across your digital channels, or whether you want to drive more measurable results.
You may want to use your social channels to convince more people to connect with you, so you can expand your network, or to push people to your website or portfolio.
Ask yourself how you’re going to track the success of your rebrand over time. You might monitor things like the number of new contacts you reach, or the number of followers you earn.
7. Create a content strategy
Learning how to rebrand yourself on social media doesn’t just mean updating your profile pictures or bio information. You also need to ensure you’re constantly producing and sharing content that conveys your brand message to your target audience.
Determine what kind of content is going to be most beneficial to your personal brand, based on the channels you’re using. If you want to seem fresh and modern, and showcase your stylish nature, you might use content like Instagram Reels and video posts.
If you’re trying to highlight your thought leadership, you may share links to valuable content on your site, or quotes on LinkedIn.
In most cases, it makes sense to create a range of different types of content for your social media channels. Experimenting with text-based posts, videos, and images will help you to reach a wider audience, and give credence to your brand image.
Experimenting with different forms of content also gives you a chance to monitor how specific types of posts resonate with your audience.
8. Create guidelines for consistency
Finally, make sure you have the tools you need to create a consistent image across not just the social channels you’re using, but every other platform you leverage to connect with your audience.
Consistency is crucial to effective branding, as it helps to earn customer trust, and cultivate familiarity. You want to ensure your customers see the same message and image whenever they search for your name online, or meet with you in person.
Creating a set of personal brand guidelines can be helpful here. You can use them to determine what your image should include, outlining any key information about your brand color palette, your professional photography, and even your personal brand logo.
You can use your guidelines to remind yourself of the values and purpose you want to convey to your audience, and even create editorial guidelines to direct your messaging strategy.
Use these documents to help you whenever you produce social media content, email marketing campaigns, or even blogs for your website.
9. Update your image
Once you have your guidelines to help you navigate your social media strategy, it’s time to update your image, based on the identity you want to convey. Think about the various types of visual branding you can leverage across social channels.
You might create an entire theme or aesthetic for your Instagram account, based on the colors you want to be associated with. Color psychology tells us certain shades can evoke specific feelings.
If you want other social media users to see you as trustworthy and reliable, you may use a lot of blues and whites. If you want to be seen as passionate and creative, you could use warm colors like reds, yellows, and oranges.
Consider your profile pictures on each social platform, and how you can use them to convey your personal values. You could use an animated image to showcase your graphic design skills, or a headshot to demonstrate professionalism.
10. Constantly monitor your brand
After you’ve implemented your rebranding strategy into your social media accounts, it’s important to pay attention to how your reputation changes over time. Using the goals and metrics you set earlier in this process, you can monitor how people are responding to your brand update.
Pay attention to the new contacts you connect with, and whether they’re more aligned with your specific, professional goals. Look at the number of visits you get to your website and personal profile, thanks to links shared on your social accounts.
It’s also worth thinking about how your overall visibility improves when you’re using the right hashtags and content strategies.
You can monitor your number of new followers, pay attention to engagement levels such as likes, shares, and comments, and even track how many job offers or new clients you receive.
How to announce a rebrand on social media
If you already have a relatively strong presence on social media, and numerous followers connected to your accounts, then it’s a good idea to strategize about how you’re going to announce or introduce your new brand to your audience.
If you suddenly update your appearance and messaging too quickly, you might end up confusing existing fans and followers, or even alienating certain members of your audience. With this in mind, before you start changing aspects of your accounts, reach out to your current followers.
Let them know why you’ve decided to update your brand, and share your new mission statement, goals, and the key personality traits you want to convey. While you might still use some followers, the ones you retain will likely be more invested in who you really are as a person.
Depending on your industry, and goals, you might even prepare a “day one” social media announcement, where you showcase your new profile picture, introduce different bio information, and tell potential clients, customers, and employers all about your brand story.
Providing extra information to followers about your brand can be helpful too. For instance, you could include a link in your social media bios to your new “About” page on your website, or your updated portfolio, where they can learn more about your strengths and aspirations.
Examples of rebranding yourself on social media
Countless companies and individuals alike have invested in a rebranding strategy to boost their appearance and strengthen their connections with the right audiences over the years.
While there aren’t as many recorded examples of personal rebranding strategies as there are of those connected to businesses and larger brands, there are still some great instances worth looking at.
One great example comes from content marketer, Charli Marie. Charli Marie started her social media presence on Tumblr, with a page dedicated to a pop punk brand.
When she decided she wanted to pursue a career in marketing, design, and content, she updated her brand image to something more professional and consistent.
Today, Charli’s social media presence highlights her knowledge of her industry, drawing attention to her key mission statement, and her strengths as a creative professional.
She constantly shares valuable information with her audience, which draws attention to her abilities, and maintains a consistent, friendly appearance across all platforms.
Another great example of rebranding comes from Melyssa Griffin. Initially a high school teacher, Melyssa transformed her personal brand to connect with employers and clients looking to grow their business.
She now uses her image on her website and social media channels to showcase her skills, her fun and friendly personality, and her core values.
Melyssa’s social media presence helps her to connect with potential clients on an emotional level, by providing insights into her passions and ambitions. She combines professional insights and actionable tips on her accounts with behind-the-scenes views of her personal life and journey.
Are you ready to start rebranding your social media accounts?
Learning how to rebrand yourself on social media can be a time-consuming, and somewhat daunting process. However, it’s a crucial part of ensuring your personal brand really connects with your intended audience.
Your social media presence has a huge impact on your potential in virtually any industry, influencing how people view you on a massive scale.
If your current brand isn’t doing a good job of cultivating new opportunities for you in your sector, then a rebrand could be exactly what you need to turn things around.
The steps above should give you all the guidance you need to start enhancing your social media presence, and making sure it conveys all of the strengths you want people to associate with you.
If you need a little more help with your rebranding strategy, reach out to Fabrik today for step-by-step guidance on the power of rebranding, social media, and digital marketing.
Fabrik: A branding agency for our times.
We’ve built our reputation, building brands for other people.
Do you need to bring a new brand to life or breathe new life into an existing one? If so, let’s start a conversation
Now read these:
—The essential guide to personal branding
—Best personal brand statement examples
—Steps to reinventing your personal brand
—Personal branding examples for students
—The best books on personal branding
—Your guide to personal logo design
