After nearly twenty years of social media being a thing, those of us who’ve been online all that time have seen everything. The scams, the memes, the inspirational posts, the toxic positivity, the inauthentic advice, and the pandering to trends.
And lots of small business owners and freelancers trying to keep up.
Yet despite all this, one piece of classic advice still rings true – people buy from people.
As a small business owner or freelancer, if you post the same content as everyone else, how will this help you stand out? How will people know who YOU are?
How are potential customers going to decide on whether or not to use you above their competitors?
Sure, you could compete on price, but we all know that that’s a race to the bottom. You don’t want to be a busy idiot.
If you work in the creative industries, your style may be different to someone else’s, but there’s no doubt that your style will be heavily influenced by the one thing that is guaranteed to make you stand out – your personality.
Similarly, if you work in financial services, you may well be selling similar products or services to your competitors. But the customer wants to work with someone that they can connect with, and the only way they’ll be able to decide if you are the one for them is if you give them the information they need on which to base a decision.
Maybe you provide a deeply personal service – a service for which potential customers need to develop more than a connection when buying from you. They need to build trust.
If your social media accounts are filled with nothing other than attempts to keep up with trends or offers of the same generic advice as your competitors, why should they trust you above anyone else?
The truth is that most people struggle to be themselves in business. It’s no surprise – with so much conflicting advice about how and what to post and an ever-changing social media landscape to boot.
But this goes beyond social media and into the real world.
By unapologetically being yourself, you give permission for others to do the same.
Whether that’s in person or online, you make other people feel like it’s okay for their authentic selves to show up too.
And who wouldn’t want to work with someone that makes you feel like that?
Come and play with me at my upcoming Content Creation Day, and I’ll give you permission to be whatever you want to be. Plus, you’ll walk away with twenty images showing this side of you for use on social media and your website – thereby giving permission for YOUR ideal customers to be themselves too.
Plus, y’know, it’ll be fun.
