Welcome back to the Jasmine star show where the coffee's hot, the business Diplo tangible and the dead jokes are way too frequent. I sorry. Totally not. Sorry. Let's dive into a conversation that I hear quite often because it's something that many business owners struggle with. I know because these helped me in my direct messages and in the social curator coaching sessions and it's this, what should we really share on social media? How much is too much and what works best for engagement? When you post on social media, there is often a question of where the line should be drawn between personal posts on a business page or on a page that you're using for your business. In order to determine this, I recommend to first ask yourself, are you building a personal brand or a business brand? Now we're all familiar with business brands like Coca-Cola and Nike, Starbucks, Apple, and so many more. For these brands, there isn't necessarily like a face or a person to connect with and the posts are a little bit more generic and less personalized. Now, if you're creating a business brand, I would recommend, even if it's not about you, we know that studies have shown that faces in people being shown in photos on Instagram and Facebook, they perform better. They perform 64% better, so if you're a small business and you're, maybe you're not as big as Nike and anthropology, it would probably make sense that if every, maybe in nine to 12 photos there should be a picture of, if not you then somebody on your team or your customers, your team with your customers so that your audience can engage with those people behind the screen. Now, personal brands on the other hand, like Gary Vaynerchuk join a gains , Mindy Kayling and Martha Stewart. Those brands are built around a single person or a really small, really relatable team. For a personal brand, there is really no limit how personal you can get. It just depends on what you're comfortable with and what your audience wants to see. Now to determine what type of brand you're building late , because before I can actually answer like how much is too much? Well, the answer really depends on are you having a personal brand or a business brand and now if you're like Jasmine, I don't know, well I want to tell you that the answer is going to come from within because I can't answer that for you and your follower account. It's not going to tell you and your engagement is not going to really answer it either. The only way that you can make a decision to build the personal or business brand is really based on what you're comfortable with. So because I always like giving you practical, applicable things that you can actually say, I have an answer to something I didn't have any answer to before. I'm going to share a really great exercise from writer, author, and Lamont . She says that you should ask yourself how you feel in one situation versus another. So let's give us as an example, like if you're not sure, should I really be building a personal brand? Should I be using my name? I want you to ask yourself, if I were to name my account, my name, how do I feel? And then what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, if I were to name my account a business name, how do I feel? Now as an example, when I first started my photography career, you know, I debated, do I name my business, I mean photography business after myself, Jasmine star or do I think of another business name that I wanted it to embody? Like everlasting legacy of memories or you know, like there was like that big hipster spin in like 2016. It's like where you use like one word, an ampersand and another word like whiskey and bubbles, you know , uh, ribbons and bows, you know, it's just like I could have chosen my name or anything else and truth be told it would not have affected the success of my business. So there really is not a right or wrong answer, but I, I want you to take time to think about it and be in touch with what you're feeling because you will notice that your body, it will physically guide you because it's hardwired to know what it wants. When I could not decide should I pursue a personal brand and need my photography business, Jasmine star or come up with another name, it was like my gut, AKA my intuition was like, you know, you want to name this after yourself because it's a division of your creativity and that was my body telling my mind this is the thing I want to do. And if you're wrong, just like if I was wrong, that's okay. You do it. You post, you test and if it doesn't work, you can change it. That's what's so rad. What I want you to do is just make a decision today and move towards that and know nothing has ever locked you in stone. Now I am challenging you to put a stake in the ground, but I'm not telling you that you can never take it out. People change and businesses do too . It's about what you feel and where going and what you're comfortable with and we're godless. If you're choosing a business or a personal brand, the comfort level of what to share is different for everyone. I have a simple rule for you to determine where your line is drawn and I call this the stranger on the airplane roll . Okay. So when I was a photographer, when I started my business as a photographer, I should say I had the opportunity start speaking to you know, other photographers about how I was growing my business. Now mind you, this is like 2006 2007 this is when blogging was all the rage. And I would blog and I would talk about really personal things. I would talk about a date that I went on with my husband. I would talk about my mom's relapse with brain cancer and how I'm helping her and I was blogging about all these things and people on the outside who were in the industry or kind of like, why are you sharing that? Like some people were like, Jasmine, nobody cares. And other people were like, aren't you afraid of what it's gonna do for your business? And then other people are like, I just like following along your journey and I decided I need the personal decision that I was really only writing content for people who wanted to be a part of the journey. Now I'm not saying it was right, I'm just saying it was the right decision for me. So when determining where the line is drawn for personal posts, for both business and for personal brands, I like to use what I call the stranger on the airplane role . This is when you ask yourself what you would share with a stranger sitting next to you on an airplane that that's what you should be sharing on social media. Because friend , there's no right and there's no wrong for the stranger in the airplane rule. It just depends on what would you actually share with a stranger. For example, if I was sitting next to a stranger on an airplane today, I would openly chat about some aspects of my personal life, including my dog polo, my husband, JD. I might here and there, sprinkle in a few stories about my daughter, Luna to a stranger. I would discuss my photography career, my passion for helping business owners build a brand and marketing and social media, and I'd likely probably mentioned other aspects of my personality like my love for coffee, yoga, how my family means the world to me. Now I would say all of those things to a stranger without blinking an eye. Now these are what I am comfortable sharing on social. On the other hand, you may not want to talk about your children on social. You may not want to post photos of your children. You might not want your whole feed to be filled with family photos or let people know that you're going on vacation. You might not be okay with, you know, showing aspects of your dog or your cat because it also happens to show the inside of your house and some people aren't okay with that. It is our job to determine what we're comfortable with sharing on social media, but more importantly, it's to also gauge how your audience is responding. It's so important to see how your audience responds in order to determine what is best for your engagement. Because I have seen it done a couple of ways. I hit a scene . Some people share really personal aspects of their lives and businesses on social media and it falls flat. And then I've seen other people share so much on social media, like the whole kitten caboodle and like it does amazing. So I don't think that this is about whose life is more or less interesting. I think it matters to are you serving the type of content that your business audience wants to see. Because when you know who you're speaking to, the content you're creating, it should be aimed at them. So that's one thing that I have to like, there's two things at play here. It's number one, I really only want you sharing something that you're comfortable with. And then number two, you have to see if that's in alignment to your audience. Really wants to see. And something that I have noticed as we turn, you know, 2020 it's giving us an opportunity to really look back and see a full decade of active social media and I know like around 2018 I started seeing people get really overly personal like sharing everything about their personal life sharing every up and down and I'm not talking about a private like Facebook account or a private Instagram, I'm talking about this is a business and somebody in their business is just sharing a lot of personal details. I do not think that the more personal you are, the more engagement you get, none at all. I feel like when you know what you're comfortable with and then you know that your audience wants to see it in that particular way, then Hey, you get to make the rules. I would love to see you experiment with different posts and see what your followers react well to and then it's not enough to say, wow , they really liked this post and then not do anything. I want you to test and create more of what they've responded well to. Now , it's about this point when people will say, Jasmine, I sell jewelry. Jasmine, I'm at business coach Jasmine, I'm a lawyer. And they say, I put all this time and energy to these really great posts that nobody responds to. And then I take a selfie of myself at the gym and it's the most engaging post. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I had somebody who is in like the spiritual realm and she said, I have worked so hard at creating enlightening posts to talk about, you know, the inner self and the mindset and growth mentality. And she's like, I pour my guts into my posts. And she's like, why do I post a meme about spiritual enlightenment? And it is by far the most engaging posts that I have posted in over a month. And she was so bummed about it and I was excited for her. Oh it was like, huh? Your audience just spoke to you. It's not like they don't like the other posts. It's just the people are self identifying with the meme. They are self identifying with the content you're putting out instead of getting bummed that like you're a meme is the most engaging thing that's out there on behalf of your account. Think to yourself, huh? If people like means what can I do to create more means that get people sharing my content in a way that they self identify. Because the thing you have to take a step back and understand it's specifically in this situation is that like spiritual enlightenment is not something that everybody's okay talking about with, but perhaps in a funny, silly tongue, in cheek kind of way. You could actually talk about something deep and personal without coming across as I'm very deep and personal owed on the gram. So I like to say when your audience speaks to you, don't get bummed out. Listen and see if you can recreate. So what I want you to do is I kind of want you to optimize your efforts. When I talk about, you know, creating this like stranger on the airplane. Like how do you get personal? I, you will see me do this quite often. If you follow me, you'll know that I blog three to four times a week and I do that because this is what I'm doing in creating searchable personal content, right? So what happens is when you post something on Facebook or when you post something on Twitter, you can't search for it on Google or Pinterest or YouTube, right? Cause there's no SEO, there's no search engine optimization, they're not reading the texts that you have in Instagram. So it's very important to me as I'm building out a personal brand or as I'm pulling , if I was building out a business brand, is I need two vehicles. I need something that people can search for my blog, my Pinterest account, YouTube, those are all search heavy engines . So when somebody is going to Pinterest, the vast majority of time, they know specifically what they're searching for when they go to Google. So if I went to Google, I would want to ask Google like how do I pitch a tent? Then I would go to Pinterest and look for how do I buy the cutest tent? And when I got frustrated at my campsite with it breeding these directions in Google, they really didn't get, but I have a really cute tent. I'd probably go to YouTube and search for a tutorial on how to pitch a tent from this really cute tent that is me using my efforts to go after something specific. But there's also a second type of personal branding or getting personal with your business posts kind of way. And that's what I call stumble upon marketing searchable. That person is going in searching for something specific, stumble upon somebody scrolling through LinkedIn, scrolling through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and they see something that they didn't know that they wanted, but all of a sudden they're like that. That's what I need to buy. So I think it's best to utilize your efforts when it comes to creating content that your audience responds well to, but making sure that you're keeping things of just like, huh, I can actually create a long form blog post that people can search for. And then I can get that blog post and perhaps break it up into like three or four Instagram micro posts. So that I can start testing to see what engagement is going in regards to understanding what people want to see. For me personally. Speaking of that, let's check out how to get social without making it awkward because on the topic of getting personal and social, have you ever read a post on Facebook? They made you feel like stumped or confused and then you wonder yourself, why did he just post that? Like what has it stopped you like, how has that thought of like, Whoa, why did that person goes that ? Has that stopped you from sharing something personal because you don't want to make things awkward in the same way? Well, we've all been there, but there's a way to get personal on social media without making it awkward. The truth is sharing your story on social media personalizes your business and when you get personal with your followers, you just don't have passive people who scroll on by. You have raving fans that support your business longterm , so I'm going to deal it to you straight, right? Deal it to you straight, no shooter coming at you from the gut unless you have a patented product. So if you don't have a patent, listen to me right here. There are other people who do exactly what you do. They might even sell exactly what you sell and all venture to say that not only do they do what you do, but they might do it better and they might even do it cheaper. So why would somebody drive farther, wait longer or pay more to get what you are selling you like? That's the secret. That's everything. The more people know, like and trust you, there's a higher likelihood of them becoming a customer because they relate to you like no one else. Like take a step back and like really think about this. You could probably think of somebody you follow on social media that if this person came out with a pair of socks, a box of cereal, or perhaps an energy drink because you know them and you like them and you trust them, you can think, you know what? I was going to buy socks anyway, but I'm going to buy it from you because I just want to see you win, right? Like I was gonna buy a sports energy drink. But you want to know what I've seen you just working in that science department of the university and I want to support your energy drink like y'all. This happens all the time in your life as a customer. Imagine somebody will want to buy what you're selling because of a direct connection to you or your team. So now that you know why you should be more vulnerable on social media, let's talk about the how, right? Cause this is always the tricky part. Okay, so let's break this down as easy as possible and we're going to do this in four simple steps. Number, I want you at first to test getting personal with one specific topic. Because if you start with like a lot of topics, it can be really confusing for your audience as you introduce these new sides of you. How about you just choose one topic and in the beginning to warm your audience up to this new personal, vulnerable side of your brand. Now when I say test getting personal, if you don't want to talk about your spouse or your partner or your children, don't do that. Please do not be inauthentic. I want you to talk about something that feels fun, light, and safe. And if you're like Jasmine, I am so permed and proper. I am Uber conservative. My husband works for the CIA. I can't share anything booboo. Pick oatmeal like I don't . I can't sit here and have you fight for your limitations. Give me something and just say, Jasmine, the only thing I talk about is oatmeal. Great booboo. I want you to post once a week for the next four weeks about oatmeal and you're like, what? This is the weirdest thing. Now I want you to post about oatmeal and create a helpful post. How to create oatmeal cookies, the secret hack to getting your kids to eat oatmeal, your childhood memory of making oatmeal bars with your grandma. How to decorate a tricky oatmeal cookie, like how long you want me to go here , booboo . Like I literally picked up the most boring topic of oatmeal and I'm saying just test with one topic that is safe, light and fun for you to get into. Number two, make a commitment to post at least four times about that topic and then test those efforts. I don't suggest posting four times in a row about it. I like to give a little bit of breathability as long as it's four times, then it's is not four times in a row. You can totally test what is good for you. I am very basic and I like to keep things easy. When I introduce a new topic, I post about it maybe once a week for four weeks and this includes the birth of my daughter. I know that there's this temptation like, listen, I'm a professional photographer. I take photos of my daughter every day. I am totally twitterpated and smitten with all things that she does and like, Oh my God, she blinked today. She blinked. Oh my God, she lifted her pinky . I swear she's smiling. Did she say, mama , she's literally like four, five, six weeks, and I'm like, she hasn't uttered a word, but I swear she said, mama , it's neither here nor there. I knew that because she was in my life. It didn't mean that I could quickly shift my entire Instagram bead specifically because I use it for business to be about her, but do I feel comfortable sharing a photo of her once every few weeks? Yeah. I'm slowly introducing my audience to that. Number three, to speak your truth. The moment you're speaking about something that doesn't come from the deepest true is part of you. People are going to smell it. Well, you know what I'm talking about. People know when you're not being real and you are not speaking your truth. In fact, you have probably experienced reading a post and you're like, this just is so fake. You don't need to try so hard, right? Like I am here to tell you that you don't have to be everything to everyone. I want you to go deep with people who came to your party and you forget the rest. You get to make the rules, you get to share what you want. You get to determine if it's a personal or a business brand. You determine your rules, so speak your truth. Lastly, number four include big ideas, but definitely avoid the fluffy details. Because I have, I , when I see a lot of people be like, I'm going to get personal, so I'm going to talk about my childhood experience starting in 1987 and then your list 18 things from that and you're like, finally, now back here in 1988 listen, when you share something personal on social media, don't include all of the details that don't push the story forward. In fact, one of my college professors sat down with one of my very first papers. It was like an essay and Oh my gosh, sentence by sentence. She literally held a red pen every time she saw a period in a paragraph and we read that sentence and she says, does it push you forward? Yes or no? And I was like, ah , ah , yes, no, you're wrong, Jasmine. It doesn't push it forward. I now, when I write captions, I ask myself after every sentence, does this push it forward? And it's been so valuable to keep my writing tight, succinct. And to the point, our job as business professionals is to bring people on a journey, but don't tire them out, right? You want them to start it, but you want them to finish it. Give them a peek into your personal life from a very professional perspective and curate that narrative. All right , I'm looping this up, y'all. Here we are. See , look it . I got on this small topic and like the watch me riff. I was like, I thought this is gonna be a really short podcast and here I am like babbling. You know what? Are we here for the Bible ? Let me know if you're here for the awkward, not so awkward. Social media, Babel , that is all about getting personal. Because when it comes down to getting personal, only you can decide how much is too much. There isn't a clear cut answer. Should a photographer include photos of her piano studio? Should a calligrapher include personal posts on her professional Instagram account? Should a mommy blogger post her fitness photos on Instagram, huh? It all comes down to this showing off. What makes you unique as a business owner is one of the most powerful things you possess. It is not the car you drive or how many website hits you have or how many followers or whether or not you got an award from YouTube. It is none of those things. The thing that makes your business as a powerful, unique point of demarcation is what makes you you. Are you a realtor who likes to paint? Why not paint the view from an ocean view home? You're selling and share a video of the process on Instagram. Are you a fitness expert who likes to cook? Why not post a photo of a healthy meal you cooked and share the recipe with your followers? Are you an accountant who loves to walk on your lunch break? Why not create an Instagram challenge with a hashtag encouraging others in office life to join your walking efforts for seven days and report on the positive changes in their mindset and you're like, Jasmine, what? Yes. Not only is this a good way to define shit , your skills as a CPA, but it sheds light into who you are as a person as well as creates community around a shared goal. Y'all that is powerful and that is being social on social media. So what am I saying? Curate your Instagram feeds, curate your Facebook page, curate your LinkedIn post to reflect your brand story. Stay true to the business vision and share images that differentiate your company with the only true thing that makes your business different. And that's you. Are you ready to get personal with your followers and create raving fans? I hope you said yes because the way you do, I want you to head to Jasmine, star.com forward slash branding to download my free branding bundle. This is really going to help you create your brand story narrative. Get that all included in there, some goodies like your dream customer profile, the fastest way to find dream clients and a copywriting work book to attract dream customers. It's everything you need to quickly jumpstart your brand building with ease. So you can grab it at Jasmine's store.com forward slash branding, or by clicking on the link in the episode description, wherever you're tuning in today. So sweet friend, gorgeous soul buttercup, hot tamale cupcake. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Jasmine stars . So I am honored to have spent some time with you today and I can't wait to hear what you think of this episodes. And I tune review your support means the world to me. And I hope you have a great week and I look forward to talking with you soon.
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