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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of Image Group International, an award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old-school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies, and hacks for the new tech world. Here, you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques, and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image, and reputation.

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Hi there, welcome to my show. And thank you for being here with me today. Today, we're going to be covering the subject of Instagram for authentic personal branding. As we all know, Instagram is a powerful platform for personal branding that offers a visual and engaging way to connect with your audience, as long as of course that your fleet audience actually lives there and engages there. So in this episode, we'll learn how to enhance engagement and foster some deeper relationships with your followers and ensuring that your brand remains relevant and influential. And we'll discover the key elements of commitment, consistency and authenticity that will drive community growth and loyalty. So let's get started to build an authentic personal brand on Instagram is not overly difficult as there is so much superficiality already on that. So therefore, Authenticity will stand out. And I am talking about authenticity here, as opposed to just getting, you know, a big following. And you don't care about authenticity. And that's fine as well if you want to go down that track, but that's not what I'm talking about today. And a perfect example. For instance, Kim Kardashian loves Instagram, she has 360 million followers on Instagram. So she is a prime example of a celebrity who has leveraged her massive social media following to build and promote her brand, of course, a very successful brand that that her posts received millions of likes and comments, and she has a significant influence on her audience. Now this level of reach and engagement is typically accessible only to high profile celebrities. For the rest of us, while for most people and smaller brands, achieving this level of mass follow it is not realistic. It's just not practical at all, because it's a mass concept. And of course, smaller brands as most likely are going to be more niche. Having said that, you can try to follow her strategy as well, it's just gonna require a lot of resources to get even close to that. So instead, it's crucial to focus on building a genuine and engaged community. And we will cover some of these approaches as we go on. Currently, there are 1 billion monthly active users making a massive platform for reaching a wide audience. So that definitely is an audience up there. And you could argue that 1 billion is 1/8 of the world's population in a frequence Instagram per month. And then approximately 500 million users engage with Instagram stories every day in providing a significant opportunity. Of course, for real time interaction. The demographics of Instagram are really interesting. At is a younger market, no question about that 18 to 34, which accounts for over 60% of users. So if you're in the younger space, Instagram is fantastic for that slightly more females than males with a higher engagement rate, you know, compared to other social media platforms.

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What I'm going to do now is explore some of the key strategies to help you leverage Instagram, if that's what you intend to do, that will be effective for your personal brand. But before you start posting, you know, let's get into some clarity here at what your brand stands for. And as we've discussed on numerous episodes, prior your values, your passions and the message or messages you want to convey. When I first started using Instagram, extensively in the early days, it certainly was totally different than you could get a follower follower base a lot quicker. But of course, in recent times, I have not used that as much quite simply because my clients don't use it they don't go to engage on Instagram get business like why would utilize LinkedIn more than of course Instagram, but that doesn't mean Instagram cannot be a great fit for your brand and your business. So it's important of course just to get that right. So your profile should reflect your identity and your tone and visuals should be congruent and 100 Of course with your messaging now, visuals on Instagram, you'll notice that most cases beautiful, they are very attractive, they are cinematic from that point of view. So if you're going to be on that, because it's a visual medium, the images have to look good. Use a consistent color palette. And of course, this is branding 101, the style and the tone of course that aligns with your brand's personality. Next, focus on authentic storytelling, a subject that we've spoken about a lot recently, but to read, tap, connect with stories. And because people connect with stories more than they do with facts, and figures, unless, of course, they are visually attractive. That's a true fact. So if you're going to use facts and figures, make sure they were attractive in the way they present it. You can also use Instagram Stories, reels, of course posts to tell your story, whether it's a behind the scenes look at your daily life insights into your work, or personal inspiration, no anecdotes. Next, I will also engage with the audience, you know, and you have to do this fairly quickly, including DMS, engage with them, by responding to comments in your real voice, not with AI. This is very important. Ai, of course, is a useful tool for so many, many things. I hate it for automatic responses, when somebody's trying to sell an authentic message out there and then uses AI to respond to me with it. I can tell you personally, I don't do business with most of them unless I am desperate for that product or service that they're offering. And it's very rare that I'm ever desperate. 

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And lighting and sharing the posts and initiating conversations very important. So show also genuine interest in their thoughts. So remember to refrain any feedback. And remember what we said about feedback, you might feed back to feed forward, you know, how did you get any form of critiquing, and create some possibilities moving into the future. And we only did that recently, because there also is a lot of fake comments specifically on social media that at times, you know, might not even be, it might be a bot, or a competitor trying to sabotage you. This is very important, of course, more common in my experience on Facebook. But definitely, it's available for anyone that's got mal intent purposes to use it on any socials. So you can also use Instagrams interactive features like polls, q&a sessions, and quizzes to encourage participation. And of course, make your audience feel valued. If you're committed to building a community around your brain, certainly it will enhance engagement, and foster deeper connections with your followers. So you got to be really on with this. That's why if you're going to use it, use it properly, spend the time and energy making sure that it's effective, via Of course, the use of your time and efforts. Because if you're not going to do that, then of course, it's not the best way to get involved with Instagram or any form of social media. The importance of building a community around your brand. And the impact of a strong community, of course, creates brand loyalty. And we know that engagement is valuable. That's why we keep on talking about commitment, like anything else in life is also crucial for fostering trust and loyalty. Remember, authenticity in connecting with your audience matters and will always matter, especially when you're a smaller or medium sized brand, or individual as opposed to a Kim Kardashian, Kim Kardashian so you know, doesn't have to be authentic. Again, she just does the stick, and she gets results. So you know, and this is where there's a paradox about this concept called authenticity. But of course, authenticity as we know, it builds trust. And people would argue with me that you know, Kardashians brand also is authentic for Kardashian. Okay, that's up for conjecture. But that's not the conversation we're having today is so what I'm saying to you is yes, there is big brands around the planet that are times inauthentic, and do very well thank you very much. But I am focusing on authenticity, because it's a big part of our conversation. And of course, that's what we stand for. So that's why I make points of it. Creating content that resonates though and feels genuine doesn't matter who's making that is essential, because, obviously, you know, you gotta certainly start with that intention. Otherwise, what are you doing creating fake content? That's not really cool. Some engagement strategies, of course include. I've already mentioned this to you before. for responding to comments and DMS promptly fostering deeper connections any way possible, right? That will happen through engaging in, of course, commenting, and also inviting people to participate. This way you get to build the community.

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Some of the techniques for building deeper and more personal connection with your followers have been covered. But also highlighting user generated content and getting them involved. And sharing their stories as well can also really powerful we've had many clients do that by incorporated or collaborating with clients and other type of connections. And having what we call is collaborative stories. Remember, consistency in all your branding matters. Otherwise, you're creating incongruent says. So maintaining a cohesive visual, and tone and tone or identity across all posts interactions is something we would recommend, as some success stories, you can check out on Instagram. And because Instagram has a cross section of businesses on their list, nothing 25 million business brands, you got a cross section right across from personal brands to business brands. So you know, if you check that Instagram, you'll see that NASA, for instance, has 92 million followers, and they've got different brands like GoPro luxury brands, like Tiffany, probably, you know, 10 15 million followers, in the Lux in the lux, space, and of course, edgy tone of voice, water bread, liquid death, you know, has around 2 million followers. So depending what your brand proposition is out there, and also your positioning, you can utilize LinkedIn, you can only utilize and maximize the value of Instagram doesn't matter if you're in the lower aspects of our socio economics, right up to luxury brands, and they all are up there. So providing also, tailored advice for some of the specific challenges face by some of your listeners can also be effective as well, if they obviously engage, and that also is really valuable, because then people feel they've received a lot more than a typical bot response. If that's possible, of course, you know, but I'm not saying you can use technology as well to help you with some of those processes. It's just that if you're dealing with real people, real people expect in most cases, not always a real response, especially when it's something you know, that might be personal. So to recap, some of the main points discussed in this episode, I encourage you to start implementing the discuss strategies for building a community, if that's what your clients would expect, or certainly will visit. So if they use Instagram, certainly you can, you have an opportunity to build a community there. You can also leverage hashtags and tags to increase your visibility, they still also matter quite a bit on LinkedIn. And his posts have shown up to you know, 12 to 15% increase by using hashtags to increase visibility. Now, of course, these things are all trends. Sometimes they go down like trends go down the sometimes they go up. So you know at the moment this they still have value. Always researching use relevant hashtags, of course, also reflect your niche and target audience. So that's very important. If you're gonna do that, make sure it's relevant to what you're doing. And also tagging relevant counts or collaborations can also help you reach a broader audience. However, avoid overloading your posts with too many hashtags. Focus on quality, always over quantity. And to sum up, building an authentic personal brand on Instagram involves defining your brand identity sharing definitely authentic stories and engaging with the audience and you know, leveraging the hashtags effectively. By staying true to yourself and consistently connecting with your audience, you can create a powerful presence on Instagram that enhances your personal brand and fosters meaningful relationships. Folks, that's all I have for you today. Before we finish our chat, I kindly ask you to connect with me on social media. My Twitter Twitter/X as Jon_Michail, my LinkedIn is Jon Michail. And you can find his image Group International on Facebook. If you enjoyed our chat, please rate us on Apple podcasts and subscribe for more valuable content. If you need our help in elevating your personal and business brands on Instagram and beyond, please contact patricia.bosa@imagegroup.com.au - until next time, I wish you a big Cheerio.

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Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence, and authority in the business world. To learn more and apply for personal coaching, seminars, and group workshops, please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.