Have You Been Noticed? — by Hamza Chaoui

Table of Contents

Your best tool might be your worst enemy. In other words, how not to self-brand yourself.

Let’s face it, for many people if you don’t exist on social media you don’t exist at all.

Every morning, the first thing I do is reach out to my phone, open my email and waste fifteen minutes on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn… my daily dose of unhealthy voyeurism. I’ll generally repeat the same ritual a few times throughout the day.

My commute to work is the time where I tend to most consume online content about the real estate industry in the region. And while a few years ago it perhaps lacked substance and depth, in the past twelve months I have found myself really enjoying some of the output from leaders of the industry. In fact, I’m realising that a lot of CEOs are almost becoming journalists, actors, directors and producers!

Some brokerage companies now have an in-house studio. Some have full-time videographers. I even heard that one CEO has hired a guy whose job is to capture ‘moments of wisdom.’ Yikes.

I truly understand the need to stand out in people’s feeds. As a CEO, you’re probably competing against someone’s younger brother who lives thousands of miles from Dubai, childhood friend, the mother-in-law’s birthday party and so on. Getting noticed isn’t easy.

So if you want to get a few minutes of my attention and get me to push the ‘Like’ button, you need to know what you’re doing.

The below are a few tips/observations based on my years of helping brands get people to sit up and take notice…

What’s The Intention?

Why do you one day decide to go on social media and open up to the world? Some would say “to help younger entrepreneurs avoid the mistakes I’ve made in the past’ or “to share insights about the industry” or “to contribute to growing the brand.”

Sure, that’s all fine. But reason number one why we do it is because we want recognition. We want people to tell us how amazing and successful we are, and that’s fine too. As long as you don’t mess around with the brand you’ve built up. By putting yourself at the forefront of your company’s social media presence you become a channel and a message. You become part of a media plan. So when doing this be as demanding as you would be with any other marketing channel, and ask for results – real results. Not just ‘Likes’ and comments from your own employees.

In the context of self-branding, you need to be thinking of yourself as the ‘format‘ rather than ‘the channel‘. One way of looking at it is the following: If you were to do a national TV campaign and associate your brand to a celebrity, who would it be and why?

Are ‘Likes’ Your Best ‘ROI?

I’ll make it short. They’re your worst enemy. ‘Likes’ mean you’re popular. They don’t mean you’re building a strong brand. So here are two things you want to look at. If you’re promoting your brand/company using yourself as a channel, you would expect to increase your share of voice in the ‘intellectual’ market of your industry.

Ask yourself the following: Since you’ve started your YouTube channel, how many journalists have contacted you? How much PR did you generate? How many mentions in the news did you get? PR mentions are a great KPI to look at, along with earned media.

The second thing to look at as a metric is CVs received. If you’ve done a good job at conveying your brand, you should probably have made your company a more attractive place to work. So, how many CVs do you receive per month, compared to last year, before you started posting?

Don’t “Kardashianise” Your Content

Are you giving tips while showing off your Dubai lifestyle? Don’t get me wrong, If you want to use social media to promote yourself please feel free to build on any hook you can find, there’s no rule. But if you’re doing this to positively impact the way your company is perceived by your target audiences, then you need to be a bit more careful. A good starting point is your brand values; as a representative of your brand on social media you need to be a conveyor of these brand values. You can not stand for ‘transparency’ if you refuse to give numbers.

In the context of self-branding, you need to be thinking of yourself as the ‘format’ rather than ‘the channel’. One way of looking at it is the following: If you were to do a national TV campaign and associate your brand to a celebrity, who would it be and why? Same applies to yourself. You’ve decided to associate yourself with your brand. So make sure that your brand, and your better self, are constantly aligned.

Think of this. The words you’ll use to describe Virgin might be the same words you would use to describe Richard Branson. The words you will use to describe Apple are the words you’ll use to describe Steve Jobs’ personality and style.

Don’t Be Bigger Than Your Brand

We identify ourselves with people more easily than we do with brands. It’s more natural to like a post from a person than a post from a brand. A brand is intangible, a person is relatable. If you have control of your brand, you can somehow outgrow your brand. And if you’re not careful this could be very detrimental.

If you become the ‘face’ of your company, and if you become the number one contributor to your content, you will at first contribute in strengthening your brand personality as you’re bringing to it a very relatable aspect. The risk here is that the more you do it, the stronger the association. In the short term that’s great.

But what would happen if tomorrow you want to exit? What would happen if tomorrow there’s a new CEO? The brand you’ve built will become an empty shell that lacks substance.

So be careful about the frequency with which you feature yourself, and don’t be the sole face of your company. Identify other people from your firm that can be contributors, and make it a team thing!

Give Me The Meat

Another thing I’ve noticed is that most videos are poorly structured. Most seem to invest 20% of the content asking the viewer to watch until the end. 10% is about asking the viewer to like or subscribe. 20% is about referring to your previous post, and 50% is the ‘meat’.

I understand how ‘engagement’ can be addictive. I understand that feeling of seeing a post going viral. The truth is you don’t need to do this. You’re not giving a makeup tutorial, and you’re not doing this to generate revenue. So focus on delivering your message in the most efficient way, and build your community base on solid ground, acquiring one viewer at a time.

We might be in an era where CEOs are the biggest brand asset you have in your hand, but it’s also the era where a song about pineapples and a pen gets over a billion views. Social media is undeniably a blessing and a curse. It’s in our hands, and in your hands, to demonstrate that the best part about self-branding is the ‘branding’ part, not the ‘self’ part.

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