Kim Luckie from Kim Luckie Marketing talks about the importance of authenticity, consistency, and managing your priorities to build a more engaging personal brand online.
This month, we’re bringing you Part 3 in our series about self-promotion for real estate agents. Missed the other two? View part one and part two. This month, social media influencer and real estate thought leader Kim Luckie shares her best practices for building your personal brand online.
From ensuring your content fits your narrative, to sharing your authentic self, to the importance of consistency, Kim’s wisdom, candor, and enthusiasm for social media will give you the incentive you need to push past your comfort zone and connect with more people online.
Q: Tell us a little about how you’ve built your personal brand to promote your business.
Everyone has a personal brand. The issue is all about who controls it. I think of my personal branding as a garden. It’s my garden and I get to decide what grows. I work on my brand; I plant seeds and cultivate my brand story with intention. If you leave your garden alone, it will grow weeds. Even if the flowers are pretty, there are still weeds that are difficult to remove.
I want to be known for my:
- Positive, authentic energy
- Effective ideas
- Strong nerd army
- Eagerness to collaborate
- Wicked sense of humor
Out-of-the box approach to finding solutions.
It’s not just who I want to be; it’s how I want to live.
Every personal brand idea or piece of content is measured by that narrative. If it doesn’t fit, it won’t have a place in my personal brand, no matter how cool the idea is. Sticking to this ensures that the clients and collaborators I work with are attracted to my way of doing business. I’m not for everyone and neither are you. That level of authenticity shortcuts that secret interview process that everyone goes through when choosing a partner.
Once you’ve determined your narrative, attracting the right customers to your brand is much, much easier. I follow Gary Vaynerchuk’s tried and true method:
- Hit your audience with more value-added messaging and…
- Be selective about your calls to action (CTA).
I employ the 4/5 approach. AT LEAST four messages of value land before one advertisement. You don’t watch tv for the commercials. Why should your social followers? Be patient. Brand-building is a long game.
Q: How has the importance of social media impacted your business?
Social media is the great equalizer, offering anyone a platform to create, maintain, and rapidly build influence, regardless of your goal.
While working as marketing director, my personal brand focused on:
- Sharing knowledge
- Collaboration
- Building community
- Aggressively spreading positivity
Now that I’ve started my own business, that consistent presence has led to an immediate demand for my services, even though it wasn’t my initial intention. It’s a brand I’ve been building for years.
People I haven’t worked with in any professional capacity are reaching out because my personal brand makes a promise that my experience backs up. Even though I’ve been preaching the power of these channels for a long time, it still surprises me how much opportunity social media creates.
Because I built a brand based on who I am and how I operate vs. what I specifically do, that brand has carried me from one career into the next, seamlessly.
Q: What are your favorite ways to use social media to promote your business and your personal brand?
1. Let them hear see and hear you.
People think I’m comfortable using video. I am absolutely not. I get nervous and tongue-tied.
What I know is that video outperforms every other kind of social content delivery, put together. The best thing you can do to increase your influence is pick a time every week to either release your video or to go live. (Live is better.)
Use the tools each platform gives you to build an audience and always launch at the same time. Even when you’re still learning, do it every week. You WILL get better the more you do it, but don’t wait until you’ve mastered the art of video to be consistent.
2. Get personal
I keep my content ratio at around 70-30. Even on my business page, 70% of my content has nothing to do with real estate or marketing. It’s about being a real person online.
I’m not just a strategist. I like books. I like movies. I like funky kicks. I am inspired by Marvel and Star Wars and Oprah. I love hip hop music and Alabama football. The only trash-talking I do online is about college football with friends who, despite possessing off-the-charts intelligence, continue to believe in Clemson’s supremacy. (I said what I said, Sue.)
I take my work seriously, but I don’t take myself seriously. When potential clients are trying to determine whether or not I’m someone they want to work with, the best version of me is in plain sight.
Q: How do you empower your team to try new marketing techniques and embrace social media?
There are two important truths that will free you to embrace experimentation.
First, there are a million right ways to do social media and only a handful of wrong ways. Focus less on whether the technique will fail and more on whether your idea still fits the narrative you are crafting.
Second, consistency outweighs good-better-best content. Once you understand that done is better than perfect, you’re free to push the envelope. Sure, some of your crazy ideas will fail, but social media allows you to fail fast and improve fast.
Hot take: If you’re a leader trying to encourage new technique adoption, avoid any “this is the right way” or “this is the only way” advice. It’s very bad advice. Personal brand building is extremely personal. What works for one doesn’t always work for others and vice versa. Focus your advice on aligning them with their value and their story.
Q: Are there any top tips or resources you’d like to share with our community to help them level up their social media presence?
- Figure out how you want people to see you. As a person, a professional, a community member, and human, how do you want clients, friends, family, and collaborators to think and feel about you? Write it down. Turn that into a story you tell with every post, video, ad, and GIF. Measure every idea against it. Refer to it constantly. Publish only what helps you tell that story.
- Manage your priorities. No matter who you are or what your goal, social media success begins and ends with making the time to imagine and execute your plan. Prioritize and protect the time you allocate to building your personal brand. Remember, time management is a myth. Priority management is the key to success.
- If it supports your narrative, use it! Supplement your content with the free content you get from your brand, leaders, brokers, your company, your team, your partners, etc. It’s a myth that every piece of content you endorse has to be original.
- Find a tool that helps you schedule content in advance. Most social media channels allow you to schedule things out for free. Save time by investing in a platform that allows you to build and schedule content among multiple channels.
- If you have no plan, start small and focused. Pick one channel and get good at it. Learn everything about it. Focus on measuring your success on that one platform. Don’t add another channel until you’ve got a rhythm and system that grows your influence and engagement on that channel. Then, add another platform to your strategy.
Now it’s your turn
How do you ensure your authentic self shines through on social media? Have you enjoyed success promoting your brand online? What strategies work best for you?
Let us know. Email us at WhatMovesHer@anywhere.re or share with us on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. We want to hear your thoughts.
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