Marketing yourself isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be scary either. The trick is to find ways to market yourself that are authentic and aligned with who you are and what you stand for. And if you have no idea what that is or how to get there, it can feel pretty hopeless. But don’t lose faith just yet! There are plenty of inspiring people out there who also struggled with marketing themselves when they first started out… People like Simon Sinek, the famous business consultant, speaker, and author of the New York Times best-selling book “Leaders Eat Last”

Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about the way we write for social media and websites. For small businesses, this often translates to “how I can write about my business, products and services.”

Yet the tasks you perform, the products you sell and the services you provide are part of the story.

Today you’ll get a better understanding of what you do for your customers.

You’ve just had your ads rejected by Facebook. They don’t give you much of a reason why. Just that you have probably violated their ads policies or community standards or something like that.

What’s next? We’re going to take a look at three main reasons why ads get rejected:

Let’s drill down a bit.

‍This past week I’ve watched seven different young personalities on LinkedIn with fast-growing followings and great personal brands very publicly burn out.

They all appeared suddenly in my feed around three months ago, and just as quickly, they were making public statements saying that they are slowing down or withdrawing from social media completely.

Is it a lack of stamina? Hardly. These are content creators in their early to mid-twenties. They have tonnes of energy. What they lack is a reasonable expectation of what a personal brand involves.

Having a strong personal brand is important for anyone, especially for career-driven millennials. However, building your brand is also exhausting.

You probably didn’t realise that it’s social media’s 25th birthday this year.

Back in 1997, a website called Six Degrees attempted to show that we’re all connected by just six degrees of separation. It featured messaging between members and the ability to invite people to the platform.

It was probably a little ahead of its time though and closed in 2000.

Five years later, Friendster arrived and picked up where Six Degrees left off. It was originally a dating site where friends would set you up with their other friends to date.

It was a terrible dating service but gained momentum as a way for friends to chat with each other and post thoughts about their lives. This was a true social network, but it grew too fast and suffered terrible outages that saw its users flocking to MySpace and just a year later, to Facebook.

At the same time as Facebook was finding its feet, LinkedIn, Photobucket, Flickr and WordPress fired up their servers for the first time.

Marketing is more complex than ever. Digital transformation has led to the rise of new technologies, channels, markets and customer behaviour. To thrive in this new environment, marketers need new skills and a broader set of abilities. The effectiveness of marketing teams will hinge on their ability to respond nimbly to market changes and operate with greater transparency and collaboration across functions. With this in mind, here are the five skills that marketing professionals need for the future:

There’s a fine line between staying in touch with your audience and annoying them. You want to stay top of mind with them without coming across as spammy or desperate. But how can you ensure you’re not crossing the invisible line and annoying them? If you don’t take measures to avoid annoying your audience on social media, they will stop following you and unfriend you. Annoying your audience on social media is one of the most common reasons small businesses get unfollowed. People are more cautious now than ever before regarding their personal information online. They know what they like and don’t like and are not afraid to let you know if something bothers them. Let’s look at five ways to avoid annoying your audience on social media:

‍Today’s digital landscape is packed with opportunities, both for business and personal brands. A strong personal brand will help you stand out in a competitive market and expand your network. Personal branding can also be an effective strategy to get a job or accelerate your career. If you want to build a successful career, grow your business or just be a more interesting human being, building your own brand is the way forward. Here are five reasons to know why personal branding works so well for business.

You know that old saying: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying?” Well, it rings true for businesses today. In order to compete, you need to be thinking outside the box and coming up with new ideas and creative solutions to keep up with your competitors. One way to do this is by optimising your website as a source of information and value for your target audience. Think about how many websites you visit in a given week. Probably more than you think, right? It stands to reason that these sites have been optimised for user experience. If they haven’t, they probably won’t get much traffic or views. It helps if you can leverage the tools that are out there to make sure your site is up-to-date and super user-friendly.

Email is still one of the most effective ways to market your business. But it’s also a channel that can feel saturated and cluttered. If you’re not sure where to start with your marketing strategy, asking yourself if email marketing is still relevant in 2022 might help you think about how you can leverage this tool more effectively. After all, there’s a reason so many companies use email as an outreach tool. It works!