I believe that everyone should take ownership of their personal brand. Much like corporate brands, you should think about your positioning, value proposition and communication strategy. I must admit, that I am learning along the way as platforms and capabilities evolve. But having an iterative strategy is key in developing your brand identity through the power of social media. You don’t have to be a ‘particular type’ or ‘seniority’ to do this. Everyone has a unique identity, but are you leveraging it to share the right message to the right audience at the right time?

Here is how I use different platforms to represent different facets of myself. This is not the gold standard, but just something that I do. Hopefully, it should inspire you to start thinking about your own social media strategy.

The first step is to understand yourself. Like customer segmentation, you might want to segment your own identity. I think about my identity as split between my professional self and my personal self (but this might be different for you). Here is my social media (no-magic) formula:

1) Representing My Professional Self:

# The power of LinkedIn – Currently, I use LinkedIn as the primary platform to represent my professional brand. I use LinkedIn to share my professional interests, network with people and participate in profession-related discussions. Find me at /asthakalbag

# The power of Twitter – Many people use twitter to express their personal day-to-day lives (what they eat, where they go, what they feel). But for me, I don’t believe that information is shared on any platform as fast as it is shared on twitter. Infact – If you have ever met me, you will know that I have an opinion on almost everything. (This includes having an opinion on not having an opinion). Therefore, I use twitter primarily to share my opinions/ viewpoints on latest happenings in the world. Follow me at @AsthaKalbag

# The power of WordPress – If you are reading this blog, you will realise that I use this platform extensively to share trends, opinions, campaigns in the digital marketing/ advertising space. Since I am really passionate about this industry, I write focused posts for people who are interested to be part of my learning journey. I like to think about my blog’s positioning as a cross between The Economist (making complicated things understandable) and Twitter (Keeping content digestible, cause ain’t nobody got time).

2) Representing My Personal Self:

# The power of Instagram – Instagram to me is a super-intimate platform. Almost exclusive, I share parts of my private life – memories with my best friends, amazing places I have visited, awesome food encounters (and pre-hangover-beer-pong photos). If you are my instagram friend, we must be close <3

# The power of Facebook – I remember the time when Facebook would my ‘public-cloud-server’ to share photo albums of everything on my digital camera. That doesn’t hold true for me anymore. In the rare case that I post a photo on facebook, it is probably cross published through Instagram (Yes, Mark Zuckerberg- it was a good idea to buy Instagram). But I still think about Facebook as an avenue to get in touch with long-lost-friends through facebook mail. And ofcourse, I can’t run away from events published on facebook that often serve as a starting point for all my weekend plans :)

# The power of Snap-chat – Snapchat to me is like some people’s personal twitter handle – only more intimate. I share real time updates to my tight circle of friends about all the random-stupid-funny-encounters I have. (Hoping that there is no trace of this the next day).

We all know that digital media platforms have powerful network effects. We are there because we know other people who are there. So depending on where my network moves, tomorrow I might just be hyper active on We Chat or Kakao Talk. But for now, this is how I leverage different social media platforms. What about you?