The key to staying relevant on social media

Martin says: "Do you ever feel lost in all the noise? There’s so much of it. Everything is vying for our attention, buzzing and beeping, asking us to like, comment, share.

How do you cut through it all? More, how do you, as one person, get your message across in a world of influencers, megastars and social elite.

There are thousands of gurus out there who bombard us with messages about what we should be posting, when, how often, in what format etc. etc. to generate engagement and stay relevant. And while I’ve no doubt they know their stuff (and far more than me), I do find it overwhelming and often, unrelatable.

I, like you, do not have millions of followers. To date, my LinkedIn following stands at just over 5,000 and that’s taken me the best part 10 years to build. In this time, I’ve found my own ways to stay ‘relevant’, but this is relevance on a small scale, an achievable scale, and perhaps more accessible than the dizzying heights of those racking up millions of views.

So, here’s my non-influencer guide to staying relevant, remaining competitive, and engaging your audience in 2024 and beyond.

Personal branding refers to the process of creating and managing a unique and consistent image or identity around yourself. It involves intentionally shaping how others perceive you and what you represent personally and professionally.

Your personal brand is essentially the combination of your reputation, expertise, values, personality, and the way you present yourself to the world. It’s the foundation of everything, and yet often we don’t spend the time to reflect on who we present to the world and within our space. Nail this and the rest will follow.

What do you stand for? What’s meaningful to you? We gravitate towards those with shared values and common interests, so for me it’s important that people know what those are. At a top-level, I believe in transparent, fair and ethical recruitment, and so a lot of my content is orientated around the nuances of what this means in real terms. By being true to my values, I’m able to find clients and candidates who believe in the same things. This is perhaps the purist form of relevance, it isn’t showy or brash, it’s truth.

Likes and comments are important for increasing your audience reach, but posting for likes can quickly reduce the quality and value of your content. I don’t know about you, but I quickly scroll past those posts baiting for likes as they rarely bring anything new to the table.

You know the ones: the “I went for coffee with” posts; the “here’s a picture of my pet” photo; the “selfie that has no direct connection to what I’m posting about but I thought it would generate likes” content. The engagement that these posts generate are great from a vanity perspective, but they aren’t helping you to establish relevance. Relevance, I’d argue, is built on credibility, and it’s important to remember that when thinking up new content ideas.

At the beginning of my career, I tried to be like everyone else. In fact, I aspired to be like everyone else, or at least, my naïve perception of what that was in the business community. A consummate professional, serious, tie wearing, suit donning, the whole nine-yard stereotype.

Creativity, fun, humour? Barely in my professional vocabulary, despite knowing that’s who I was beneath it all.

Now, I embrace it. And that will be polarising to some extent. I’m sure I’ve lost business based on that uniqueness (you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea) but I’d like to think I’ve won a lot more than I’ve lost. And hey, at least I’m being me.