Building a personal brand for yourself as an accountant can actually take you very far in your field. Here’s a guide for starting your own personal brand as an accountant.
Why does personal branding for accountants matter?
As an accountant, like any other business, your goal is to connect with an audience and sell your service to that audience. Having a strong personal brand and image makes it a lot easier to do that. If you establish your brand properly, you’ll be seen as an authority in that field and you’re more likely to build trust in your target audience. Trust is incredibly important in the field of accounting and bookkeeping, since you are dealing with such personal information.
Before the popularity of social media, personal branding was all about business cards, having a logo, and attending networking events to show people your business. While there’s still something to be said about those marketing opportunities, it’s a lot more important having an online presence.
Getting Started
It might feel overwhelming when you have to start your brand and you don’t know what to do. These tips will help you develop your online personal brand to make you stand out from the competition.
1: Stick with One Angle
The first step is to figure out how you want to be known or perceived in the accounting community and toward potential clients. Before you dive into your brand creation, you need to know the angle you want and it has to work with your career objectives. Your focus can be anything from an e-commerce business accountant, to a tax planner for individuals and entrepreneurs, to fast and easy bookkeeping services.
According to Dylan Harrison, a marketing writer at Writinity and Last Minute Writing, “Once you choose your niche, you need to focus on promoting that aspect and centering your brand on that angle. If you keep pushing it long enough, people will start associating your name with that angle.”
2: Post Regularly on Social Media
The next step is to build up a following in your target audience on social media. Learn about the differences between LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms. Some are better than others for your personal objectives so you need to find what works best for you.
Once you have your profile(s) set up on the right platforms, post on a regular basis (but not too frequently) some interesting content related to your niche discovered in tip 1. By doing so, you’ll be establishing yourself as a thought leader in that field and creating a group of followers in your targeted audience. Don’t overwhelm your followers with posts, and focus on quality over quantity.
3: Blog Regularly
As mentioned in the previous tip, you want to give your followers valuable content about your niche. If you have a blog and post something about once a month, over the course of the year it will really showcase your relevance in that industry. This contributes a lot to your personal brand as a leader in the field.
A suggestion from Olivia Tillerson, a marketer at Draft Beyond and Research Papers UK, is to “Optimize your post with some relevant keywords for your target audience, which will make your content rank higher in searches. You can either create your own website to post your content, or reach out to relevant blogs and write some guest posts.”
4: Set-up Email Marketing
People actually like getting newsletters if they’re filled with engaging and high-quality content. Email marketing is a very useful tool for communicating with your target audience regularly and consistently. For this aspect, you should choose a theme that your content will revolve around, and send it on a regular basis to your followers. That way, they will know to expect your newsletter every week at the same time.
There’s a lot more to building a personal brand online as an accountant, but these 4 tips should get your well on your way. You can also consider other methods, like starting a podcast or YouTube channel. The important thing is having a consistent image and engaging with your followers to build a loyal client base.
Author Bio: Ashley Halsey, a professional writer at Lucky Assignments and Gum Essays, is involved in marketing and personal branding projects nationwide. She enjoys helping start-ups and individuals build a brand and market themselves online. In her spare time, she travels and attends business conferences and networking events.