How a strong personal brand takes back your power from the algorithm

Alexis Neve - How a strong personal brand takes back your power from the algorithm

00:00 Lately, more and more people are finding themselves burnt out by social media producing a lot of content and not having the results to show for it, and often they just blame the algorithm for it. One problem is that many new business owners have learned how to use social media from people using it more like influencers who focus on growing the following in order to sell ads rather than converting their followers to direct sales. 

00:32 In this honest training, I will share how you can take back your power from social media by cultivating a strong personal brand. But before we go any further, I'm Alexis Neve and I've been in digital marketing ever since social media came onto the scene. Being an ADD adapter in my teens led me to temp for a marketing agency while a university, which shaped the first decade of my career. Now I'm a photographer and alignment coach and I love to help people that, especially women, build businesses that work for them and not the other way around. 

01:17 Personal power is my big theme and if that survive, you can find more about me in the not for disorder training, but I'm a copic of Mercury, so efficiency is the name of the game. Let's dive in. First we'll look at the state of social media in 2025 Then we'll talk about what's a personal brand and the two key things you need to cultivate one that is strong, attracts the people that are your best fit market and makes you unforgettable through them. 

01:54 As AI becomes a constant factor in how we move online, customer behaviour on social media is changing. This is the age of relationships. People are looking for authentic connections and personalization is increasingly important and claim it's safe we leave it behind. These brands get incredible results from being creative. Also, social media platforms are more like a search engine for the younger generations, so depending on your target market, you want to keep that in mind. 

02:34 As Media Tool put it in their 2025 forecast, attention is the new currency so you want to do fewer things but better. This is where having a strong personal brand comes in. You can speak to a very specific person and become known as the go to for a very specific thing. 

02:58 It doesn't matter if you have multiple of first star feel disconnected from each other because a personal brand is a brand that revolves around a specific person and it's known by name and be a global brand or it could be very local or even tied to a specific niche like influencers are. Of course, that's not to say that you can be a life coach on Monday and then on Tuesday to become an accountant and see a great response from your audience. There still has to be a cohesion so that any people to look like a natural progression or you need to have a clear story behind why a whole other direction and there will probably be a period of adjustment around it. 

03:47 But it doesn't have to be that you have a signal of product like any Porterfield is known for courses. Let's use an example so I can show you how to think about personal branding so you can look at yourself with a bird's eye view as you curate or brand. Gola Darling started her career with a fashion blog in the early two thousands. Then she added radical self love to the topics that she was known for with a book by that title in 2016 Her second book, Magnetic Mindset, established in 2022 was about manifestation. 

04:27 Over the course of these years, she has become known as the Tapping Queen thanks to her work to popularize the emotional freedom technique. Her current offerings vary from money to love, but the underlying connection is living a high vibe life and being your biggest, boldest self, unapologetically pink glitter and all. She has recently remarried and if she were to launch a product about pregnancy and it kept the easels of Glamour Queen living her best life, nobody would be thrown off course. 

05:07 It's just the natural evolution of her brand as we know it. But if she came up with the same product about pregnancy and it had an Earth Mama vibe with neutral colors and a picture of her and a baby bum in a white boho dress on a beach at sunset, now that make us go what the beep but that 'd be the same also as if she's just shifted the look of a brand, even while still talking about EFT and manifestation, which are the topics we know her for. We're going to know her for her pink hair, Jessica Rabbit aesthetic maximalism, and unapologetic glamorous champagne lifestyle. 

05:53 So her community is a very clear type of woman and every detail of her brand speaks to that woman. Now you might be thinking easy for her, she has over 300,000 thousand followers, but that's the key thing here. She didn't build a platform to be that big out of nowhere. The specificity of a message and the look of a brand in the past decade since she worked with an agency on it, has made two things that are the goal for you too. Recognizable and referable, having reels go viral and being pushed in suggestions and the For You page isn't the only way to expand your following. 

06:35 You don't even need to run giveaways or other tactics to expand your reach artificially. You just need to find the one thing that people seek you out for and have a brand that is authentic to you so that people who resonate with your energy can find you. A Christian mum overwhelmed with burnout from running a business while homeschooling their four children isn't going to come get business coaching for me, as much as I have a lot of value to give her with my experience. 

07:06 But she'd buy from someone who she can relate to that shows her the transformation she wants for herself. So this is the first key point, specificity. There is no right or wrong way to be. You know what your superpower is. If you have been in business a while, you have data from past clients, but if you're new you can look at what people reflect back to you in your career or your personal life. For years I was the friend who is every once in pay therapist and even in my work as a photographer when I was in covering concerts people would talk about how I made them feel when a camera is quite intimidating. 

07:50 So it's not always clear cut line and reportedly equals courses angola darling equals CST. It can be subtle when it comes to how it ties into your products and services. It's still something glaringly obvious about you as a person and once you have it, you just tie it into your brand. Which brings me to the second key point of what makes a powerful brand Your story. Data shows time and again that people make emotional decisions and then rationalize them later. So storytelling and its ability to provoke emotions and create connections is the most powerful tool at your disposal in marketing. 

08:34 Your brand story is what makes you unforgettable and together with clarity on your message and we stand for is how you become referable. If you come to me and you need a coach, I have so many people I can refer you to including myself. But if I know you're employed in a high profile career and experience in burnout, I'm going to send you to my friend who worked for Chanel and now cautious women dealing with anxiety and burnout. Talking about your key topics and stories also makes you more searchable as social media picks up the keywords from the things you say. It's not just about other people recommending you. Now, since this was short training on a huge topic, my goal today was to give you enough information to shift how you think about social media in the year ahead so you can remove the pressure to perform for the algorithm and align your energy for organic growth. 

09:36 Some people align and explode, but that may not be your path and that's OK. By being specific, not only inertia, potential clients at the early stages of awareness that are in your existing audience, but you maximize your chances of adding new people who come across you and like your brand, especially if you add other visibility strategies. So let the pressure go and bring back what you enjoy doing as it lands so much more powerfully than anything you do because you think you have to do it. 

10:10 I wish you all the best with your 2025 goals. I know you smash them because now you know the foundation of a powerful personal brand, and it's only upwards from here.