5harathFounding Growth Lead, Willow Voice

Building a personal brand on social media - Jack Appleby

16 Jan 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:48

In this segment of Jack Appleby's talk on building a personal brand, he frames personal branding as a relatively new, evolving discipline and highlights the common anxieties creators have—namely fear of negativity, controversy, and online fights. Appleby acknowledges that while no method can guarantee zero conflict, he proposes a near‑foolproof approach: treat the personal brand like a classroom. By positioning himself as an instructor, he shares content that critiques poorly executed advertising, using flawed examples as teaching moments. This strategy both provides value to the audience and creates a protective buffer against backlash, because the focus is on constructive analysis rather than personal opinion.

Chapters

Personal branding is still a new term. It's like 5 years, 10 years old. So there's a lot that's changing, a lot that's developing in that space still. And that's a common fear that I hear from people who are like, either wanna post for themselves or wanna join Break an Egg. Like, how do I avoid negativity? How do I avoid controversy? I don't wanna get internet fights. There's a way to approach this where you're almost foolproof. To not have that happen. I'll say I'll never promise you 100%. I started my personal brand, like I fancied myself like almost like I was building a classroom. So when I started tweeting about advertising, I would feature things that I didn't think were smart or things that I thought were very flawed.