Could you spot a deepfake profile on LinkedIn? Or have you ever read a social media post that felt a little too stiff and robotic? AI generated content is nothing new, but online profiles using enhanced imagery of their own faces have catapulted the professional world into a whole new era of personal branding and image management. As divisive as the topic of artificial intelligence may be, the benefits can far outweigh the risks, when used well.
In this article, we discuss how putting your best digital foot forward with AI can be the difference between closing the deal and the door closing on you, as well as practical tips for implementing artificial intelligence to grow your business and strengthen your service offering to clients.
The important takeaway is that you gain valuable insight into investing in your most important asset: you. According to a Forbes report, 84% of consumers believe that a company's reputation is influenced by the personal brand of its employees. Now, if you’re an independent consultant, that means you’re the whole business, and all its employees in one.
Your personal brand is the shopfront every prospective new client will see – and judge – when looking for external consulting services. So how do you make sure you have an engaging online presence?
Top Tips
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Using social media platforms is nothing new, so changing perspective and using them as a marketing channel to spread your personal brand is relatively easy to wrap your head around. But doing it well takes a little more work.
Tip 1: Make it personal
My understanding of personal branding is that you want to use your unique skills, experience, and personality to help others. Bringing these elements together in a digestible format for your audience is key to presenting an authentic personal brand. The internet is full of disingenuous personal brands and the result is always the same – audiences scroll right past because they can’t see what is truly important to you as a consultant and as a person. Ultimately, clients will resonate with strong, authentic personal brands and they will compare your personal brand with their corporate brand to make the final decision to partner with you.
Tip 2: Make it consistent
Posting regularly keeps you in the minds – and LinkedIn feeds – of current and future clients. Create a social media calendar with a regular cadence where most of your audience will see it. This can be on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), or other platforms. And if you’re feeling a little lost about where to start building that calendar, read on to Tip 3…
Tip 3: Just… Do it
Rolling up your sleeves and producing content can feel intimidating, but AI can be a brilliant tool to assist in this. Not everyone is a graphic designer, expert copywriter or social media maven, but with AI tools that can write, create images and summarize information, all you have to do is be yourself. Research AI tools like Taskade to create social media content calendars and experiment with what works for your personal brand.
And then what?
So you have a strong personal brand that feels authentic to you and what you can offer – check. You have a consistent online presence, where you post regularly and you’re seeing engagement with clients – check. You’re integrating your newfound love of AI with your ongoing client projects – not quite…
Step 1: Find use cases where AI augments your tasks
Keep up to date with new tools and AI capabilities. If you’re not able to use AI well, people that are able to use AI well will replace your job sooner or later.
Finding examples of brands, platforms and individuals using AI in their everyday workflow is vital, because you’ll be able to spot the advantages and mistakes others make before implementing them in your own work.
Step 2: Embed AI use cases into your routine with clear intent
Prompting is something that I believe that everyone needs to learn. LIke many things, the best way to learn it is to do it.
Prompting is how you give an instruction to an AI platform. It’s vital when creating content because the results that AI can give you are only as good as the instructions you give it. Upskilling yourself as a consultant is a never-ending task that underpins the value you bring to your clients. Weaving skilled prompting into your day-to-day routines will help render frictionless AI-generated results for your personal branded content and projects.
I recommend:
- Being Clear and Specific: Ensure your instructions are clear and specific. AI relies on the information you provide, so avoid vague or ambiguous language.
- Starting with a Clear Objective: Begin your prompt with a clear statement of what you want to achieve. For example, "Generate a blog post on the benefits of renewable energy.”
- Providing Context: Briefly provide context or background information to help AI understand the task better. This can be a sentence or two explaining the subject matter. AI also responds well to example content that you want it to mimic.
- Setting the Tone and Style: Specify the tone and style you want the content to have. For instance, "Write a formal report on..."
- Iterating and Refining: Don't be afraid to iterate your prompts. If the initial response is not what you expected, adjust your instructions and try again.
Step 3: Test, learn and optimize with your audience
Using AI is all about experimentation and trying things out.
This is the fun part! You can play around with AI tools and content until you find a prompting method and platform that consistently delivers results you feel best represent your personal brand. Experimenting with organic and paid content on social media platforms, like LinkedIn, will allow you to monitor audience engagement, compare that content to similar posts, and then make changes based on what the data shows.
What if clients aren’t on board?
The Boogie Men of technology, Artificial Intelligence and Automation, have inspired nightmares for professionals and consultants alike for decades. Has technology changed the labor market? Yes. Has it made it better? Again, yes. Those who have embraced change and incorporated new technologies as part of their best practices have left the competition in the dust and grown their client lists.
But, a generous helping of caution is always a good idea; your personal brand doesn’t end online. Your business practices also need to reflect your integrity and work ethic, just as much as your digital practices.
Here are 3 pieces of advice when it comes to implementing AI with clients:
This is a major point; using AI on a project as a consultant needs to be clearly communicated to your client. A useful exercise is to sympathize with a client if they were to receive purely AI-generated work. Being met with robotic language and potential errors in the information could result in a relationship breakdown, with a client possibly feeling that the work is overpriced, or worse.
Education is key
As consultants, a large part of your job is to educate your clients and advise on new methods and technologies. However, there is still widespread skepticism regarding the use of AI, which could leave many consultants in a difficult situation.
AI can replace a task or augment your task, which are two totally different things. Make sure this distinction is clear in your mind, which is vital to understand as consultants, because it’s the difference between upholding your reputation with your clients, or ruining it completely.
When under pressure to deliver results with substantiated data and case studies, it can be tempting to use AI in place of time- and resource-heavy methods. But remember: AI is part of your arsenal, not your entire toolkit.
Assess your services to clients and identify tasks which require new research, creative problem solving and real-time attention. Once you have those clearly demarcated, play with the rest of your tasks and shop around for AI tools that can reduce time spent on activities that do not directly benefit you and your client.
Don’t have an assistant for task management? Trevor can help. Sick of stale stock imagery for content and client presentations? Many recommend Midjourney for authentic-feeling imagery. Feel like your social media presence needs an upgrade? Canva has some great AI features to assist. But if your client has a question about revenue models and opportunities for growth ahead of a new product launch? Well, that’s your chance to shine.
Ethics and legal boundaries
Imagine the scenario if a long-term client were to learn their project was completed using AI without their knowledge, especially if (as is so often the case) the work contains errors and flaws inherent in AI use. Flaws such as biased data analysis and factual errors can result in whole projects being derailed, even with potential legal ramifications.
Inviting your clients into your workflow is always a positive thing when using AI to round out your toolkit because it fosters an understanding that you are still bringing your own personal knowledge and experience to benefit the project as a whole – especially when they’re paying you for just that.