Personal Branding Guide: Using Elections to Showcase Your Expertise

With politicians hard at work campaigning to become the next President of the United States, a lot of us are asking ourselves the same question: Is it possible to show our expertise during  any elections – or should we ignore politics altogether?

As we’ve seen with Halloween, events are a powerful way of making customers focus on content just because it’s relevant in terms of very good timing. Elections of any kind you to follow what politicans are doing and any expert that can contribute to the discussion will see their personal brand develop along the way as well. The harder question we should ask ourselves: How to promote our personal brand properly during elections?

Why Even Bother with Elections? Mindshare!

While sports and holidays might be events that a lot of people participate in, elections are even more relevant and it’s hard to ignore them in the news as well as our lives. Who we elect is important to anyone living in a country where elected officials influence the way the country is being run! From tops of large corporations to the lowliest worker, everyone follows elections because the government impacts all of our lives.

That “mindshare” in the general public makes elections a great time to show your expertise and expose your personal brand to a lot of people. However, before you do, you have to decide:

Do You Want To Mix Your Personal Brand With Your Political Views?

Before we go further, let’s remind ourselves about what personal branding is. It’s the process of managing and optimizing the way that you (and I) present ourselves to others. The question is if you want to present yourself through the politics you stand for.

While most will probably want to make sure that everyone knows where they stand on certain issues and how they think the country should be run, it’s a question we all need to decide for ourselves. It’s not just a matter of standing behind one’s convictions, but also having in mind that there are ways of being both subtle and not so subtle when talking about politics.

For people who rely on their personal branding as a long term investment in their future, it’s imperative to be serious about this decision and follow through whatever you decide. Want to make sure everyone knows your stance on a particular issue? Great, make sure by tweeting about it – but don’t worry later when someone unfollows you because they don’t agree. As we’ll see, they actually don’t even have to disagree with you:

You Don’t Have to Choose Sides to Be an Expert

The best thing about personal branding is that you can show that you’re an expert on a certain topic, such as social media, content marketing, design or writing. While people might debate about the issues, the way political views are presented can always be analyzed in an objective way that has nothing to do with a particular issue.

Let’s take writing blog posts as an example: While you might not agree with a particular topic, you can certainly see that a certain post was properly formatted, that the featured image was uniquely designed, etc. As a writer, you might object about some of the titles used in the article and suggest better alternatives. Not because you don’t agree with the topic at hand, but because you are an expert in writing and have a clear knowledge on how to improve content, whatever the topic might be.

Another example is social media: With so many politicians using Facebook, Twitter and even Snapchat to promote their agendas, there’s a lot of content out there that a social media expert. For example, can critique in an article talking about how the elections are being covered on social media channels.

In both examples, you aren’t risking alienating anyone since your comments come from an objective standpoint and not a political one.

Actionable step: Look at how politicans and political parties are using channels that you are an expert in and critique their work. Write (or make a video?) about what they are doing well, as well as what they are doing wrong. This kind of content will bring you people that are following the elections, both personally and professionally. While someone might not agree with your political views, they might decide that you are a true professional that should work for them – instead of the other side.

Show Your Expertise – Related to the Elections

If, on the other hand, you decide to approach the issue head on; the great thing about half of the people not agreeing with you is that the other half will probably agree with you. Let’s tackle elections as events first!

If we look at any of the elections of the past number of years, we’ll notice how they have a lot of similarities with other large events that we usually use to promote our products, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving – or even Halloween that we wrote about recently.

You can always “activate” your users by either creating special promotions for a certain group of voters or – better yet – challenging your customers to show their support for an issue or side by participating in some kind of competition.

While you can always make people pay to show their views (“Buy this latte to support Republicans”, for example), I’d suggest not going overboard since you could be seen as taking advantage of an important event for the future of the country. This can, instead of increasing the value of your personal brand, lead to losing credibility in your community. A better way of using the elections, while making your views seen, could be:

Contribute – Your Expertise, Instead of Your Money!

As someone developing your personal brand, I’m sure you have a lot of expertise you can lend to a politican running for office, right? You might be able to help them with their social media strategy or the design of their posters.

Instead of standing on the sidelines, go ahead and make yourself known to the party or candidate of your choice. Make sure they understand how you can help their (your?) cause and send them a plan on what you can do that they will immediately understand. Elections are generally a very stressful time and strategies are planned well in advance. If you’re joning in at the last second, you have to make sure you can be put to use right away!

Whatever Your Decision: Make Sure Everyone Knows

It’s not my place to ask you what you decided, but whatever your choice might be, you need to make sure that the both the general public and your followers and fans understand it. If you’re going to critique all sides of the elections, tweet out how you’re going to be an objective expert!

If, on the other hand, you pick a side to actively help with your expertise, make sure you disclose your affiliation clearly enough. While someone might not agree with your view, they will certainly appreciate you being a professional and standing by your convictions.