The Impact of a Daily Social Media Challenge

How does social media affect your personal brand? How do you use social media intentionally and in a positive way? This week we look at the effects and impact of a daily social media posting challenge.

ANDREW: I started the whole doing a poster a day for a year project as an experiment, both in my just being able to do something every single day, but also as for social media purposes. And so I feel like one of the things that I’ve learned with that is that it’s really hard to grow a following from scratch, but the interesting thing is that all of a sudden I have connections to people I wouldn’t have had connections to before.

I’ve done some work for a producer that JC knows who I now know, and because we’ve been working together, he has had me do probably four or five pitch projects that he’s pitching to studios and things like that. And then his friends have also had me help do pitch posters for studio projects and things like this. And I had another producer friend who I’ve done probably four or five posters for, for different projects that they’re pitching too.

And then I got another connection through one of those producers to a guy who is a producer for ABC. And he’s worked with Lady Gaga and all these big artists as a music producer. I have no reason to be connected with them with my normal skillset, but now we have a connection. I’ve served him in some way through the poster design for him, and so it may lead to nothing and that could totally be, but it’s just interesting that I have those connections.

And then the other thing that was interesting was going to festival this year, there was something that people knew about me that was different, that I have been doing posters now for over 200 days when I saw them. So it’s like everybody was just like, “Oh, wow, that’s a lot. That’s a huge commitment.” They know that I’m doing that as a side project, but I feel like it says something about who I am, that I’m willing to commit and do something every day for an entire year that’s not just super simple.

So now there’s a certain feeling or thought about who I am as a person that will be attached to my name, because of what they’ve seen in the consistency and the things that I put out through that. What you share on social media has invisible effects sometimes but branding is how people feel about your brand, it’s not what you make, if that makes sense. So it’s how people see your brand. So when you’re sharing your work, you’re affecting how people see you, your branding, if that makes sense.

So it’s not just your logo and those kinds of things, especially if you have a personal brand as a person. So if you are a jerk, your personal brand is going to be pretty negative. But if you’re a nice guy, and you work hard, and those kind of things, and then you’re showing the stuff that you do, and your excitement about certain things. For me personally, I love nerds, in a sense of I love seeing someone just completely nerd out about something. I’ll watch it on YouTube for hours even if I have literally no clue what they’re talking about.

Or I might learn some things, but it’s like, I just love watching people nerd out about something. It doesn’t really matter what it is, whether it’s nuclear energy, or space travel, or time, or Blender, or just different things that I can’t actually necessarily do. Sometimes it’s enjoyable even if people don’t necessarily need the thing that you’re doing, it’s creating a certain feeling about you as a person that then affects how people see you.