Stage one of developing your Instagram itinerary is figuring out what your approach is going to be. How do you want to deliver your content to the world? There are a lot of different ways of representing your brand on Instagram. But for the most part they can be distilled down into two main categories a personal brand and a business brand.

I've personally had experience growing both of these types of accounts. Obviously. I've grown my own personal brand on Instagram, but I've also grown an account for my business Creatorly media and of course many of both of these different types of accounts for all the clients that I've worked with over the years so I can share what I've learned personally through both of those experiences. There are several factors that play when you're deciding which brand approach might be best for your brand.

So let me explain both of these two types and the pros and cons of each of them. So first, let's talk about personal Brands a personal brand is of course built around you personally, so The name of your brand is probably going to be just your name. For example my YouTube and my Instagram profiles are both just Katie Steckly. That's me now just because the brand name is my name does not mean that I am going to share anything and everything about myself on these accounts. And this is something that's really important to remember when you're thinking about starting a personal brand. There's still a focus to the content that you're creating there. For example on my profiles I share about content creation and online business now, I'm the face of the brand but the brand is not me and this is an important distinction to remember because a lot of people make this mistake, but the reality is you can't grow a successful personal brand just off of sharing everything about yourself. There has to be some kind of purpose and focus behind your account so that other people other than just yourself want to follow that content.

Remember we talked about that unifying why back in lesson one? That's what you need to really keep in mind. If you are choosing to move forward with a personal brand and try not to get distracted by all of your various interests and hobbies that you might want to post about you still need to have a reason it's just that the visuals and the theming of your brand is going to be drawn from you as a person. That's really what it means to be a personal brand. You're still gonna have specific value that you're offering a specific Niche that you're in but your logo is essentially your face and you know, your brand colors might be inspired by the colors that you like Etc. Okay. So let's talk about the pros and cons of a personal brand on Instagram.

So here are some of the benefits of having a personal brand since obviously with a personal brand there is a human face behind it that human face being yours; You have the opportunity to make a super quick and personable connection with your potential audience as humans. We love to see other humans. And we feel that personal connection if we see somebody else in photos or in reels or whatever kind of content. So that is definitely an advantage of being a personal brand as you can make that sort of friendly human to human connection really easily another big benefit of being a personal brand is that you have the capacity to participate in a lot of the more sort of modern forms of content that we're seeing online. So especially reals on Instagram, if you don't have a human being who is willing to be in front of the camera. It's very hard to participate in real Trends.

Now, there's definitely strategies for creating reels that you don't have to be in which we can touch on later but it would be disingenuous to say that it's not easier to make Reels. If you are willing to be in front of the camera, it just is and the same goes for Instagram stories. Okay. So let's talk about some of the disadvantages of the personal brand then one of the biggest disadvantages of having a personal brand is the pressure to always be in the spotlight. You can't hide behind any logos or Graphics? You personally have to be front and center and that can be intimidating. I mean on one hand you open yourself up to all these beautiful connections and affirmations and support but you also open yourself up to a lot of potential criticism and negativity because it is the internet that's how it goes.

So, of course in my experience as a personal brand, you're gonna be a little bit more sensitive to the comments that you're getting you might be more likely to feel imposter syndrome. So that's just something that you'll have to work through. If you're kind of showing up in that way online and another main disadvantage that a lot of people don't talk about is as a personal brand like I was saying before even though you are representing the brand you can't just show every side of yourself. So there is this pressure to kind of take who you are and turn it into like a one-dimensional caricature of yourself to represent the brand. Here's the thing all of us are multifaceted people. We contain multitudes. We have all kinds of different talents. Hobbies and interests in our lives, but and trust me because I know this from experience if you try to incorporate all of that stuff into one space online, it's really really going to hinder your growth.

Again taking myself as an example, I talk about like I said content creation and online business on my various platforms, but there are so many other things that I am probably just as interested in in my life. I love learning about history and sustainable fashion and outer space and vegetarian recipes and politics and social justice, but I can't talk about all of that in just one little Instagram account or if I did it would probably be confusing it would certainly really really narrow down the audience that is gonna be coming to me and overall. It's gonna hinder my growth. So instead I need to pick and choose the parts of my life the interest that I have that are gonna be most relevant to my target audience and most relevant to my long-term goals and I'm gonna share But not everything and if you're like me from several years ago, then you'll probably find this really discouraging because I always felt like I wanted to be a hundred percent authentic to myself.

I wanted to share everything that I cared about and that I loved with my community online but trust me the fact that you need to narrow yourself down a little bit for the internet is actually a blessing in disguise. Once you get further along down your career as a Creator you are gonna value so much having parts of your life that are still just hobbies that are still just for fun because at one point in my life this whole Instagram and YouTube thing was my hobby. It's what I woke up feeling excited to do when I like got home from school or got home from work eventually and that's what I really, you know, love to spend time on but now it's my job and I still love it. But we all know when you take a hobby and you turn it into a job, it starts to feel like a job. So it's really really nice. If you can keep some of those areas of your life just for hobbies whether it's history. Our space or you know vegetarian recipes or whatever. It might be honor those things that you can keep as Hobbies because trust me someday, you will really appreciate not having to monetize those interests.

So the point is yes, be yourself as a personal brand that is required, but also choose which parts of yourself you are going to incorporate into that brand because it cannot and it should not be everything about you. Okay. So now let's talk about business Brands a business brand is a brand built around an identity that you craft that is separate from yourself. So it's going to have a business or brand name. That's not just your name for example Creatorly media, which is the social media content creation agency that I founded is a good example of this. It has its own name creatively media. It has its own logo. That's not like a photo of me and though I'm the founder and CEO of this business. I am not necessarily the face of the brand.

So let's talk about some of the pros and cons of having a business brand one of the benefits of having a business brand is The credibility and Authority that comes from having your own name and logo. It just feels official. If you go to a website or Instagram profile and see really on point branding and a professional logo and brand name. It can immediately provide a great first impression and start to build that trust with your potential follower another big benefit of a business brand is that you can develop a super memorable name that will stick for example, it's easier for someone out there in the world who has never met me before in their life to remember the name creatorly media over Katie Steckly, and that might be the case for you like depending on your name for me Steckly is not an overly common last name for a lot of people that meet me on the internet. I'm probably the only Steckly they know so it's kind of harder to remember they might read it and not really know how to pronounce it. But anybody who has like a good understanding of English can see creatively media and immediately know what that is and remember it so that can be really helpful to, you know, introduce a brand new person to who your brand is and what you do if you have a name that's descriptive of your services or of your Niche and that is super memorable. Sometimes it's just easier than remembering a name.

So let's talk about the disadvantages of a business brand then I think one of the biggest disadvantages of having a business brand is the lack of that opportunity to create the more like personal, you know human face type of content like the stories in reals that I mentioned earlier and therefore that hinders your ability to make a more human connection with your audience like I mentioned before if you are a personal brand and you're just showing up as a person on Instagram, it really helps your potential followers get to recognize you they feel that connection. They can like make eye contact with you through the screen. It feels like a real person rather than an anonymous brand so it can be a lot more challenging as a business brand to kind of come across as authentic and human if you don't have a human representative and like I was saying in other disadvantages is the limitation on the kinds of content that you can create if you really do not want to be on camera and you don't have anybody else that wants to be on camera for you. Then it's gonna be hard to create some of those viral reels Trends. It's gonna be hard to create engaging story content. Yes, there's still lots of stuff you can do you can get creative with it. You can try doing real trends that don't involve a person like there are Creative Solutions to this but it's just simply going to be harder to create Instagram story content or Instagram real content.

If you don't have a person to be in that content now as a business brand it is possible that you might have a team and maybe some people on your team will be willing to be the face of the brand over at creatively media we Have everybody from the team contribute, you know reals and YouTube videos to our content every so often so that can be a good solution. If you as the founder don't personally want to be the face of the brand. Yeah. It's just gonna be a little bit more complicated than if you're willing to just pick up your phone and be on camera. So that's something to consider. If you want to start a business brand.

So after considering all the pros and cons you need to ask yourself which one suits you and your goals and your lifestyle and your comfort level best a personal brand or business brand with that decision in mind. You're gonna start thinking about what types of formats of content are going to be most effective for your page. This goes beyond just deciding if you want to do reals or Graphics or photos. You also need to consider what type of content is going to connect best with the type of audience you want to connect with now obviously if you choose to move forward with a personal brand you're gonna create more content that includes your face like photos of you real. That kind of thing. If you decide to move forward the business brand then maybe you'll lean more into graphic carousels tweet Graphics memes. These are kind of overarching questions. You can start brainstorming on now.

So when it comes to actually planning your content calendar, you'll have some ideas in mind of what types of content might work best for you before moving on to the next video take some time now to do a little bit of research and find some pages on Instagram that you admire that are the same format that you might be pursuing. So you don't necessarily have to find people that are doing stuff in your Niche but instead look for personal Brands if that's what you want to do or business Brands if that's what you want to do that you admire and you like their content and start to save some of their sort of formats of posts as inspiration. You can do this by using my Instagram page inspo template, which you'll find in your course workbook. You can collect all of your screen shots of your inspo pages in one place and Also create a mood board for your brand.

So between the inspiration of formats from other types of accounts that are similar to what you want to pursue a mood board of the kind of colors and Vibe of your own brand and then finally we'll take in your content pillars which will work on in just a little bit and put that all together to create your content strategy. So go ahead and go work on that Instagram page inspo template and then I will catch you in the next video.