- Jul 3
- 3 min read

Mastering Your Brand: How to show-up responsibly on Social Media - Youth workshop!

Updated: Jul 4

Today's teens have grown up with all the benefits of modern technology, finding themselves with photo and video content that is easier to upload than ever in a society that does view your social media postings to get an idea of who you are, especially when it comes to our growth and development in the professional world.

So here is some advice we got to share with teens about using social media to protect, as well as project their brand, during our recent Lead by Design Foundation speaking engagement invite, to speak on the subject.

First of all, to be able to comprehend this session, we need to first know: “What a brand is, and what branding is ?”

A brand is the perceived image, brand promise, or result of a product, organization, or individual, and branding is the strategy to create that image.

Key question: Is our online reputation important? We believe it is; why? Because times have changed, we have moved into an online digital age. In the past, we could apply for a job or “vacation job,” and people would just look at our resume and even invite us to an interview meeting. However, nowadays they will check you out on social media to see what you’re doing. What're you publishing about? What activities do you engage yourself in, and who do you hang out with? All these things give people a “feeling” about you!

Another key question is: Can we influence how people perceive us? Most assuredly, we can not only influence how people perceive us through the truthful, authentic, healthy lifestyle we live by, but we can also be of influence to our audience by encouraging them to live a healthy lifestyle as well.

One thing is for sure: we need to be mindful of how we show up on social media.

How? We can do two things:

1. Take care of my social media by not posting anything negative, and that’s it!, or...

2. Be “intentional” by posting about, for example; school or other learning projects that show that there is growth happening in my life. Being intentional about branding your personal brand! By doing this, you are branding yourself, as well as involving yourself in social impact as you impact your viewers with your growth mindset as well.

A small case study - example: “Anna is the new Human Resource Manager at an "A-List Hotel.” She just moved from abroad to Aruba and does not know anybody on the island. The company is looking for a new intern to join the Human Resources department over the summer months. She has six impeccable resumes before her and needs to select three people to invite over for an interview. She decides to look up three social media feeds and gets to see these three:

We asked a workshop participant to impersonate Anna and state her rank of options; she ranked:

1. Nicole

2. Sarah

3. Marcus

Case continues to develop:

However, Anna is certain of one definite yes, and one definite no, and one……”not sure” - because the feed says nothing. However, having such an "A List Hotel" brand in her hand, she also wants to do her very best and come-up with the best possible candidate, so having three more resumes on her desk, what will Anna most probably do?

Impersonated Anna: “Look up the other two also.” There Anna indeed goes, and looks up Catherine, Omar and Andreina.

Anna ranked this round: 1. Catherine 2. Omar

Summary of the case: Round 1:

1. Nicole got selected because of successful “intentional branding.”

2. Marcus did not get selected due to “bad branding.”

3. Sarah got passed over because of “doubt” due to not being intentional about her branding. Consequently, a second round was called, out of which:

Catherine got selected because of successful “intentional branding.”
Omar got selected because of successful “intentional branding.” -At last, Anna reached her first three interviews, Nicole, Catherine & Omar! Some easy content creation ideas to consider for your personal branding as a your student, moving up her/his studies/career ladder: