Branding for socially anxious

As someone who is introverted and has social anxiety, it may seem funny that I'm into branding and other marketing. Aren't those things for extroverts and loud, social people? Don't you have to be outgoing and the centre of the attention to become great at branding and take advantage of marketing? I'm on a mission to shatter those simple stereotypes.

First things first, it's important to remember that introversion and social anxiety are not the same thing. Introverted people can be quite social, but for us it's very important to take time to recover from social situations in private. While extroverts gain energy from social situations and other people, introverts rather give and lose energy to social situations and other people. Many introverts don't have any social anxiety and extroverts can have social anxiety.

"Social anxiety is the fear of interaction with other people that brings on self-consciousness, feelings of being negatively judged and evaluated, and, as a result, leads to avoidance."
Social Anxiety Institute. What is Social Anxiety?. Retrieved Jun 20 2016.

Branding and other marketing can seem difficult to an introvert, and impossible to a person with social anxiety. A brand (or brand image) includes, in addition to the internal and self-controlled areas, lots of external and uncontrollable areas, which makes it seem unpleasant when you suffer from social anxiety. The prejudgements, values and impressions the other people, such as clients, media representatives, employers and fellow employees, have and get, form a big part of the different brand images. They can be influenced, but not controlled. This makes a socially anxious person often feel, and fear of, negative judgment. Also getting positive feedback has usually less impact than negative feedback, or even no feedback at all.

Networking, attending to events and webinars, reaching out are extremely scary for a person with social anxiety. Rejection, for any reason, seems like a personal thing, something you did wrong. Thus joining face-to-face coaching or following advice on how to be found on LinkedIn seem laughable. For the former activity, there's the whole thing about having to communicate with other people, often half or full strangers. For the latter, the advice usually includes being engaged and social, which will make your palms sweat and your blood pressure raise.

How does a socially anxious person brand and market herself? The same way as hedgehogs make love: Very, very carefully. If you are socially anxious, don't expect your branding and other marketing make instant or very fast results. If you force yourself to suddenly attend many events and webinars, you will end up scaring yourself off, and making your social anxiety only worsen. Internet can help with this, you don't have to attend to face-to-face situations and you can take time to form your communications, when you do them in writing. Don't try to do everything at once and give your brand time to develop. Gradually add new things and new experiences to your branding and other marketing. Try things in slow patches first, before committing to bigger things. If you join those highly praised business and marketing Facebook groups, you don't have to necessarily initiate conversations or even participate in them. Stalk a little, like a little, try answering if someone asks something you can answer. Don't let the enthusiastic types and their "boss moments" intimidate you. Comparison is harming your progress, so try not to compare too much. As mentioned before, there are lots of things in branding you cannot control, so don't even try. Voice your anxiety out. You may notice that lots of people share your feelings and that makes you feel better.

Those who matter keep following you, commenting your posts, and liking and sharing them. Concentrate your attention to them, rather than having anxiety over those who unfollow, never comment, and never like or share. Paying too much attention to unfollows, traffic (especially those times when the traffic is low or gets lower), and the possible negative feedback will trump your efforts and worsen your reaction. Jumping to conclusions for one unfollow or one less impactful branding effort is easy, yet useless. The unfollowers have their own, personal reasons to unfollow which don't have to have anything to do with you. You don't know their underlying issues, as they don't know how them unfollowing you increase your anxiety. Think it this way: If someone doesn't engage or unfollows you or something like that, they are likely to have some sort of a personal issue, similar to your social anxiety, that made them do it. Eventually, it's part of their persona, not part of yours.

The advice you read on different blogs about how to brand yourself better, how to network, how to get your posts appear higher in searches and so forth, is always based on limited experiences and situations, which don't necessarily apply to you and your situation. If your blog posts don't get immediately high in search results, even when you follow all the advice to the t, your social anxiety will make it seem worse, as if there's something wrong with you. Most of the advice forgets that sometimes things just fall to the right place, and other times you can struggle and struggle, and end up with nothing in your hands. The advice will make it seem easy and make it seem like you did something wrong. Most likely, you didn't.

Social anxiety doesn't have to stop you from branding and other marketing. It makes the process (appear) slightly slower, and it is likely to strain you a more than those who don't suffer from social anxiety or similar things. As in other things in your life, you just need to learn to give yourself the time and space to recuperate from the strain. Let your branding grow slowly, don't expect fast results and step away when things get too anxiety inducing. Approach to your personal brand gently.

• Lost connection
• More effortless and less time-consuming social media