Danielle Aquilina is a Darwin, Northern Territory-based corporate and kids entertainer, MC, event and workshop host.
Having previously been our local Captain Starlight, amongst other things, Danielle burst onto the scene in 2022 seeking more corporate and event hosting work – and she has undoubtedly made her mark, booking an increasing schedule of work and building a pipeline of future work based on her local reputation, collaborative spirit and unquenchable energy to entertain.
In this series, I’m looking closely at the personal brands that everyday Aussies are creating for themselves, how they express it online and what we can all learn from them.
All this material is based on my assessment of their social media and PR activities that I can get online . And the purpose of this is to highlight great things that people are doing, what we can all learn from them, and ultimately, introduce you to some people I’ve found that I think you’d love to get to know.
Where you’ll find her
Danielle is active mainly on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. This is mainly because the different lines of work appeal to very different people on very different platforms. She also has started a presence on TikTok, but is yet to add more regular content on there.
As at January 2023, her following is:
Facebook: 563
Instagram: 209
LinkedIn: 972
Danielle is proof that you don’t need hundreds of thousands of followers to build a successful business. She has recently taken on additional “fun people” to help in her business and now has a team. That’s pretty awesome growth considering that her social media is modest in reach.
Despite the lower followers, it’s what Danielle does on social media that helps support her offline promotional efforts.
The Content
Danielle shares a variety of posts that fit the variety of things that she does for her work.
While it would be tempting to stick to just one kind of her work in order to create a consistent look and feel, the reality is that her work is spread quite evenly across different kinds of work. So focusing on posts at kids event would not adequately show that she is also a corporate presenter.
There are certain things that Danielle does really well on her social media to support her personal brand.
She calls herself a “Professional fun person.” With a title like that, you’d want to make sure your social media matches that – and it does!
Everything on Instagram, Facebook and even LinkedIn is fun. And while the content varies a little between each (LinkedIn has more content about corporate entertaining, MCing and workshops while Instagram has more public kids events) it all follows the same theme of Zesty Productions being professional fun people.
The Engagement
Danielle’s social media presence and personal brand is more “show” than “tell.” And this suits what she’s doing. While people like me focus in on our expertise and produce content that is more educational and thought-provoking, Danielle’s content is about the core of what she does – fun.
That means that it’s about showing the fun that’s happening, not talking about the fun that’s happening or going into longwinded treatises about the philosophy of fun and what it means for humankind.
This also means that engagement on social media is low. And that’s ok. Social media for Danielle isn’t about going viral. It’s a catalogue of work and activity for potential clients to easily find, see and understand what she does.
The Branding
While pull-up banner photos are not my favourite kind of way to brand an image, when you’re out and about doing events, they’re often the only way for you to include your brand in what you’re doing. Thankfully, Danielle goes light on photos that have her banners in them. And this makes them stand out for the right reasons in their profile feeds. The burst of yellow (a great colour to brand with, by the way) cuts through the rest of the grid of photos and successfully tells us what her business is called and provides a bright link from what she does to what her brand is.
Whether she holds back the branding deliberately or by chance, it’s a good balance. You don’t have to go far to see the brand on the Instagram feed or Facebook.
The branded material, like the pull-up banners use a blend of citrus tones. Yellow, Lime Green, Ruby Red Grapefruit. That fits the brand name, Zesty, just perfectly. The photography that Danielle has had done incorporates the citrus theme as well. The website at https://professionalfunperson.com/ has continued this theme, perhaps more obviously than elsewhere, into the official home of Zesty online. And there’s lots of great photos there.
The Audience
As you would expect from a multi-pipeline business in a small city, there is almost no audience interaction on these accounts. If these social properties were for retail or fast-moving consumer goods, I’d be concerned. But Danielle is using her social media in precisely the way it should be used.
Gathering likes and comments don’t pay the bills. Danielle concentrates on maintaining the fun image, the consistent brand presence and recency when it comes to posts.
The kind of person that Danielle is marketing to on social media is the kind of person who has:
- Been referred to her by word of mouth
- Has worked with her before
- Has seen her on a list
All these people are then in what we call the Consideration stage of the customer journey. They are not discovering her. They are using social media to verify what they’ve already heard about her. They are seeing what she’s already about. They are researching her. And this is why performance in terms of following or engagement isn’t actually important at all for Danielle’s personal brand.
Takeaways
What can we learn from Danielle Aquilina’s personal brand and online presence?
- Bring your brand to the front here and there, but not all the time
- Concentrate on the work you do and capturing the energy of that
- Let yourself be the front person of your business
- Don’t be afraid to share the spotlight with colleagues and friends
- Never appear desperate for work. Rather, celebrate the work you have
- Produce content that matches the stage of the customer journey your ideal customers are at
More info: https://professionalfunperson.com/
Want to get started on developing your own personal brand?
My free email-delivered mini-course on Building Your Own Personal Brand will deliver 5 modules that cover:
- Defining your values
- Developing your own voice and tone
- Where to share your personal brand with the world
- How to format your writing to express your personal brand
- Discovering a colour palette, getting photos done and developing templates
It’s 100% free, and you won’t be added to any sales funnels.
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