Huda Kettan

Huda Kattan is a social media sensation behind the creation of the blog Huda beauty, a top ranking beauty blog both in the Middle East and worldwide. Owing to her training in Hollywood, Huda is an accomplished beauty consultant and makeup artist. Before all the fame she is enjoying now, this beauty icon grew up with an obsession of fashion and beauty. She conceptualized the idea of starting a beauty blog while at the University of Michigan. Huda was born to Iraqi parents in Oklahoma but they moved to Tennessee where she was raised. Currently, she resides in Dubai with her Colombian husband. 

Huda Kattan is a huge brand in the beauty industry. Her presence on social media is undoubtedly a proof of this fact. With 43,000 followers on Twitter, 7.4 million Instagram followers and over 700, 000 YouTube subscribers, she inarguably a social media sensation. Basically, Huda ventures in makeup artistry which includes lipstick, eye lashes, mascara, eye liners etc. In addition, she is a notable Vaseline beauty ambassador. To achieve her campaign objectives, Huda relentlessly posts her self-titled videos on YouTube close to a weekly basis. The same goes for Instagram where she post pictures and videos in support of her campaign on a daily basis. On Twitter, Huda has perfected the art of posting links to videos, pictures and content on her other social media platforms and her blog. She tweets not less than three times in a 24 hour period. Huda perfectly does her social media branding.

According to her, she aims at helping women across the globe attain beauty. Clearly, Huda makes immense steps towards that goal by feeding women across the world with content about beauty on a daily basis. She offers women solutions on beauty across her social media platforms. Apart from just posting pictures of perfectly done lipstick and eye lashes, she posts tutorials about the same. If you quickly look at her YouTube, Twitter and Instagram profiles, it will be very hard not to notice how aggressive she is with posting educative content to her followers and fans.

As stated above, Huda aims to empower women in the world by helping them attain beauty. Of course, being beautiful will help women attain confidence, which is a great catapult for success. The face is a center piece when looking for beauty; Huda gives women solutions of having a pretty and bold looking face. Across the above stated platforms, Huda consistently posts pictures, videos, links and tutorials on the best use of makeup. In addition to her own brand of makeup, she goes ahead to campaign on the different uses of Vaseline for women. The consistency with which she does her social media campaign is clear.

Nevertheless, as much Huda’s online campaign appears perfect, some mistakes are apparent. Although she has a huge fan base, it looks like she does very little to engage her audience on a one on one basis. For instance, her followers would feel more connected to her and look forward to her next post if she responded to their comments and appreciate the fact that they check out her new posts. In her campaigns, she seems more concerns about generating content and feeding it to the audience. Her followers would be more ardent to check out every content she posts if they felt there was real feelings behind those posts. Of also great significance, her snapchat profile relatively appears deserted compared to her other social media platforms. While her Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are awash of daily posts, the posts on snapchat appears to be spread across days. With that, I think she is not using her Snapchat platform as effectively as she should.

All in all, it is very difficult to poke holes in Huda Kettan’s social media personal brand. She has a very solid personal brand that is working for her. From her social media personal brand, I have gained insightful information about social media personal branding that will help me define my own personal brand on social media.

Huda appears to have defined her overall aspirations; that is the first step I will take towards making a footprint on social media, just like she has done (Quast, 2013). I will clearly define my objectives and goals. It is unmistakable that Huda Kettan’s goal, from the days she was in college, was to become a beauty icon. Before I begin my social media campaign I will have specific and well directed goals that I wish to achieve.

The second insight I have gained from Huda’s online personal brand is the importance of defining the attributes of my brand (Deckers & Lacy, 2011, p. 280). Her brand conveys beauty; a beauty that any woman would admire. I will want my brand to be associated with a sense of admiration. I will design my brand in a manner that my audience relates to and proudly associates it.

Huda proactively manages all her brands. That’s an attribute about her I will emulate. I will ensure that all aspects on my social media platforms are in sync as a way of reinforcing both my market niche and brand. For instance, my posts of Twitter and Facebook will relate to each other and will stay in the specific market niche I am venturing in. Additionally, what I will be marketing will relate to how I look in person. I draw that from Huda in relation to how her hair, makeup and attire relates to her beauty campaign.

Just like Huda Kettan, I will not create mismatched social media brands by posting competing and unrelated posts on different social media platforms like posting a video about my holiday on Instagram and Tweeting about sports. I understand that doing so will create a confusion in my audience hence jeopardizing my objective of having an outstanding social media personal brand. In the same line of thought, I will feed my fans with content and posts about my venture on a daily basis because this the only way to develop and grow a great portfolio. That is one area where Huda has perfected her game.       

Lastly, unlike Huda Kettan, I will engage my audience. Apart from just posting content, I would want my audience to feel the presence of a real person behind my posts. One way I will do that is by replying to the comments of my fans on a constant basis. I will show a great concern to the posts of my followers. In that manner, am sure my followers will be looking forward for the next content I post and be ready to share it with zeal.

In the Middle East, 40.2% of the population use the internet. Of the 40.2%, 88% uses social media platforms use on a daily basis. Of also great significance, Facebook has the highest users of social media of 94%. Additionally, the Middle East has 6.5 million Twitter users (Jazra, 2014). From the above statics, I will heavily base my social media personal branding on Twitter and Facebook.

References

Jazra, K. (2014, July 1). 15 stats about social media in the Middle East that you need to know | social4ce. Retrieved from http://social4ce.com/blog/2014/07/01/15-stats-you-need-to-know-about-social-media-in-the-middle-east/

Deckers, E., & Lacy, K. (2011). Branding yourself: How to use social media to invent or reinvent yourself. Indianapolis, IN: Que Pub.

Quast, L. (2013, April 22). Personal Branding 101. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2013/04/22/personal-branding-101/