(Wellness)
HBFIT Founder Hannah Bronfman’s Secret To Turning Your Social Feed Into A Bonafide Brand
Tips and insights for the ever-changing world of content creation, including her go-to tool: Adobe Express.
It’s hard to find something that Hannah Bronfman hasn’t done. The activist, founder of HBFIT, and on-camera personality has grown her social media platform from personal feed into a powerful social and e-commerce destination that unites followers behind her philosophy: “Do what feels good.” Across posts, videos, vlogs, and travel guides, Bronfman uses her feed to continuously refine and expand her brand, which is centered on health, beauty, and fitness.
She might make it look easy, but building your social feed into a brand takes thought, commitment, and long-term strategy. That’s why Bronfman uses Adobe Express, the web and mobile-based app with thousands of unique templates and easy to use tools, empowering content creators to make visually powerful posts quickly, beautifully, and on-brand. In anticipation of the relaunch of HBFIT, Bronfman gave The Zoe Report her best tips and strategies for getting your social feed off the ground.
Tip #1: Listen To Your Audience
Although HBFIT is guided by Bronfman’s instincts, sharpened over the 10-plus years she’s spent as a business owner, a brand won’t get anywhere without an engaged audience. On social, this means finding a balance between what you want to post and what your followers want to see. “I love engaging with my audience to find out how their interests are evolving, while leaving space for myself to explore and find inspiration,” says Bronfman.
One trend she’s noticed: Lately, her community has been particularly excited about informational and educational content. With this in mind, Bronfman used Adobe Express to create branded story slide templates for sharing things her audience cares about, like recipes and beauty routines. Bronfman is one of a handful of creators who have teamed up with Adobe and Meta to offer inspiration for business owners through Express Your Brand, a training program that offers free education and tools to help small businesses grow online with ease. The program consists of seminars, where creators can share their inspiring journeys and best practices, monthly learning sessions, and Bronfman’s custom curated Adobe Express templates. “Being able to share these things in an aesthetic way can help creators stand out within the social media landscape,” she says.
Knowing your audience doesn’t mean you should get too comfortable, though. This year Bronfman did a complete rebrand, which meant deleting all the posts from her meticulously built Instagram grid. Such a move might feel scary, especially for someone with almost a million followers. But it was so worth it, says Bronfman. “Since doing this overhaul on Instagram, our engagement has increased, and we are re-connecting with our community in a better way.” Beyond looking more pristine than ever before, Bronfman’s social media redesign was made simply and easily using the tools available from Adobe Express. Paying it forward, she’s thrilled to extend this gift to her audience through her own custom templates. “My Adobe Express templates are a great way for creators to take their content to the next level.”
Tip #2: Find Partnerships That Really Work
Several years ago, Bronfman got booked to DJ for a fashion brand and was asked to wear their clothes and post a photo from the event. “I quickly realized that the brand wanted access to my audience, and that this would become a new way of monetizing what I was building in addition to my DJ fee,” she remembers. She wasn’t just partnering with a brand. The brand wanted to partner with her.
HBFIT is built on these sorts of mutual relationships, working with fitness studios, hotels, and restaurants to offer exclusive deals to the platform’s subscribers. Products from companies in Bronfman’s own investment portfolio will soon appear on the HBFIT shop, alongside her brands. What all these partnerships have in common is alignment with HBFIT’s mission of bringing Bronfman’s keen eye for health, beauty, and fitness to her audience. “Identify what other brands your followers interact with,” she says. “That could tell you about collaboration opportunities which can lead to growth.”
Her partnership with Adobe exemplifies the value of growing your brand in this collaborative way. By designing her own suite of templates, she’s not only letting her followers in on a tool that’s been crucial to her own strategy — she’s showing them how they can adapt it to their unique voice. “I wanted the templates to be easy for people to use but also still have nice creative elements that they can customize based on their business’s branding,” she says of her approach to the partnership.
Tip #3: Step Away As Needed
Putting in time upfront to save time in the long term is one way that Bronfman carves out the mental space she needs to stay creative. “Adobe Express has been a huge time saver for all the work I do at HBFIT and for myself personally,” she says. “Adobe Express is so easy to use, and we’re able to upload all our branding elements so that the graphics always look consistent.” Having an arsenal of inspiring templates allows her to fire off an on-brand post or a story quickly while the idea is still fresh, leaving her more time and opportunities to recharge and come up with new ideas.
This feeds into one of the most powerful, if counterintuitive, secrets to Bronfman’s brand success: stepping away often. “I really try to set boundaries around knowing when and how to turn work off,” she says, prioritizing daily time with her husband and child, as well as personal time for her to work out in the morning and cook at least a few meals a week at home. “I need those things for my brain to feel like it’s fired up,” she explains. This balance is how she keeps innovating her brand within what she calls the “ever changing and evolving landscape” of being a content creator.
