Part 2 of the series on social media marketing for designers who’d rather be doing literally anything else.
In Part 1, I told you that authenticity beats polish. That algorithms finally reward genuine content over growth-hacking bullshit. That your design instincts about quality were right all along.
All of that is true.
Here’s the part I left out: the “authenticity” that works is still performance. Calculated, strategic, and requiring you to spend two hours crafting a post that looks like it took two minutes.
Building an audience doesn’t mean “just being yourself.” It means performing a carefully curated version of yourself that people find useful enough to follow without being so real that you make them uncomfortable.
Welcome to the part of content marketing for designers where we stop pretending.
The “Just Be Yourself” Lie (And Why It’s Terrible Advice)
The most common advice for building an audience is “be authentic” or “just be yourself.”
This is the social media equivalent of “just make good work” — technically true, completely useless, and ignoring how anything actually works.
Being yourself means posting whatever you feel like, whenever you feel like it.
That 2am rant about kerning? Post it.
That half-formed opinion about design trends? Share it.
That deeply personal struggle that has nothing to do with your professional expertise? Absolutely dump it on your followers.
This is fine if you’re using social media like a diary. It’s terrible if you want anyone to actually follow you.
What actually works is strategic authenticity — showing genuine parts of yourself, but only the parts that serve a purpose. The relatable struggles, not the embarrassing ones. The vulnerable moments you’ve already processed, not the ones you’re currently crying about.
You’re still being real. You’re just being selectively real. And that selection process? That’s the performance nobody admits to.
What “Authentic” Content Actually Looks Like (When You’re Honest)
Let me show you what calculated authenticity looks like when you stop pretending it’s spontaneous:
The vulnerable post that’s not that vulnerable.
You share a project that failed. But it’s from 2 years ago when you were at a different company. You’ve processed it. You know exactly what lessons to extract. You can be funny about it now because it doesn’t hurt anymore.
That’s authentic — it really happened. But it’s also safe. You’re not sharing the project that failed last week when you’re still checking your bank account nervously.
The behind-the-scenes that’s carefully staged.
You show your “messy” desk. Except you spent 10 minutes arranging it to be the right kind of messy. Relatable messy. “I’m human and imperfect” messy. Not “I found a coffee cup from March and can’t remember what this sticky note means” messy.
You know exactly what you’re doing. You just don’t mention the 10 minutes of curation.
The contrarian take you’ve tested first.
You post an opinion that goes against conventional wisdom. Bold! Authentic! Except you’ve already discussed it with three designer friends who agreed. You know it’s not actually that controversial. You’re performing boldness while minimizing risk.
This isn’t dishonest. It’s strategic. Like not building hidden features — you’re making deliberate choices about what to reveal and when. You’re just not admitting you’re making those choices.
The Personality Calibration Problem
Here’s where building an audience gets tricky: you need enough personality to be memorable, but not so much that you alienate potential followers.
Too little personality, and you’re generic. Forgettable. Just another designer posting the same takes as everyone else.
Too much personality, and you’re polarizing. Interesting to some people, off-putting to others. Great for building a small, devoted audience. Terrible for reaching the numbers most people want.
Most successful creators land somewhere in the middle: enough personality to have a distinct voice, but calibrated to their specific audience’s expectations.
On LinkedIn, that means professional but approachable. On Twitter, it means opinionated but not combative. On Instagram, it means aspirational but relatable.
The “authentic” part is that these are all versions of you. The performance part is that you’re emphasizing different aspects for different platforms.
Like doing UX design for different platforms — same core skills, different context requirements.
What Actually Builds Audiences (The Part Nobody Wants to Hear)
Let’s talk about what actually grows audiences, because it’s not what the “authenticity” gurus promised:
Consistency beats authenticity every time.
Posting every Tuesday at 9am with moderately useful content builds audiences faster than posting brilliant insights whenever inspiration strikes.
The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re having a genuinely authentic moment. It cares if you showed up on schedule.
Useful beats vulnerable.
That post where you taught someone how to fix their Figma workflow? Shared 47 times. That post about your personal struggle with imposter syndrome? Three pity likes from your mom’s friends.
Even though the vulnerable post was more “authentic.”
Familiar beats original.
Content that fits existing patterns performs better than truly novel ideas. “5 UX principles” gets more engagement than your genuinely original take on interaction design.
Because people share things they understand, not things that challenge them. Revolutionary thinking doesn’t perform on Tuesday morning LinkedIn.
This is why design content that goes viral feels… kinda samey. Before/after redesigns. Common mistakes. Numbered lists. It’s useful, familiar, easy to consume.
Is it authentic? Sure, if you genuinely believe it. But it’s also strategic. You’re giving people what they want, not necessarily what you want to say. And you’re doing it on a schedule, whether you feel inspired or not.
The Compromises You’ll Make (And Lie About at Conferences)
Here are the specific compromises successful designers make when building an audience, then conveniently forget to mention when giving talks about “authenticity”:
You’ll simplify your actual opinions into clickable takes.
Your real view on design trends is nuanced and context-dependent. But nuance doesn’t perform. So you’ll make bolder claims than you’d make in person. You’ll present preferences as principles and educated guesses as universal truths.
Then someone will quote you at a conference, and you’ll nod like you actually believe the oversimplified version you posted for engagement.
You’ll perform confidence you absolutely don’t feel.
People follow confident voices. So even when you’re uncertain, you’ll write with authority. You’ll present experiments as insights. You’ll share “lessons learned” from projects where you’re still not sure what the actual lesson was.
Like those UX design skills everyone claims to have mastered — you’re performing expertise while still Googling basic shit.
You’ll recycle content you’re bored of.
Once you find a format that works, you’ll return to it. Repeatedly. Long after you’re personally sick of it. Because content marketing for designers means giving audiences what they respond to, not what interests you anymore.
You’ll have drafted three versions of “before/after redesign” posts this month while dying inside.
You’ll time posts strategically, never spontaneously.
You’ll have a genuinely insightful moment at 11pm on Friday. And you’ll save it for Tuesday morning at 9am because that’s when your engagement is highest.
Authenticity scheduled for maximum algorithmic impact. The contradiction doesn’t even register anymore.
You’ll engage with people whose work bores you to tears.
Building an audience requires engaging with other creators in your niche. Even the ones whose posts make you want to log off forever. You’ll comment “Great insight!” on takes you find painfully obvious. You’ll share work you find mediocre because they have 10k followers.
It’s networking, but everyone pretends it’s community.
The Algorithm Wants Performed Authenticity
Here’s why this matters: platforms reward strategic authenticity because it creates engagement without controversy.
Real authenticity is messy. It’s contradictory. It’s sometimes inappropriate, often poorly timed, and frequently uninteresting to anyone but you.
Performed authenticity is clean. It’s relatable but not too real. It creates connection without discomfort. It’s vulnerable enough to feel human but controlled enough to stay professional.
The algorithm can’t tell the difference. But your audience can sense when something feels forced vs. genuine. The trick is finding the overlap: content that’s strategic enough to perform but genuine enough to resonate.
It’s like designing for authenticity while marketing keeps pushing CTAs — you’re balancing competing priorities.
Since I’m apparently giving tactical advice in a post about how tactical advice is performative, here are the actual boundaries I use:
Share struggles after you’ve solved them. Not while you’re in them. People want to learn from your experience, not become your therapist.
Share opinions you’re willing to defend. If you can’t handle pushback, don’t post the take. Social media rewards boldness but punishes backing down.
Share process, not just outcomes. This is where genuine authenticity actually helps. People want to see how you work, not just what you made.
Don’t share anything you’ll regret in a job interview. Even “authentic” content has professional consequences. If you wouldn’t say it in a client meeting, think twice about posting it.
Share enough personality to be memorable, not so much that you’re a liability. This varies by industry and platform, but if you’re constantly worried about whether you shared too much, you probably did.
The Personal Brand Building Trap (Or: When Did I Become a Product?)
Personal brand building sounds empowering until you realize you’ve turned yourself into a product with consistent messaging and strategic positioning.
Brands don’t have bad days where they don’t feel like performing. They don’t change their minds publicly. They don’t contradict themselves across platforms because they forgot what they said last week.
But you do. Because you’re a person, not a brand. You have contradictory opinions. You change your mind based on new information. You have days where you absolutely do not want to be “on brand.”
The uncomfortable truth? Building an audience requires you to act more like a brand than a person. Even when you’re selling “authenticity” as your brand positioning.
You’re creating a public persona that represents you but isn’t fully you. It’s the professional you. The useful you. The you that fits into your target audience’s expectations and the algorithm’s preferences.
This isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just honest about what’s happening. You’re performing, we’re all performing, and the performance that works is the one that looks least like performance.
Like designing like Pharaoh — you’re making strategic choices about control and presentation, then telling yourself it’s organic.
Why This Is Harder for Designers
Designers are especially bad at performed authenticity because we’re trained to hate fakeness.
We spend our careers arguing against buttons that do nothing and marketing websites that lie. We value genuine solutions over superficial polish.
So performing authenticity feels like becoming the thing we critique. It feels like design theater instead of design thinking.
But here’s the reframe: strategic authenticity isn’t lying. It’s editing. It’s showing the parts of yourself that serve your audience, not just the parts you feel like sharing.
That’s not dishonest. It’s professional. The same way your UX design work prioritizes user needs over your personal preferences.
The Actual Recommendation
If you’re going to build an audience, be honest with yourself about what you’re doing.
You’re not “just being yourself.” You’re performing a version of yourself that’s useful, relatable, and consistent enough to follow.
That performance can still be genuine. It can still represent your real values, opinions, and expertise. But it’s curated. Strategic. Calculated to serve both your goals and your audience’s needs.
The designers who succeed at social media marketing aren’t the most authentic ones. They’re the ones who figured out which authentic parts to show, when to show them, and how to package them for maximum impact.
That’s not selling out. That’s understanding how platforms work and using that knowledge intentionally.
Just don’t lie to yourself about it.
Coming up in Part 3: Content systems that don’t make you want to quit — how to actually produce content consistently without it consuming your life or soul.