Where do most people need support to continue to grow their personal brand, beyond initial planning and launch?

All of my work with individuals starts with Personal Brand Profiling, to get clear on their personal brand positioning messages, along with their audience and goals. After that, most will work on refreshing their LinkedIn profiles to reflect that positioning, and from there we create detailed personal marketing plans which may include LinkedIn and networking strategy and sales/business development plans.

Some clients ask for specialised help in particular areas such as building a personal website, creating a speaker profile and topic outline, or coaching in professional confidence in meetings, presentations or networking.

“They may have been thinking about achieving these goals for some time but don’t know where to start or how to get it done efficiently and effectively…”

I enjoy the structure of a handful of focused intensives to get the above goals achieved with clients. They are busy people who want to achieve a lot but also have a lot on their plates. They may have been thinking about achieving these goals for some time but don’t know where to start or how to get it done efficiently and effectively. Intensive one-to-one workshops over a few weeks achieves that.

While people can get a lot done in a short time clarifying their personal brand, creating a plan for reaching their target audience and even launching on one or two platforms… where most people really struggle is in keeping the momentum up that is required to actually carry out your plan successfully and build the brand with communication over time.

Watch the video and read on below for examples of what people ask for support on when working on their personal brands…

I’m SO excited to share this with you…

Join our AWESOME community that is totally AWESOME!!!

#grateful to get another amazing testimonial today… 

I’m thrilled you are joining us!!!!!!!!!

After my recent wailing to a friend about the persistence of this kind of language in what is supposed to be professional communications to smart business people, he laughed and termed it ‘The Pretend Personal’.

I know I’m not alone in thinking that over-excited language and punctuation, often repeating the same tired words and phrases, has lost any impact it ever had on online audiences.

Now I’m an expressive person – I get excited about ideas, I talk with my hands, my voice goes up and down and is kind of on the loud side. I can’t help it – I have 100% Latin blood! This sometimes comes across in my online content too, in videos, articles, posts and newsletters. I have in the past been guilty of unnecessarily excited language, but I have learned to scale it down to try to say what I really mean. I have learned that it can be human and personal, while professional. I have learned the importance of understanding your audience, right at this time.

Getting content engagement and personal brand visibility among the right people: Share your articles with well-thought-out short intro posts

I recently shared a process and some sample topics to help write high quality and differentiated LinkedIn articles, either for yourself or others, when you have limited time. This was particularly relevant to advisors and directors of professional service businesses, and the people who support them.

Of course, you don’t want to work hard on that quality article only to find that very few people will even see it. It’s important to work on gaining maximum visibility among your target audience, too.

Here are some important steps for the SHORT POST you write to accompany the article when you are sharing it with your audience on LinkedIn.

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about feel free to drop me a line, or take a look at my short posts on my LinkedIn profile as examples.)

This will help to increase your article’s achievement in terms of eyeballs and brain engagement… among the right people!

• Give your audience a reason to read. Introductory sentences could be made up of one of:
  • An eye-catching statement straight from the article
  • A summary of what the article is about
  • A statement of who would benefit from reading and what they’ll get from it
  • Include key words such as industry types who you are targeting in the article, or topic words that people might search for
  • Persuasive/emotive (but not promotional) language that entices people to read e.g. ‘A must-read if you are struggling with…’
  • A question that makes the audience identify with the content e.g. ‘Is this you?’ or ‘Have you experienced this…?’ or ‘Do you have problems with…?’
• Make your article work harder. LinkedIn will share your article when you hit publish. Schedule a second share that month, and future share/s in upcoming months. Each time you share, you should write a different introductory sentence in your post, to entice people to read in various ways. I’ve often got more engagement on second and third shares!
• Include a few hashtags of relevant keywords that people might use if searching for this type of content (or words they might be engaging with) e.g. #TaxUpdate #BusinessPlanning #RoyalCommission (!)
• Be mindful of the time of day you are posting – as most people access LinkedIn on their phones, try for before/after work hours, or if that’s impossible, during typical lunch/coffee break times. You could use a scheduling program to schedule future shares of an article, once it is published – in this way you can control the timing without physically posting at that time.
• Where possible, tag in highly relevant people (but check confidentiality before publishing – e.g. case studies) e.g. event organisers or people whose work you’ve referenced or who worked with you on the project/IP behind the article. This will extend the reach of your article significantly. DON’T just tag a bunch of people because they represent your target market (more on representing your personal brand through stylish posting in a future article!).

As always, keep in mind that people are busy and don’t care about your content nearly as much as you do. It’s all about WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? Make sure this is clear not just in the article, but also in your introductory short post.

“The number of hits means nothing unless the people seeing your content are the RIGHT people for your purpose.”

And remember that the number of hits on your article means nothing unless the people seeing your content are the RIGHT people for your purpose – whether that’s gaining new clients, influencing people or simply giving people something to think about.

If you’ve felt the pesky sting of a person acting without integrity online, consider what they are doing to themselves

It is not uncommon for people building their thought leadership with online content to see some copycatting or piggybacking from ‘competitors’ from time to time. Certainly, this has happened to me more than once, and while frustrating, is in my opinion so detrimental to the personal brand of the one trying to get a free ride, that they may as well not have bothered at all!

To clarify what I mean by the terms above:

A copycat blatantly copies other people’s style or IP and claims it as their own. I have seen not one, but three examples of this happen to clients and friends in just the last couple of months. They are all willing to take legal action.

A piggybacker uses the audience, profile and creative ideas of their competitors to promote their own content. It is fine to join a conversation lead by a peer in your industry. It is not fine to slap your own promotion onto a post your competitor has written, just because they had a great idea and are getting lots of pick up on their content.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: An old concept that stands the test of time

If you act like a jerk at a BBQ, loudly taking over the conversation and making it all about you, trying to outdo everyone else – your friends might forgive you (a few times) and luckily, not too many people have overheard you.

But if you act like a jerk on social media, you can seriously damage your personal brand and break people’s trust… forever.

If you disrespect others, they will never respect you. Neither will the audience of thousands who gets to witness it online.

We are all working hard trying to build something. Yes, ideas are shared and built upon and re-interpreted – that’s a good thing. But if you are too scared or too lazy to do the work yourself, simply taking from others will only do you harm in the long run.

To those who have been guilty of what I describe, I urge you to have enough faith in your own brand and your own potential to do something original – it will be your best and most lasting work.

To those working hard to create something of quality, originality and authenticity – I say, keep up the great work, and don’t worry about those others who will prove to be a ‘flash in the pan’ and their own undoing.