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…

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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.

When talking to people about their personal brands, I hear the concern, ‘But I don’t want to sound too self-promotional!’ pretty much on a weekly basis. If you’re a professional consultant or advisor, it’s absolutely necessary to be careful how you communicate your personal brand so that it is elegant, human, and appealing. Coming across too pushy or salesy will only do your reputation damage. The trouble is:

If you hold back on self-promotion, you are expecting people to read your mind.

On my favourite podcast for consultants, The Consulting Success Podcast, experienced consultant and business owner Michael Zipursky tells the story of Eric, a guy who left the corporate world to become an independent consultant, but was held back by a fear of promoting himself to others. Eric didn’t want to come across as too full of himself. But as Michael points out on this episode, if you refuse to promote yourself, you are expecting people to read your mind! How else will they understand what you can offer if you don’t tell them?

Despite personal branding being my thing, listening to this podcast did remind me that there are areas where I am expecting people to be mind-readers in my business. For example, I run several really well-received workshops for teams that I had previously not included on my website – I was waiting for enquiries before telling people about them! (They are on there now, by the way.)

Similarly with corporate personal brand strategy consulting, it was important to demonstrate more widely NWC’s unique approach and how it makes sense for the business world we now live in. I am continuing to share this message through keynotes, the media, content writing and of course, the website.

When you’re going from being an executive in a company to running your own show, you MUST learn to self-promote because you no longer are part of a household brand; nor are you still in a situation where more work lands in your lap than you can deal with. Even if you are part of wider company, if you want to step up to the next level or win more clients for your team, you need to think about self-promotion.

To get the work, people have to know what you do and why they would want to work with you.

Some tips to promote your consulting or advisory services in a way that works for a professional personal brand:

• Ensure you have made full use of your LinkedIn profile to explain what you do in detail, and to demonstrate how your past experiences serves this.
• Spend time reflecting on your strengthsand achievements so that they come to mind when you are called on to communicate them – for example, in a performance review. In addition, clarifying your value as a professional will infuse all your communications with authentic confidence that can only serve you.
• Think about the most important thing people need to know about you in order to want to find out more about doing business with you. This may be your experience on a big project, your area of niched specialisation, or a different approach you offer. When you meet someone new, frame your very first sentence in a way that gently draws attention to the things that matter most about what you do. This is not a sales pitch; it’s a lens you are inviting people to see you through, but it still takes preparation.
• Be ready with business cards wherever you go, just in case someone asks to know more about what you do. It’s an old-fashioned idea… but I like it, especially if your card has a touch of the wow-factor to really leave an impression.

This week I was working with one of my client’s marketing team to create their communications strategy for 2019. We discussed the importance of quality professional articles from members of staff, using LinkedIn as the primary platform. The question was posed, ‘What process can I use to help a busy director to create quality content for an article?’

It’s important that the content, voice and perspective belong to the person publishing the article, and this is the big challenge for professional advisers and directors who just don’t have the time to pen articles themselves. The internal marketing team can support them by creating a process to draw the article out of them during a short ‘writing meeting’, after which they can polish the article and send it to the director/adviser for final approval.

In this way, you can retain the advice and even the unique voice of the original author of the content, by using their responses and their words to create the article.

Here’s the process I suggest for those assisting someone to write an article, or for those who are writing their own but need a little inspiration and structure to ensure their article is a worthwhile read.

Pick one of these two core areas that people want an adviser or senior professional person’s perspective on. Pick your related topic that appeals to your target audience, such as ‘tax time for small businesses in farming’ (be specific to be interesting!) and answer the following questions:

Addressing a business problem

• What’s a common business problem or challenge for your clients? Give an example/story.
• Why is this such a common problem? What don’t clients know/what are they getting wrong?
• Why is this problem dangerous if not addressed correctly? Another example/story of when this has happened, or when it’s been avoided?
• Outline a possible solution in every day language. Try to use steps that summarise your advice in a tangible way.

OR:

Responding to a recent media piece or other information – ask one of these to build an article

• What’s something you’ve read/heard about in the media lately that may affect your clients? Summarise the news item in your own words and explain how it may affect clients, and what they should do about it. Can we link to the original news item or others involved in this space?
• What was your take on a recent business/professional development event you attended? What key points stood out to you, what’s your experience/opinion of these, and how do they affect your clients? What do your clients need to know? Did you get a photo of the event? Can we link to the organisers/others?
• How do recent legal/compliance changes affect your clients? What do they need to know and do?

One last thing: be sure to use ‘client speak’, not ‘around the office speak’, when writing! LinkedIn is a professional platform but your language should still be accessible. Imagine you were answering a client’s questions, face-to-face. Write it that way. More on this topic soon!

In a recent interview, author of The 4 Hour Workweek Tim Ferris spoke with Marie Forleo about marketing advice. I’ve picked out a couple of points he made which I feel are essential to successful marketing for any business, but are often overlooked.

Business leaders often feel overwhelmed at how much marketing has changed and continues to change at a rapid pace – but the truth is, the vehicle is less important than the message.

Tim says: “My tendency is to look at things that have not changed. Let’s say you want to learn to draw. You can use a crayon, you can use a pencil, you can use a pen… You could think of all those tools… as different types of social media – but at the end of the day you have to know how to draw!”

When it comes to marketing a business, it is better to choose one relevant medium, such as LinkedIn for professionals and B2B, and learn how to do that exceptionally well, than to be across all the latest platforms but do them poorly or inconsistently (which also means poorly). A strong marketing plan focuses on a small number of strategically-chosen activities supporting a well-defined set of brand messages.

I recently sent one of my clients, an education provider, a list of her company’s top 5 readers following a newsletter we sent out. She commented that all 5 readers had immediately made bookings following the mail out. The following month, she received further bookings worth thousands of dollars within a few hours of the next newsletter hitting inboxes.

Another client, a lawyer, said he received a big wrap from a LinkedIn contact on an article we worked on with him. This reader then sent it to over a dozen clients and contacts by way of introduction.

These on the surface look like examples of online marketing activity that has immediately been rewarded with new clients, bookings, or at the very least, warm leads. However, these communications – the newsletter and the article – were the tips of the branding and marketing icebergs. These items worked because, besides being of quality and value in themselves, were backed up by well-thought-out and consistently communicated business and personal brands, combined with a solid strategic plan.