In today’s continuation of the Personal Branding (PB) series, we’re finally starting to connect the dots on everything we’ve been talking about. We’re digging into the 3rd component today.  

There are 3 primary components of every single personal brand:

• You: The product, The representation of your PB’s Values, The vehicle of your PB’s Mission

• Other People: Specifically your target audience, the peeps that align your mission and values, and choose to stay connected with your brand (customers, subscribers, etc)

• Your Means of connecting with them: Marketing your brand, making your presence known, establishing bridges between where you are and where your potential loyalists are

The way I kind of visualize this 3rd component is like a literal bridge between two islands.

I picture a scene that resembles Tom Hank’s, Castaway where some people are stranded and starving on an island… Yet in the far distance, they can kind of see another island that seems to be thriving and loving life. 

What’s going on over there? And how can we explore it?

What they’re actually seeing is You. You’ve got food, shelter, Spotify premium, and the works… And damn are they desperate to be a part of that. 

This is where we begin to build bridges, construct boats, or dig underwater tunnels from one island to the next - giving those that are interested, the opportunity to grow and thrive with you on your island. This is essentially the marketing component of your personal brand.

As always, we need to understand the fundamentals in order to be effective with everything else.

 

Marketing is your means of connecting with the world.

And to connect, we must know how to communicate.

Importance of Communication

In one of the previous entries that focused on the PB component of YOU, we talked a lot about your brand story, and just the power of stories in general. Storytelling is just one way of communicating. 

In order to communicate effectively you must consider:

• Who you’re communicating with

• The Context

• The Timing

• The Way you communicate

• The Goal 

What do you expect to happen as a result of your communication? For example…

A friend calls you after a breakup… They’d like you to sympathize and console them.

You DM someone that you look up to… You’re hoping to be noticed and connect.

You tell your child you love them… You want to reinforce that truth in their psyche.

When we’re building bridges between ourselves and our current and future tribe members, 

We have to communicate in a way that not only conveys the message but considers everything listed above.

The Trick to Effective Communication

Last summer, as a guest on The Subtle Art of Not Yelling podcast (link to that episode), I was asked, “How do you define marketing?” I responded...

“Marketing is just effective communication with a goal in mind.”

The moment you roll out of bed and face the world you are marketing yourself. The outfit you chose to wear today, is a reflection of how you wanted to be seen. The way you write your emails gives the person on the other end an assumption of the kind of person you are. 

Verbal or not, every action and exchange you take is another piece of evidence as to you who are and how you are. And this all plays a part in your brand reputation. 

With our simple definition of marketing in hand, let’s touch on the 2 primary marketing methods and the 3 actionable approaches that align with either method.

The 2 Types of Marketing

All of the marketing efforts you see in the world fall into one of these two categories:

🧲 Inbound Marketing: Designed to draw visitors and potential customers in, rather than outwardly pushing a brand, product, or service onto prospects. With inbound marketing, you’re placing content and resources in a strategic manner that ultimately attracts the type of people you want to do business with

🔊 Outbound Marketing: Proactive outreach out to potential customers to get them interested in a product or service you’re selling. With outbound marketing, the company initiates the conversation and pushes a message out, rather than waiting for people to come to them.

There are pros and cons to both and they’re both great in their own way. But the best approach in my opinion (especially in the context of PB marketing) is to focus primarily on the inbound approach. I’ll show you a glimpse of both. 

3 Great Ways to Build Bridges

“To truly build a great Personal Brand, it is crucial that you share resources and insights that would be felt as valuable to your intended audience.”

1) Content can be anything from a tweet all the way to a feature-length film. As I say often… Don't overthink it. What you should put some thought into is your future audience and what they want/need/crave.

Thoughtful content results in a slow build of confidence, trust, and reciprocity with you and your brand. It’s the long game. 

With content, not only are you becoming a useful source of truth for your audience, but each piece of content becomes another asset that you can re-use, re-configure, and re-deploy for as long as it’s still useful to your tribe! Your PB’s ‘stock price’ goes up each time.

And once you’ve built some killer content, you can always boost it out to new eyeballs using paid ads. 

2) Outreach is one form of traditional networking where you are directly contacting individuals typically through social media DM’s or emails with the intent to begin a conversation that leads to a connection.

Outreach is definitely an outbound-ish strategy that becomes more of a numbers game than anything else. If you hypothetically wanted to add 10 new people to your audience, and 1% of people turn into a customer or good connections, you’d need to reach out to 1000 people. The numbers may vary here.

The nice thing is that you’re having real 1-on-1 conversations. The bad thing is there’s a lot of time involved in doing this. Of course, automations can come to the rescue to save you time, but your outreach can quickly lose its unique, personal touch if you’re not careful. And with personal brand… It can’t come off as corporate, or dis-ingenuine.

Where this can be nice reaching out simply with the aim of brand awareness. If you don't try to convert these people immediately and instead just ‘plant the seed’ of your brand, this seed may eventually blossom into another brand loyalist! 

2) Engagement is the act of replying to comments, engaging in forums, leaving thoughtful feedback on ideas someone else posted, and more. This can happen on a 1:1 basis similar to outreach or in groups. Kind of like the idea behind classic networking.

The key difference between engagement and outreach is that one is proactive, and the other is reactive. Engagement is your reaction to something that already exists.

Many personal brands of built solid followings off of consistently (and almost constantly) staying engaged with people online. You can engage on content put out by potential new followers, or engage on content put out by much larger brands who many others likely follow too.

What I love about this is you can cover a lot of ground pretty quickly. Many people can begin to see you. The downside is that sometimes it's a pretty slow build, requires a lot of manual effort, and really only becomes powerful if you’re also putting out content as well.

To determine which method(s) is best for you and your brand consider the following:

1. Do I have the capacity to add this effort into my routine?

2. Will I relatively enjoy the process of this effort?

3. Can I commit to this for the foreseeable future?

4. Which route provides the most leverage for future success?

To use me as an example, cause I’ve thought a LOT about this for my PB…

I am not an outreach guy. Just not my vibe and doesn’t make leverageable sense to me. Maybe in small doses, for specific things. But it’s not my bridge-builder.

I am cool with engagement. But to try and make sure I comment on every Twitter thread and LinkedIn post from big influencers in my niche… it’s a drag. And very ‘shiny-object’ feeling. Plus you really have to keep at it for it to really pay off. My angle on this is to stay wildly engaged with all comments and reactions I receive on my own content. It’s an absolute no-brainer.

What I am is a content guy! It plays to my strengths and aligns with my future goals. I’m huge on building out a suite of ideas, content, and offers that can live on beyond my existence. Content can build audiences with an insane level of trust, and can become a monetizable thing as well.

Stick around. I’m just getting started. 💪

To conclude, just a reminder that you can still jump on the waitlist for a way more in-depth version of this personal branding series I’m developing in the form of some sort of course or workshop. The goal of this is to tactically help you either start or enhance your own personal brand.

Don’t sleep on your personal brand. It’s the way of the future. 

Have a great week.

Til Next Time ✌️🙂
Ev