Today we’re talking about how to build your brand voice and your brand image. Learn how to expand your attention to lots and lots of people.
This is the last part of the four stages of personal branding. This is how you go from zero to one hundred in terms of building your brand. I wanted to make sure you had a roadmap. You had somewhere to start from zero and knew what to do all the way through the end, or at least have a vision of that.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND VOICE IS A JOURNEY
We’ve mapped out the things you need to focus on first versus second versus third and beyond. Obviously, we can’t cover every little nuance in these four phases on just a podcast. There is accountability. There are workshops, training, tutorials, and tools you need that will actually get you there.
I’m happy to walk you through these one by one, but it takes time. Personal branding is not a one-and-done thing. It is actually a continual journey over time.
Today though, as promised, it’s our last step in the personal branding process. This is the last stage of personal branding. We’ll call this building your brand image and honing your brand voice.
This is one of the more interesting steps for me. I get to see people go from just throwing random content out there to really honing in on what their voice is as a creator. They become someone who’s providing a service as a thought leader, someone who eventually wants to be known in their industry.
WANT ACCELERATION? BUILD YOUR BRAND VOICE
Finding that niche, that corner of the pie that they want to dive into is always a process. We start out really big and grandiose. We try different things, and we pivot and switch. Eventually, we hone in on that thing.
What’s beautiful is as you start to really get clarity around what you want your identity to be, then you have some acceleration that can happen towards your goals. That clarity means that everyone that meets you now starts to carry on and pass along that message of what you are good at.
When it’s clear it can be very powerful. In terms of crafting that message of your brand image and your brand voice, there are a couple of things that I want you to stick in your mind today. One is about illustrating your expertise. Number two is about pillar content.
YOUR BRAND VOICE WILL MAKE YOUR EXPERTISE CLEAR
Illustrating your expertise is critical. What this means is that in everything you do, whether it’s helping someone one-on-one, networking, being featured in a Facebook group or podcast, even writing your own content, you are very focused on understanding the topic that you could talk about all day. That is your expertise.
That’s going to be a mixture of stories that illustrate your points, frameworks that you use to help people, examples of people you’ve helped, and lessons that you could teach along the way. All of that combined helps illustrate your expertise.
Your job, as you have built and you’re in this phase for personal branding, is to continue to demonstrate expertise and find new ways of sharing that different piece and slice of that expertise to as many people as possible.
TELL YOUR STORY
In some cases, it will be redundant. You might be telling the same story but to new people. In other cases, you’ll be telling new stories to the same people.
Whatever it is, as long as they are focused within your niche and within your area and zone of expertise, it will all be a cumulative effect in terms of snowballing into this thing that you want to be known for.
What’s great is it’s just a matter of time. Every day, every month, every blog post, every social media post, every interaction, every speaking opportunity adds to this body of work over time. It’s you just continuing to say, “I’m committed to illustrating my expertise at every potential opportunity.”
YOUR BRAND VOICE ENCOURAGES NEW CLIENTS
Getting practice at sharing that knowledge is part of this. Have those models mapped out, have those stories written out ahead of time. Every time you think of one, write it down. Save them so that you can refer back to them and remember that this is how I teach these things.
You can start to build those back into your offers, which we talked about in the last episode. Having those ways of explaining to people what you do and how they can move forward to the result is huge.
It might just be when you said it one way it didn’t resonate, but you said it slightly differently the next time and a little light bulb went off in someone’s head that said, “Oh my God, that’s what I’ve been waiting for to hear.” Now they’re ready for help. Try to illustrate expertise at every stage that you can.
BUILD YOUR BRAND’S PILLAR CONTENT
The second piece is this idea of pillar content. What I did when I started (and what a lot of people that I talked to do) is we get this idea that we need to start being present and active in every media outlet possible.
The problem is we start seeing all kinds of random stuff, but we never really focus on a particular piece of the pie.
An example would be, let’s say you want to be known for something.? You want to be known for email list building. One of the premier keynote speakers in that space is Amy Porterfield. She’s brilliant at it. You could check that out. How does that happen? Eventually, you have to have focus. You can’t be talking about a million things. You have to focus on one thing.
YOUR BRAND VOICE DIRECTS YOUR PILLAR CONTENT
If you want to be known for email list building, then literally everywhere you go, you need to be talking about how to build your email list. On top of that, when you are writing content, producing blogs, and posting on social media, all of those need to be mapped towards that same particular topic.
The way we think about this is when you’re actually out there building blogs or building content, do you have something that demonstrates (in the deepest way possible) how to solve that problem? In this case, it would be how to build an email list, your ultimate guide.
What is that for you? Write it out from top to bottom. Have it somewhere as a resource. Have it as a post that explains everything in terms of how to get there. That is what we call cornerstone content. We call it pillar content. It is the thing you want to be known for and everything else you create after that can feed into that.
If you say, “This week we’re going to talk about how to write email headings,” write that as its own article, its own amount of information and words can feed into your pillar content, which is the ultimate guide of how to build an email list.
Because they are connected in that way, somewhere in that article you can say, “Hey, are you enjoying this content about how to write email headings? Great. If so, you will love my ultimate guide to how to build an email list.” They start to connect in that way.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
CREATE CONTENT FOR DIFFERENT PLATFORMS
Having everything you create filter towards this one topic is helpful. Then you can think about that not just in a blog format, but in podcasts and social media. All that content is connected and starts to add up in terms of credibility for you.
If you get a chance to go on someone’s podcast, what are the most important topics you would want to talk about that demonstrate that you are king or queen of email list building? What are those things that people would want to know that might even make them interested in working with you, to begin with?
Taking that focus once you have clarity and really going a hundred percent towards everything you do, every stage you get on, every piece of content you write, being focused on that expertise is what catapults you to being known for that thing and having a reputation.
When your friends say, “Do you know anyone that could help me really grow my audience?” and you say, “Oh, I know that the list building guy or girl, you’ve got to talk to them,” you are that person now. Even if there are multiple people in that field, they know you personally. You’re the person that they’re going to recommend.
That’s the message part of it. Really hone in on, “This is what I do. This is what I want to be known for. This is what I’m.” Then create all your content around that. Focus on that.
HOW TO GET ATTENTION FOR YOUR BRAND VOICE
The second piece of this is attention. Again, we’ve talked about lots of types of attention. One-to-Zero is you creating something and no one seeing it like a website when you’re starting. Then as you moved forward, we talked about One-to-One messaging, which was you networking with people one-to-one and sending direct messages.
We then talked about One-to-Few, which was you getting in front of small groups and tapping into those relationships.
Now we’re going to talk about One-to-Many. This is how you create content, opportunities, and communication that brings large audiences to you over time. There are a couple of key things that stand out to me that I’m going to share with you.
USE YOUR CONTENT TO BUILD YOUR BRAND VOICE
We talked about stages already and those can just become bigger stages. Beyond that, I want to start with content.
For me, content is the one that no one really understands, except for the expert content creators. For the average person who’s getting started, what I want them to know is the more you can create content that is connected to the thing that you are known for and delete everything else, the more it will work for you.
That means using content that maps together and also using the right amount of keywords in your content that the computers can recognize and know this is what this article is about so that you can start to rank.
Just finding one article that you can create that starts to rank for a keyword that you want to be known for can change your business. Now you’ve created a set of leads that will come in not just once but every month if you can rank for something that people are searching for.
HOW TO RANK FOR YOUR BRAND VOICE
Whether it’s a YouTube video, a podcast episode, or a blog article on Google, if you can create that top page result for a word that people are searching for within that world that you want to be known for and rank for it, you’ve now created something that you will consistently get traffic for every week, every day, every month.
Then you can think, “Okay. Now that that page is what’s starting to pop for me, how do I take people from that page and bring them into my world? How do I get them on my email list and send them to other content that I have? How do I get them to interact with me in some way, shape, or form?”
It all starts with you finding the content that you want to be known for and creating it in a way that can be found. That can be the best article on that topic, period, or the best episode, or the best YouTube video on that topic so that you can start to generate views of that based on what people are already doing.
USE YOUR BRAND TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
The next thing that I’ll bring out to you guys is if you really want to get known (and this is without paying for anything,) and build that attention for your expertise, then the thing that really I want to get you guys to think about is how do you build relationships with people who have input?
How do you really build relationships with people who have influence? The best way to do that for me is that you have to like them first. You have to find the people that you think make sense. They are the people that you vibe with. You respect what they do, who they speak to, and how they help.
Then embed yourself in their work. Literally, embed yourself in their world. Buy their book, go to the events that they are speaking at, join their programs and find a way to interact with them.
That’s the only way you can actually build a relationship, and guess what? There is a secret tool for this one. If you have a podcast like this one that we are doing today, you can invite people to be on your show. Tell them why you want them on your show and build a relationship in that way. It’s a great hack for building relationships with people that you don’t know instead of simply fan blowing over them.
I’d say something even more important than that is if you can get in a room with somebody, shake their hand, get to know them, and then mention the podcast. That’s even better because instead of asking something from them, you’re saying, “I have this show. By the way, I’d love to get you on there and feature you to my audience.”
YOUR BRAND VOICE GIVES YOU A PLATFORM
Beyond influential relationships and just being friends with and getting to know them, the next level of that is building a platform that is your platform that people want to be on.
If you can start to build attention for your content and you can share that attention with other people, even people who have bigger audiences are looking for a lot of smaller platforms to get new eyeballs from.
Developing your platform is an amazing way to build your brand image. It starts to unlock a lot of the tools that you’ll need to do this consistently because as you have your own platform. You can then start to fill in your messaging. What emails am I going to send? What content am I going to put on social media?
All of that can come from an original podcast format, an original YouTube show format, or something like that. Interview-based or solo show-based, it can start there. Having that platform is like building your own stage over time. Long-term, these are the things that are going to give you the most return over time.
Once you build them, they’re there for you to continue sending leads over time. It’s not where I would start because at the beginning you need a quicker return on investment. That is why we’ve talked about these different phases.
BUILD YOUR BRAND VOICE FOR LONG-TERM RETURNS
In the long-term, One-to-Many is one way to get there. Once that stuff is built, then you can look at the things like paying for ads, paying for more eyeballs, paying for more attention.
However, you have to have all these other systems built first so that when more people come into your system, it can handle converting these people and turning them into a community that’s interested in getting the help from you that they’re looking for.
Those are the four phases. I really hope that was helpful for you guys. Again, this is just the conceptual version of what I help people do on a day-to-day basis.
If you are looking for help on a weekly basis, and you want to have someone to help you with that along the way to share in the experience, I’d love to hear from you at brandsonbrands.com/coach. I’d love to understand your story and see if we’re a fit.
Other than that, just keep on listening to the show. We’re always dropping free advice here every week. I appreciate you for listening.
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MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
If you’d like more content about how to build your personal brand, check out my free Content Marketing Starter Guide.
And here are some more of my most popular thought leader interviews!
- What Business to Start with John Lee Dumas
- Personal Branding Masterclass with Chris Ducker
- Built to Serve with Evan Carmichael
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Talk soon!