If you want to know how and why to build a personal brand, this post is for you.
I'm going to share stuff in a different way and get you to think about it a little differently.
Then I'm going to give you access to a ringside seat, on how to actually do this yourself.
No, it won't cost anything…well, maybe that’s not quite true. It'll cost you your time and attention…two things which I personally value very highly.
And you should, too.
If you don’t know me, I'm Ron Carmichael, a video marketing expert. I help coaches, consultants and mentors get extraordinary results through the effective use of different video marketing strategies.
In this video, I'd like to cover the four key areas of building your brand. Most people only talk about two of the areas and mostly, just one in particular.
But first…
I'd like to talk about the important topic of….is it worth building a personal brand and is there value in it?
I think if you're an expert you realise how important it is and the fact that you really ARE your brand, but let's be objective about it first and get the why out of the way.
Well it’s because there's genuine value in building a personal brand. I’m not just talking about positioning you as the expert, but in creating real value.
Look at Joe Rogan, look at Kylie Jenner. (You may not be so familiar with Joe Rogan but I’m sure you know of Kylie Jenner)
Joe Rogan is reputed to have sold his podcast show to Spotify for $100 million.
What are they buying? Well, a back catalogue of podcasts… but they’re really buying his brand and the content he creates. That's it!
While Kylie Jenner has built a powerful brand and on the back of that, a cosmetics company, to become the youngest self-made billionaire.
Let's dive into those four areas I mentioned earlier.
1) Aesthetics.
2) Uniqueness.
3) Consistency.
4) Platforms and Process.
1) Aesthetics is what most people focus on when they provide content around branding.
By aesthetics, I mean colour schemes or your colour palette, fonts, your logo and the look and feel you put out there.
It includes how you decide to come across and portray yourself. I’ll say a little more on that in the next point.
I think a lot of people get too hung up on this and put far too much time and effort into it.
Yes, it is important and you’ll certainly want to create a brand style guide and establish processes and protocols to go along with this.
This is especially true when you have other people working alongside you, like video editors and social media people, as I do.
It means anyone on your team or joining it can get up to speed quickly and know exactly what’s required. This very much fits in to your processes covered later on in this video.
2) Uniqueness. This is really important because this is YOU. This is the piece that sets you apart.
And of course, through the use of video, you're able to convey this so very effectively.
But what do I mean by uniqueness?
I don't mean you have to develop some special persona or in-your-face character. Which we seem to see quite a lot of in social media and on YouTube channels.
In reality, it's very difficult to maintain this type of persona. Particularly for what we’ll be doing and our approach.
You’ll be showing more of who you are, your personality, interests, principles. That’s what people will identify with.
You’re taking charge of the narrative, you’ll want to be seen for who you are and what you stand for.
So by uniqueness, I also mean the specific set of traits, skills and experiences you have to make you the expert that you are.
We’re all judging and being judged all the time…so you might as well help shape that judgment.
More importantly, what you're doing is you're establishing your credibility as an expert or industry leader.
If you build this trust and confidence, which you can do by the videos you put out and the knowledge you share etc, you start to position yourself as the first and most natural choice when people need your product or service.
To do this, you really DO need to be genuine and authentic, rather than some manufactured or fake persona.
This is how you build relatability and intimacy with your audience. No one else has the same skills, experience, knowledge and approach as you.
This is your uniqueness. You start to stand out and differentiate yourself in a sea of blandness and copycats.
Standing out through how and what you share will help you establish this authority status and get seen in our attention deficit era
Moving on…
3) Consistency.
This is so important. But I have a confession to make here. My own consistency or lack thereof when it comes to posting my own content.
I’ve been far from consistent…but I have now put the pieces in place and team to make sure that I personally show up on a regular basis.
I will share my main pieces of video content each and every week. There will be other content and training that I share on a regular basis too.
So that's consistency in terms of regular content.
This is particularly important in the early days as you build your social media channels and build your tribe of followers who you can genuinely help.
Then there’s consistency in terms of your look and feel.
This is the branding part we mentioned in point 1), where people will start to recognise the style and format of your content, because it’s consistent across the platforms you use.
This is used to support and reinforce what you’re doing.
Then there's consistency in terms of your messaging, the tone you use, the content you share and your voice.
Harnessing the power of messaging is so important, but probably the part that people understand the least…putting little effort into it.
Unleash your passion and let your knowledge shine through
Establishing that voice and building your confidence and comfort level is difficult for us all.
In the beginning, it can seem strange and a little bit scary just trying to stare down that dark and inanimate camera lens.
Our minds like to give us a whole lot of reasons as to why we should not be doing it. But learn to get comfortable on camera and people will start to totally get you.
That is why I’d encourage you to stick at video.
It’s much harder to create that level of engagement on other mediums. I’m not denying that the spoken word in itself can be very powerful but video let’s you connect on so many more levels and removes so many barriers. (There’s also so many different ways to use video and do it)
4) Platforms and Process.
Platforms is really just about the best channels for you and your audience.
This should all be determined from the most critical piece of work you do.
Your initial analysis and research phase.
Through doing the right groundwork you will establish whether ranking videos on YouTube is the optimum strategy for you and building your YouTube channel or whether you are better investing your time building out your social media profiles, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or another social media channel.
Or the best bet for you might be going straight to paid advertising.
I’ll share a lot more on this and have produced some guides and cheat sheets.
It IS the cornerstone of everything you do.
But I digress.
By placing the right strategic and intentional bets you significantly increase your chances of success.
But…this doesn't mean you don't use a range of channels, but you really need to invest your time into the ones that will help you achieve your desired results.
Whatever you’re told about blasting your content all over the place, all channels require a slightly different approach and have their own unique characteristics.
This can make the workload seem daunting, which is why it’s so important to establish processes that help you streamline your workflows.
Frequently, it's ineffective processes that lead to that feeling of struggle, overwhelm and confusion.
By having or developing effective processes, makes it so much easier for you and also helps you stay consistent.
This is a huge stumbling block for most coaches, consultants and mentors when building their online presence. You end up juggling so much, when you also have a day job and clients to look after too.
It's particularly important, nay necessary, if you plan on building a team around you, which you should.
At the end of the day, you want to focus as much time and effort on your zone of genius, letting your systems, processes and others do the rest.
I hope this is helpful. I have deliberately not dived in too deeply. But I want you to think about these four key areas. Think about them all.
I'll be sharing a lot more specific content on how I do things, what I've learned from 10 years in the trenches.
Yes, I've been using video in some shape or form for over 10 years now.
But…. at the beginning of this post, I said I was going to give you the opportunity to take a ringside seat on how to actually build your personal brand through video.
So how would you like to see it first hand?
Most experts do this when they've already established large followings and built a large subscriber base.
But I haven't…crazy right!
Although I've been using video for quite some time and have my own video marketing agency. This is the first time I've ever built my own personal brand.
For me, it's about helping and making an impact on a far wider market of coaches, consultants and mentors. This pandemic and the current economic environment really brought this home to me.
So it's time for me to step up.
Here's what I'll be doing.
I’m going to be putting out content regularly on my YouTube channel with a view to building that. I'm being very intentional with my strategy there to deliberately build it.
Here’s my YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/RonCarmichael
So you understand…
Originally, I was going to use YouTube as a support channel, but thought given what I do, it would be far more helpful to everyone if I was to actually build my channel from scratch and turn it into something more significant.
To make my job more difficult, I will also be building my other social media channels as well as running some paid advertising campaigns in the near future.
These are all parts of different strategies and not something I would advise for most just stepping up their video marketing game.
But if I share not only the content I’m creating but also show you behind the scenes of what and why I’m doing things, I thought that would be pretty helpful.
I’ll also be showing you the results I’m getting but you’ll be able to see quite a bit of that for yourself.
No hiding here!
The best way for me to show you that more behind the scenes stuff is via Facebook and Instagram.
The reason being, it would mess up my YouTube strategy in the beginning.
You’ll have to join me on Instagram and Facebook to see why I’m saying that.
https://www.instagram.com/roncarmichael
https://www.facebook.com/RonCarmichaelBiz
I’m thinking that I will do lives on Instagram which would then show up under IGTV and in my Instagram feed.
But if you’re interested, I suggest you follow both my Instagram and Facebook profiles.
I’ve got some additional training that I will only share on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/RonCarmichaelBiz
There’s the links to both. Please do follow along.
In the meantime. Thanks for reading and watching my video.
Please be sure to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel too!
Over on the YouTube channel you can comment below the video and tell me what you do.
Or tell me on my social media channels what are the greatest obstacles and barriers to you using video marketing successfully in your business.
Thanks very much for your time.
Really appreciate it.
Catch you soon.
