Here are a 3 simple ways you can make your personal brand stand out from your competition:
- Be helpful.
- Be brief.
- Be consistent.
Helpful, brief, and consistent will serve you well, whether you’re writing an article, a book, an e-mail, preparing a podcast, or delivering a speech.
Helpful (because it’s not about you)
Success is not about you; it’s all about the relevance of your message to your intended market. No matter how well-informed you are, the strength of your personal brand depends on your ability to write and present helpful and relevant information that helps your readers or listeners solve their problems or achieve their goals. This involves:
- Identifying the target market you want to serve. Don’t try to write for everybody, identify the market segment you want to build a long-term relationship with.
- Identifying your target market’s problems and goals. Don’t try to solve all of your target market’s problems, or help them achieve all of their goals. Instead, focus on the problems and goals that play to your strengths and niches where you can be Number One.
Brevity (respect your market’s time)
Strong personal brands respect their readers’ or their audiences’ time. Books and speeches that build brands are often short and to the point. Brevity has never been as important as it is now, in our connected world where there’s not enough time to do all that’s required of us.
Think of books like Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style–now in its 50th Anniversay Edition, or the lasting impact of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Note that the world’s greatest contemporary communicators present their inspiring messages at TED.com in just 17 or 18 minutes!
Consider the personal branding power and continuing sales strength of business books by authors like Bob Burg & John David Mann, John C. Maxwell, Spencer Johnson, Bob Prosen, or most Seth Godin books.
Even better examples of the power of brevity are shown by the success of the 42 Rules series of books and the THINKaha Books.
Brevity is more important than ever in today’s time-starved world, where just about everyone has more demands on their time than ever before.
Consistent visibility (because your market has a short memory)
Your market has a short memory, and you have more competitors actively competing for their time than ever. The more consistently visible you are, the stronger your brand becomes.
Think of the typical emergency room scene in a televised hospital drama. There will usually be an oscilloscope monitoring the patient’s heart. There will be a trace that rises to the top of the screen, remains for a second, and immediately begins to decay. Soon, the trace is at the bottom of the screen–or, it disappears.
That’s what happens when your personal brand is not visible to your market! Each article, blog post, e-mail newsletter, podcast, or new video restores market awareness and brings you to the attention of new prospects. But, the effect is short-lived. Soon, your awareness begins begins to drop off, replaced by competing messages.
Each relevant, helpful message you share with your market restores your awareness and reinforces your personal brand, so your market will think of you first when they’re finally ready to buy.
In many ways, the strength of your personal brand is based as much on the consistency of your social media updates as well as the relevance of the information you share or link to.
Test the performance of your personal brand
Are each of your marketing messages helpful? Do you always target your intended market and deliver relevant messages? Do you have a system to cut the clutter and write as tightly as you can? Do you always review what you’ve written and delete unnecessary words? Do you replace long words with short words? And, most important, do you have a system that makes it easy to maintain your personal brand’s consistent visibility? Share your ideas and tips below, as comments.
Author:
Roger C. Parker shares ideas for planning, writing, promoting, & profiting from brand building books in his daily writing tips blog and his latest book, #BOOK TITLE Tweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Compelling Article, Book, & Event Titles.
