Are you one of the many who use lack of time as a reason to put-off building a personal brand by writing provocative thought leadership articles, books, starting a podcast, frequently updating your blog, or submitting guest posts on other blogs?
If you don’t have the time now, when will you have the time?
Lack of time is an unfortunate reality for most of us; today, everyone is stretched then by family demands, financial pressures, job expectations, and an “always connected” Internet/cell phone world.
Nevertheless, each year, new subject area experts appear as competitors in every area.
What’s their secret?
Since everyone shares 24-hour days, and no amount of wishful thinking is likely to reduce your workload, there are mainly just 2 things you can do to find the time to build your personal brand:
- Commitment. Commitment means making your personal brand a priority in your life, not just something you do when you finish your “real” job. Commitment involves recognizing the importance of creating a personal brand, making difficult choices, and cultivating the habits needed to create the content you need to establish a a compelling personal brand in your field.
- Efficiency. After making the commitment to build your personal brand, you have to cultivate the habits of efficiency. Efficiency involves multiplying your time by accomplishing in 30-minutes a day what would normally take you 60 or 90 minutes a day. Efficiency involves writing strategically, so your words and key ideas can be leveraged as broadly as possible.
The following are some ideas learned from authors and subject area experts whom I’ve interviewed during the past 18 months.
7 time-saving personal branding tips
- Time limits. Try writing your blog posts in 30-minutes, or less. Stress builds, and productivity often gets clogged, when you take a writing task too seriously. The solution is to commit to writing your blog posts in 30-minutes. Words are far more likely to flow when you spend your time writing, rather than over-thinking the topic before you begin writing. Writing quickly also gives you more time to review and self-edit your post before sharing it with the Internet.
- Technology. One recently self-published author I interviewed purchased an inexpensive, hand-held digital recorder and dictates blog posts and sections of chapters while driving to client meetings or stopped at traffic lights. When he gets back, he plugs the digital recorder into his computer, and his voice recognition software program transcribes his dictation and prepares the first draft.
- Expanding topics. Although the practice is by no means universal, more and more individuals are building their personal brands and leveraging their writing by expanding blog posts into articles, ebooks, and chapters of brand-building books.
- Condensing topics. The same idea works in reverse; blog posts can be condensed to their essence and reused as tip sheets and sidebars in articles and books.
- Reformatting. Content ideas should transcend media; ideas that first appear as blog posts can be addressed in podcasts and YouTube videos. Likewise, after creating a podcast, you might be able to convert the topic into 2 or 3 separate blog posts addressing aspects of the podcast. Each media has its own followers. More important, each time you re-address a topic, you’re likely to come up with new ideas.
- Live connections. One of the easiest ways to develop new content is to present an on-going series of free interviews and teleseminars which are recorded and transcribed. Live events create deadlines that overcome procrastination and prompt action. Your enthusiasm builds, and your voice changes, when you’re projecting to a live audience, and the ideas flow as they tend to during conversations.
- Crowd-sourcing. Many profitable personal brands have been based on tapping into the power of others, often by providing an opportunity for others to share their expertise and ideas. By soliciting success stories and examples of mistakes made and lessons learned, or even just commenting on the videos found on the TED.org, ( not only taps into the power of story, but provides a foundation for your critical analyses and observations.
Personal branding sense demands efficient content creation
The above are just a few of the ways you can save time while building your personal brand with helpful and relevant content. There’s no time to waste! If you want to succeed in the Web 2.0 world, you must establish your personal brand, and personal brands dependent content. Your ability to build your personal brand is, ultimately, tied to your ability to save time creating content.
