... new opportunities.
Creating a personal brand has never been more important, this holds true for freelancers, business owners and coaches and consultants. People ultimately want to connect with people, not businesses, so building a personal brand and showing your authenticity and authority over a topic is the perfect way to inspire people to want to work with you, and bring in lots of inbound enquiries, the bread and butter of your business. Some of the benefits are…
Get lots more clients.
Increase your prices.
Differentiate yourself from your faceless competitors.
WHAT IS A PERSONAL BRAND…
A personal brand is a way you are perceived by both the people who know you and those that don’t. This article is more about the people who can hire you and how to position yourself, in their eyes, as the expert or authority over the topic which your service provides solutions to.
HOW TO TELL YOUR STORY TO THE WORLD…
Storytelling ultimately is a skill which can be developed, but one which very few people have ever considered getting better at. The age-old practice has its roots in prehistoric man, and much of the structures in how we tell stories are the same - from the Inuits to the Zulu’s - stories transcend culture. Joseph Campbell, in his critically acclaimed book, ‘A Hero With A Thousand Faces’ breaks down this structure which he calls ‘The Hero’s Journey’. Inspired by Carl Jung’s literature on Archetypes, Cambell observed that the stories we have told since the dawn of time, all the way up to the present scripts written for Holly Wood, are essentially part of some cosmic structure which helps our brains understand the world, its people, and its environment better. Archetype’s such as The Hero, The Magician and The Warrior transcend time and culture. By following this structure we can also tell the story of our brands and more relevant to this article, our lives which in turn will help us get people desiring to work with us.
WHAT IS YOUR STORY…
Being able to communicate your story, your purpose and the challenges and battles you are fighting is all part of your personal brand. If you can position yourself as the hero in your story, and define your battle or enemy clearly, then this can be a powerful way for people to quickly get what you are about. This message, once defined, then has to be clearly communicated numerous times over to the right people. The fact of the matter is it has never been easier to get in front of your prospects utilising digital platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook and Google, yet this holds true for everyone, so people are being bombarded with people screaming at them to hire them or to buy this. We are becoming more numb to advertising as a result, and therefore it has never been harder to get people to pay attention to your message.
One differentiating factor we can use to stand out of the crowd is to tell a compelling story, and then help people solve their problems by giving them the knowledge and tools they require. This means we need to give before we ask for anything in return, build up rapport, and then - only then- ask them to work with us.
This means we should create content which your prospects can use right away, either blogs, reports, useful tools or video trainings. The trick here is to give away your systems and tell people clearly how to solve the problem for themselves. This shows people how you work, and once they start getting some small wins from this content, they will see how hiring you could be so much more beneficial than trying to do it themselves. There is a DIY crowd out there who will try to do it themselves, but if you are genuinely helping people solve the problems your service provides, then some of these people will come through and hire you. The DIYers will not hire you anyway, they have the time to spend months trying to figure it out for themselves.
WHAT IS YOUR BATTLE?
Defining your battle is a great way to define why you do what you do, and also will form the basis for the content you create. If say you are a leadership coach for CEO’s in the tech world, then one of your battles might be to fight a lack of direction by helping them gain clarity on the future and the goals of the organisation they are building. Therefore you should create content around creating an inspiring vision which is going to get your investors, staff and media excited to hear what you have to say. Breaking down the benefits of hiring you down to the minute level is the way we at Super Lumen create content strategies.
HOW TO DISTRIBUTE YOUR STORY...
Once your story is developed, you have defined the battles you are fighting and you have created content which helps the people who need your service then we can utilise digital media platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin and Google for distribution. As mentioned before, it has never been easier to get your message in front of the right people. A good way to reach out to a cold audience is to start with a lead magnet which is written around the core problem your service solves. We then put this in front of a cold but relevant audience on Linkedin, Facebook or both, and what this essentially does is it allows people to put up their hands to say they have that problem when they download the lead magnet. Once they trigger our pixels we can remarket to them with more relevant content, and we keep doing this for a period of months, consistently offering them relevant and useful content, while also directing them to a call to action of ‘schedule a call’. Around 5% of people who go to download your lead magnet will end up scheduling a call with you to directly look into hiring you.
Ultimately if you tell your story in an inspiring way, help people solve their problems, and then put this content in front of the people who have the need for your service and means to pay you, then you will be getting lots of people enquiring about you and your service.
If you would like to learn how Super Lumen can help you with your story, and to position this story in front of hundreds - thousands of prospective clients, then schedule a call with us and we will walk you through a process in more detail.