Discover actionable strategies in how to promote yourself in a crowded digital landscape.
Learn how to stand out, build your brand, and connect with your target audience through proven digital marketing techniques.
IE 416: How to Promote Yourself in a Crowded Digital Landscape
Define Your Personal Brand Strategy
The first thing that you absolutely have to do is define your personal brand strategy.
You need to be able to let your audience know what makes your business different.
Why should they come to you to solve their problem?
You have to be able to in an articulate, concise manner, be able to tell them what makes you different than everyone else with the problem that you are solving for them?
You also want to make sure that you have consistent messaging across all platforms.
Whether you are creating blog content, whether you’re writing an email, whether you are posting on social media, or you have a podcast or YouTube, you have to make sure that it is consistent and that your voice continues to come through so that they can see how you are the right choice to educate them and to help solve their problem.
Build a Strong Online Presence
Create an Optimized Website
You have to be able to build a strong online presence in order to promote yourself.
The first place that you have to start is to create an optimized website.
It needs to be easily to navigate.
I shouldn’t have to spend 20 minutes trying to find your email address, or an about page, or what services or products you offer.
It should be a website where I come to a homepage.
You’re going to let me know that I am the right person for your product service and for your website by offering me something in exchange for my email.
You have to have an opt in in your header so that it does not come below the fold.
You want it to be right there and they immediately qualify themselves and go, you know what, they obviously have the solution for me.
I’m going to sign up.
Once you start to scroll through your website, you should then have three places, three paths for them to be able to take so that they can navigate through where they need to be with you, whether it’s going to be an education piece, whether it is going to be your products, your services, you need to be very clear on the three different pathways that they can take with you.
That website should also make sure that up in the navigation bar, I can also jump to the pages that I need to be interested in.
If I’m looking at you as a potential speaker for my summit or my in person retreats, I should see a speaking if that is something that you offer.
If you have a book, that absolutely should be there.
You want to make sure that they can understand you’re about, who you are.
All of this needs to be in your top navigation bar.
Then as I’m scrolling, you can start to give me some content.
It should not simply be all the blog content that you have created.
No longer can we have websites that simply just show the latest posts. or give you pretty pictures of all of the content.
You have to make sure that you are qualifying me, that I am the right target audience for you, and that needs to be done through your website.
Blog for SEO and Engagement
You also want to make sure that your content continues to use keyword research and SEO in them.
You still need to get found.
I hear so many people saying, Oh, Google, it hit me with an algorithm, I’m not writing for Google anymore, Sorry!
You still have to.
Google is where your people are going to find the solution to their problem.
If you’re not getting found, it’s because you have not set up a personal brand strategy.
You have not defined to Google what you are an expert or educator in.
They do not understand, so they are not going to show your content when it is searched for.
You still need to be doing the keyword research on the problems that you solve and what your people are going to be googling in order to find you.
That’s going to be a huge piece of this.
Leverage Social Media
You then want to be able to leverage social media.
You don’t need to be on every single platform.
Find one platform that you know your audience is on and they are looking there.
For your content, your audience may be on all of the platforms.
Unless you have an audience that is below the age of 25, why are you creating content on TikTok?
Your audience isn’t there looking to consume that type of content unless it’s specific to books.
That I can say, yes, if you’re writing romance novels, yes, definitely go on TikTok because below 25 is looking for it there.
You have to pick a specific social media platform where your people are and where they are looking for this type of content, otherwise you are wasting your time.
If your people are not going to Instagram in order to find solutions for their health, get where they are.
Are they going to Facebook for that? Is your target audience on Facebook?
You have to find a way to get in front of them.
Make sure that when you are leveraging social media, that you always have a call to action.
How are they going to engage with you?
You have to give them that opportunity.
The more they engage with you, the more content they will see of yours.
Make sure that you’re using the platform the right way.
Use Content Marketing to Build Authority
Develop Valuable Content
You need to create a piece of content that is consistently coming out every single week, that your audience expects it and goes to you as that expert, as that educator, in order to find.
This can be done starting on either audio Podcast, written, blog content or, video with YouTube.
If you use audio or video, you need to be turning that video and audio content into blog content, into an article that can be searched by Google.
If you are simply just using the platforms, you’re missing out on the opportunity to be found on when people actually Google things.
Make sure that you are repurposing your content if your first piece of content starts with audio or video.
If you’re doing blog content, you want to make sure that you of course are using keyword research and making sure that your content is SEO’d.
Collaborations
You want to start to think about how can you collaborate with others within your niche?
Can you do a webinar with them?
Can you participate in a summit?
Could you do a list swap?
How can you create content that is going to be beneficial to others or to their audience so that their audience becomes your audience because it’s your ideal clients.
Start figuring out ways that you can collaborate with others.
Engage with Your Audience Directly
Build an Email List
We’ve been saying this for years, you need to create a freebie, an opt in, a lead magnet, all the same thing, in exchange for their email list.
Whether this is a guide, whether this is a cheat sheet, you need to make sure that when you create that opt in though, that you are showing how you are the educator for them, how you are going to solve their problem, and that the obvious next steps to purchase something from you, product, service, whatever it might be that you offer.
Make sure that you are growing that list.
We did say that you obviously can use social media, one platform to start with, and make sure it’s where your target audience is.
Even on social media, you should be trying to get them to your email list so that you can actively engage with them and continue to stay in the forefront of their mind.
That is how they are going to purchase products from you.
People have to know that you are consistently out there.
They need to hear about something that you offer five to seven times before they will take action.
This is not a simple go to the blog post.
This is product service that you offer.
They have to be continually hearing about it and finding ways that it is the solution to their problem that they have.
Give them that opportunity.
Host Events
Another great way that you can engage with your audience directly is to think about how you could potentially get in front of them as that expert as a speaker.
Could you host a virtual summit?
Could you do an in person conference?
Could you do an in person retreat?
Give them opportunities to be able to interact with you and and you have to provide them with a way to personalize you.
It could also be, because I know for many summits can be intimidating or a conference or retreat, but instead think about how could you do a one off workshop where they get to see you, the video?
How could you do a, maybe a live webinar?
Starting to think about ways that they can really get to know who you are as a person and see a name with the face and your voice.
Your voice connects people to you.
It speeds up that, like, no trust factor.
You have to really think about how are ways that you can actually engage with them directly.
Or as direct as it can be through technology, through Zoom, whatever it might be.
I want to make sure that if you have not grabbed our strategic growth plan that you go and do this.
I cannot emphasize this enough.
This is a new guide that we have put together with the idea and understanding that we have to adapt our businesses to what we are seeing right now.
The biggest, the biggest thing that we are seeing, as you probably heard from two weeks ago, is of course, that AI has made it so that we have to make sure that we have a personal brand strategy in place so that our audience can connect with us.
The strategic growth guide is going to help you do that.
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