7-Day Personal Branding Challenge: How to Get Paid to Be Who You Are

1. Intro: How do you catch butterflies? That's a question my mentor asked me and I was stunned. I thought, isn't there a net thing you run around with? He said no. The point is, you don't catch butterflies. You build a garden and you let them come to you. If butterflies are all the opportunities you want in your life and career, your personal brand is that garden that will help you attract them. Hi, my name is Sina Port. I am a brand strategist, manager, and the founder of Shared Diversity. I'm here with [inaudible] today to talk about how to build a personal brand that can potentially help you receive more career, life, and business opportunities. In other words, butterflies. I started working on my personal brand when I was struggling in my career. I am originally from Germany, but I lived and worked and studied in Berlin, Madrid, London, and Kuala Lumpur. I was wondering why my studies and my international work experience didn't help me land a successful job. After I learned about catching butterflies, I launched my Shared Diversity podcast and started to share my ideas online. My personal brand helped me in my career to eventually work with brands like Adidas, BMW, and Google. It helped me in my personal life to get featured in Vogue although I wasn't either a model, a fashion designer, or a fashion influencer and it helped me in my business to be nominated for an innovation award simply because I shared my work online. Now you might think you need a large network, already existing social media following, or a lot of money to start. But I started with no context, no online presence, and no money. It's not so much about self-promotion or showing off. It's about sharing your work, your unique viewpoints, your values and beliefs so that people get to know you before even meeting you because visibility equals credibility. When people think you're credible, you will receive more opportunities. The class today is about getting to know what your personal brand could look like and why people would listen to you in the first place. I'll show you how to find out what makes you unique and helps you stand out in your field. Then we'll talk about how to find your perfect content style so you don't feel like a cheesy salesperson. Then we'll set up a posting schedule for your brand that works for you and your lifestyle, so you can be yourself, reach people, and attract opportunities. Whether you want to land more clients or get a job promotion, attract more eyes to your work or be recognized, we'll set of strategies that can help you get paid to be who you are. I'm excited to see you in class. 2. Class Orientation: [MUSIC] I could have easily called this class how to create a personal brand but that would have been inaccurate because the truth is, we all already have a personal brand. You are already known by the people closest to you. You already have a reputation and they interact with you in a certain way, and that is essentially your personal brand. This is not so much about creating something, but growing your personal brand into something that feels authentic to who you are and who you want to become. When trying to build a recognizable brand, one of the most difficult things that holds us back a lot of times is creating visibility and getting into the habit of creating it because we are held back by doubts like, "Who would even be interested in me? Doesn't that make me look self obsessed or I don't have time to create content constantly." But I found that the more you get into habit of creating content even if it's not perfect because we remember perfection is not a human quality, the easier it gets secret visibility and get into the habit of building something that feels authentic to you. The more you get into the habit of creating imperfect content, creating visibility around who you are, the easier it gets to overcome those doubts. A seven day challenge is helpful to creating a personal brand because it gets you into the action of what you will learn, which is, find out why people would follow your personal brand in the first place. Understand where to grow your brand and how to create content around it. Discover what makes you unique. Find your audience and brand backers, not just your followers, but people who would support you online and offline. Explore what makes people fall in love with you and your brand. Design your brand identity's look and feel, and lastly, you'll learn brand strategies to grow your brand. And the great thing about a seven day challenge is that we are creating everyday of those seven days. That means by the seventh day, you will have multiple platforms and content up and running for people to discover you on. Because our goal is by the end of this class, not to know about personal branding, but to start living your brand in terms of tools that you would need for this class, we will just need a phone or a camera, access to the Internet and you, but knowing that you're watching this right now, I think we got this covered. In the next lesson. We will cover branding rules and why it's important to develop your brand attraction and then we'll jump right into planning your project. See you in the lesson. [MUSIC] 3. Branding Rules: [MUSIC] Welcome to branding rules. In this lesson, we will talk about three important rules for personal branding that can help you get paid to be who you are. Rule number 1, attraction. In the beginning, I told you about the butterfly effect. If butterflies are all opportunities you want to attract into your life and career, then your personal brand is the garden that will help you attract them. What I didn't tell you is that by the time my mentor told me that story, I had just finished university and had sent out 200 applications to companies with a total of five responses, responses not interview invitations. The mistake I made, I didn't believe that all the international work experience, my cover letters, my various degrees, and the stocking HR managers on LinkedIn weren't enough. The butterfly effect was really a realization that changed the way I looked at my life and career to stop chasing and start attracting. It's not you just have to want enough attraction, it's actual strategies that you will learn in this class, including to find different branches that help you communicate your personal brand to the world because visibility, again, is important for you to start becoming credible. The first branch of my personal brand was my podcast. Instead of chasing job openings, I started talking about my opinions and professional expertise on my podcast and helped companies find me. Instead of chasing people and events and networking opportunities, I started interviewing people that I admired on my podcast, and they eventually became friends and mentors. Instead of chasing a business opportunity, I started talking about my wins and my work on my podcast which helped attract clients to me. So think about what are the opportunities that you want to attract into your life, business, or career. Rule number 2, association. What is a personal brand? That is one of the most loaded questions that people ask. It's basically what pops into people's minds when they think about you. What helps them remember you and talk about you when you're not in the room or in front of a person that they want to introduce you to. You're looking for an interior designer, check out Mariam. She always shares the most beautiful design concepts on her Instagram. You're looking for an artist that talks about mental health, check out Josh's YouTube channel. He always invites people into his podcast to talk about art and mental health. You're looking for an inspirational business speaker, you should check out Layla's website. She always shares resources for small business owners. Of course, there might be a thousand more talented interior designers than Mariam or hundreds of other business coaches despite from Layla or better-qualified artists to talk about mental health than Josh. But it's not what pops into people's minds when they first think about those keywords: interior designer, mental health and art, business speaker, those three people were the most visible, and that is why that popped into their minds when they talked about their specific area of work. We tend to recommend people for opportunities that we're familiar with. How do we get familiar? By seeing their content. That could both be online and offline. They have to be visible for us to associate them with a certain area or work. We associate them with the context that they're in. The industry that they operate in or the opinions they share or the conversations they have. This is the same principle that big brands use to grow. Its association. Associating them with a common feeling or a habit or an industry, or a product. Look, for instance, at this Ketchup ad that shows how associations can be so strong that consumers actually associate entire product range with a specific brand. This ad actually shows how far associations can take a brand. Think about what do you want people to associate you with. Think about the context you are in, the type of content you want to share, and the type of feeling you want to give people when they interact with you. Rule number 3, visibility equals credibility. People who talk about what they do are more successful than people who are better at what they do but don't talk about it. Being the best-known always beats being the best. Because how does it benefit you to be the best or most qualified or highest quality product or service on the market if no one knows about it? The more you talk about who you are and what you can do for your employer, for your community, for your consumer, the more you will be seen as an expert in that community, in that company, in that business. But unlike business brands, it's important in your personal brand to understand what do you want to be known for, not only connected with what you do, but who you are. You don't want to hold yourself hostage in a job title, an industry, or even a business that you created. Even though you might really identify with that business or industry focus, but you don't want to be known for what you do in a specific moment of time but who you are. Because who you are will grow with you. What you do might change over time. But we will go more in-depth about this on Day 3 when we talk about you and what makes you unique. Until then, I already want you to think about this question. What do you want people to associate with you when they hear your name? You can stop the video right now and write it down. You can also take out your phone and send a message to your friend or a partner and ask them, what is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear my name? Secondly, and that is most important, is what do you want people to think about or associate you with when they hear your name. Remember, done is better than perfect. These are just thoughts starters to get you going. In the next lesson, we will talk about the why. We will talk about how to develop your purpose and vision for your personal brand. See you there. [MUSIC]. 4. Day 0: The Why: Welcome to Day 0 of your seven-day brand challenge. In this lesson, you will learn techniques that can help you develop a purpose and vision for your brand. Why are we starting with Day 0? I understand usually counting starts with one, but we need to understand before we start growing your personal brand, why are we starting and where are we going? In other words, your purpose and your vision. If your personal brand is a garden, these are your brand roots. Why do you want to be visible? Is it to attract opportunities into your life, into your professional career, or into your business? It could be one, it could be multiple, or it could be all three. But it's nice to know where we're starting, to know how we're going to focus the next seven days. Is it more to attract clients? Is it more to attract professional opportunities? Or is it more to just build an audience, find friends, mentors, and people that could be part of your life in some way? Let's talk about the why. Personal branding is often seen as trying to appear as perfect as possible. Fake it till you make it. But what we want to do is we want to go from fake it till you make it to imitate until you become. Imitate not another person, but you, your future version, a better version of yourself, a vision of yourself even. If you're imitating the next version of yourself, you still are loyal to the person who you are, but you're trying to evolve into a person that you want to become. You're trying to grow into it, and that is the aspiration aspect of your brand. This part is not so much about understanding the technicalities of your CV, why you're qualified, why you might stand out in front of their competition. It's about understanding the vision you have for yourself and then creating a brand and career path that is as unique as who you are. Let's look at some techniques of the world's biggest brands that they use to create a guidance for their brand. When a brand markets itself to an audience, they use one of these three techniques. They either demonstrate a benefit of a product or a service, they inspire a certain feeling or emotion, or they aspire to higher purpose. The strongest emotion here, as you might imagine, is aspiration. For corporate brands, this is where they sit. As you can see, the why, your purpose, is at the center of your brand. But in this lesson, we also want to look at where we're headed, your vision. Just to be clear, your purpose is not your passion. A lot of times we confuse the two. Gardening might be your passion, but your purpose might be to help people connect closely to the earth and create sustainable solutions. As an easy rule, passion is for you, purpose is for others. To find your purpose, I want you to start asking yourself these questions. Who or where do I want to add value to? How do I think I can add value to them? To find your vision, think about these questions. What industry am I in or interested in being in? What are my ideas for changing that industry to the better? What role would I play in implementing those ideas? That's it. That's all I want you to start with. Big questions, I know, but it's a good way to start thinking about why you're here and where you want to go. It's also helpful to look at purpose and vision statements of the world's biggest brands. I've put them in the resource section, so you can check them out there to see how they define their purpose and vision more closely. But I want you to remember that you are a person, you're not a business or a strategy. You are creating a personal brand. I understand that, but you're still a character and you're unique in yourself. That means your purpose and vision will change with time. It will evolve into the person you will become. The purpose and vision that I had 3-5 years ago is completely different to the purpose and vision I am defining for myself right now. Always think about how to create an imperfect purpose statement. Once you have a rough idea about your purpose and vision, we will come to Day 0 action item. For Day 0, I took some time to reflect my why and where probably changed about a handful of times over the years. That's totally fine. That's actually the point because you will change and grow with time too. For me, it looked like this. I have a purpose and vision for my business, shared diversity. The purpose is to use the power of diversity to help brands change the world, and the vision is to help brands improve the lives of one billion consumers. But sometimes people confuse what they do with who they are. I have to remember it's not about my business, it's about me personally. While purpose and vision for shared diversity will definitely influence my personal, it's not the same thing. This is what my personal why and where is. With the purpose, I was brainstorming some options. I was going from show women how to embrace their diversity, to provide resources for women, to support them in their life and career. But with my vision, I was very clear, I want to impact one billion women positively. This could be through my business, or through my career, or the resources I share online for the next couple of days. You might have a better understanding of your purpose and vision throughout the seven-day challenge. I'm excited to see what you come up with. Your purpose and vision don't necessarily need to be posted online. You don't need to put that into your profile if you don't want that. But they will definitely define your brand actions, and how you will behave, and what content you will create for your personal brand. Once you have done that, we're going on to the next lesson where we will talk about the where, finding the right platforms to position your brand on. 5. Day 1: The Where: Welcome to Day 1 of your 7-Day brand challenge, The Where. Today we will talk about techniques that can help you choose the right platforms where your brand can exist. If your personal brand is a garden, these are your branches. If you remember, I told you my first branch was my podcast so now we will try to figure out the spaces where your brand can exist best. Brand branches are the spaces where your brand can grow in. For instance, do you want to be growing in the writer space, to be a published author? Do you want to grow into the search space to be the first search result on Google? Do you want to grow in the corporate space to become a CEO and be amongst the biggest corporate leaders in the world, or do you want to grow in the public speaking space to become an international speaker? Those spaces can both be online and offline but for the sake of creating as much visibility as possible, this week we will focus on your online spaces. In other words, what platforms do you want to be visible on? Choose two branches today, two platforms that you can focus on and create content on for the next seven-days. Don't worry, as soon as you establish one branch you're free to branch out unintended. You're free to establish more platforms over time, but it's important to start with one or two in the beginning to get yourself growing and get your brand visibility before you spread yourself too thin and get too overwhelmed with too many platforms you should be on. We'll establish two platforms this week, and then you can still take time to grow and expand later on. For instance, I started with two branches, my podcast and Instagram, and then I branched out to other spaces like TikTok and YouTube and so on. For folks that aren't so social media savvy, we will talk about the different platforms that we can exist on that you can choose from, and some pros and cons, as well as content formats. The basis of all content are formats. We have micro-content, short-form content, and long-form content. You might have heard about these before but haven't really understood what they mean, so here is the simple breakdown. Micro-content is any content that is under one minute, but ideally under 30 seconds. It's very quick conceivable content that is very sharable and often when we talk about a viral content that is the content that goes viral. Short-form content is anything between one minute and five minutes. It's still easily consumable on the goal but it doesn't take too much time for you to sit and focus on. Some people might also establish 5-10 minutes to be short-form content but in today's attention span lacking society, we will talk about the definition of short-form content anything between one minute and five minutes. Long-form content is anything onwards or five minutes. You might think this only applies to video content. No, it doesn't. Even content that is in written format that you have to read, you need to figure out, is this readable in under one minute or does it take more than five minutes? As soon as it takes more than five minutes, it's considered long-form content. Whether you are a total beginner, a rocky, or super-advanced in your personal brand, is always good to brush up on your content platforms to see whether you want to expand a little so let's go over some of those platforms now. Google. Google comprises both Google and YouTube, and they are both search engines. You might think, I didn't know YouTube is a search engine, is a video platform where I just consume content. But the most common place that people go to when they search for things, how to do something, tutorials and information, they go both on Google and on YouTube. The type of audience you find on Google are everyone, everyone uses Google. We even created a word for doing the searching on Google, which is googling as you know. The platform is really made for everyone. Here, it's spaces like your website or other platforms where you can easily find your personal brand over Google. The easiest platform, of course, to find on Google would be your website. If you have a website then Google is the platform where you should focus on optimizing on. It's made for content that is searchable and both for businesses whether that is locations or reviews, people look up for specific business, for instance, when you google for a restaurant you want to see reviews, you want to see where it is, business information. But also for people, the first thing that we do when we meet a person is we Google them. What can we find out about that person? The next platform is YouTube. YouTube is also a platform that easily could be said as used by everyone. The nature of the platform is long-form content, so any video content over five minutes. However, it's also used for short and micro-content when you promote the long-form content. Nature is long-form but promotion formats are micro and short-form content. It's a great platform to follow YouTube University as people are always going to search for things, tutorials, information, how to do things, as well as locks on YouTube. It's a great platform to create searchable content, but as well personal content, opinion content, and collaborative content like interviews. Now a podcast is not necessarily a social media platform but it's still a brand platform. If you're interested to be known as an expert, podcasting is the place to be. Podcasts are made to share long-form content and the audience is very sophisticated. The podcast audience unlike other social media platforms, is highly educated, usually has a very high income, and therefore it's a great platform to create visibility in a corporate, in a business, in a client-focused environment, as well as an environment where you want to target high income consumers or audiences. Whether you are an artist, a business owner, or a consultant, podcasting is a great place to be. Unlike other social media platforms, people that listen to podcasts have a higher attention span. You're more likely to be able to create long-form content, and long for not just five or 10 minutes, but up to one or two hours and people still will be there paying attention to you. Why you would never be able to imagine watching an Instagram video for one hour, or even more than 30 minutes, or even watching a YouTube video for more than one-and-a-half hours, you could easily listen to a podcast for a very long time and 80 percent of listeners actually listen to the entire episode. If you want to be known for an expertise, or want to create a deep connection to your audience, podcasting is the platform and the space you should look out for. Next step we have Meta, which is both Instagram and Facebook. Instagram was known as a photo-sharing app, but it's now emerging much more into video creation. It's made for short-form and micro-content. It's highly focused on entertaining content and quick things that are very sharable. Facebook, on the other hand, is much more of an established audience. The younger audiences are migrating away from Facebook so we have more mature audiences there and the biggest functionality you have on Facebook still are Facebook groups. If you are a business owner, Facebook is a great place to establish your profile because, just like Google, you can gather reviews from people and share their content on your platform. Most of the content is short-form, but there are some places and spaces where you can bring in some more long-form content as well. The next platform is TikTok. While it was known much more for very young audiences it's now expanding to a wide range of consumers. The platform started with micro-content, is now emerging more into micro and short-form content. It's a place where you can be experimental, incredibly imperfect, and follow trends and find entertaining and opinionated spaces and communities. The thing about TikTok though is, it's not a traditional social media platform because it's highly consumer oriented, so you go there to consume. While you can be on Instagram scrolling around and sending messages and doing things at the same time, when you are on TikTok you're mostly engrossed in the content. The entire screen is full of the content that you're consuming, and the algorithm is made for you to consume more and more. It's a very engaging algorithm that keeps people focused on the content and unable to focus on anything else while they're consuming the platform. This is where it highly differentiates itself from Twitter, for instance. Twitter is a space where you can share opinions, find niche audiences, and share your expertise and quick quotes and thoughts you have throughout your day. Twitter is a very topic focus platform so when you are in the tech space you will find a bunch of communities and trends and topics where you can become an expert and continue and engage into a conversation in the tech field. If you're an artist, if you're an activist, you will find your spaces on Twitter and it will be very much focused on your opinion. However, you can also create connections, because you can easily tweet as an edit person, and it can be retweeted, and you can create a conversation in the comments and really have a much more connected relationship on that platform compared to, for instance, TikTok. While opinions work on both platforms, and controversy works on both platforms too, Twitter is much more focused on engagement and TikTok more on consumption. Twitter is made for micro-content, short-form content, and links out to long-form content. You will find a lot of links to articles, or websites, or podcasts, so long-form content, that is teased on the platform. Lastly, let's talk about Pinterest. Pinterest is a great platform to be at as a business owner, or if you are selling any product or service, because the platform is really made for people to buy. Most people who come to the platform, come with an intention to buy something. If you're there offering something, that is the great place to be. Pinterest is made from micro-content and, links out to long-form content. Actually the Pinterest space is quite good for creators. If you are already creating on other platforms, Pinterest is a great place to repost your content. Or link out to your content, because they are much focused on pushing creatives, and creators on the platform. Think about what kind of platform sound interesting for you, and also don't forget your website, or any online spaces you have for yourself, that are independent from social media spaces, because those are the places where you then can talk more, and have longer-form content. You can either link out to a podcast, or YouTube, or you can actually create articles on your website. The advantages of a website is that it's your brand's home. You have total say about everything that goes on. When people are on your website, you can 100 percent control what they will find. While on social media platforms, people may judge you over the amount of followers you have, or the comments you get, or an engagement that you get on the platform, on your website, everything that people see is 100 percent in your control. You can talk about yourself. You can introduce yourself. It's a great place to really introduce yourself if you don't want to elevate or pitch yourself every time you meet a person. It's a great place to link out to longer-form expertise content. Because when someone goes onto your website, they even want to know more about you. They want to get in contact with you and find ways to get in contact with you or they want to consume content that you put out. That is not short-form, or micro-content like on social media, but long-form expertise, and SEO content. We will talk about SEO on Day 7, when we really go into the branch strategy. But just keep that in mind. It's really searchable content. Like I said, the two platforms that I started out were, my podcast, long-form content, and my Instagram, short-form content. Why I did that is actually I only started with my podcast, but I didn't have a place within the podcasting world to actually connect with listeners, and to promote my content. I was heavily relying on people just finding me randomly on podcasting platforms. I was looking for a social media platform that could drive traffic to the podcast and I chose Instagram. I chose Instagram, mostly because it was the easiest platform. I'm a very visual person, and I felt that my community was on that platform. It was easier to find them there, and then redirect them to the podcast. As well as tell them on the podcast, to find me on Instagram. Because you always have to figure out where your community is, to be able to know where to find and connect with them. I started with a podcast and Instagram. As soon as I got loyal listeners on the podcast, I expand it to my YouTube channel, and as soon as I got a couple of thousand followers on my Instagram, I expand it to TikTok, and put more time on LinkedIn, and expanded a little it into Twitter. It was really understanding that those two branches are the spaces I want to focus on, until they grow to a place where I'm comfortable saying I'm established there, now I can branch out to other spaces. How do you choose the platform to create content on? Here are three ways you can figure out what spaces and platforms to grow your brand on, depending on how far along on your personal branding journey you are. We've got total beginners, rookies, and advanced. Let's start with total beginners. Trust your gut. What were the two spaces that instantly popped into your mind when I started this lesson? Because those are the spaces that you probably feel most comfortable exploring, or have already thought about exploring, but never really started. Think about the channels that get you excited when you think about creating content there. Or maybe a platform where you said, like one day I will create a YouTube channel. Then you should create a YouTube channel. Number 2, rookies. Create what you consume. Let me explain. For Rookies, and you are rookie if you're dabbling in content creation, you are learning, but not really applying. You're not quite there yet, but you started already. Create what you consume. Focus on what you consume already. For instance, you love listening to podcasts, create a podcast. Or you are a reader, then probably you're a good writer too. Are you a visual learner, and you love aesthetics? Then you should explore platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, because that is the kind of content you love consuming. One great sign that you are a visual person, is that your phone storage is always full with videos, and photos that you create of every day little things. I always had that issue and, at the moment I decided to create a vlog, all my stress just left me. Because suddenly, all these random videos and photos that I created, weren't so random anymore, I actually could use them to share it with others, and establish and document those memories, not just in my phone storage, but actually as a story online. If you are a bookworm, or you love journaling, then you should probably explore written content platforms like a blog on your website, or platforms like Medium, LinkedIn, or Twitter. If you are obsessed with audio books, and you love listening and learning through audio media, then you should probably start a podcast. Chance are when you consume on a platform, you're more likely to create on it better, because you like it already, because you are consumer of the platform, you know it better than other platforms, because you spend a lot of time there, and you might already know what kind of content you'd like. You're more likely to be able to create that kind of content as well. You're also more likely to be able to grow, and be excited to learn, and expand on the platform, because you enjoyed it as a consumer, now, you'll enjoy it as a creator. Create what you consume. We come to those who are advanced. Do what already works. If you already established a better following on LinkedIn, and you get good engagement there, or you have a tiny community on Instagram, but you feel like they're commenting regularly, and they want to hear from you, they love when you share stories, do that. Do more of it. Do more of what works. That's always the strategy. If something already works out on a platform, expand on it, optimize it, focus on the platform, and double down on it. For people who are advanced, they sometimes feel like they're overwhelmed by so many platforms. That is the reason, because you're not focusing on the platform that actually works. Look at what works already, and then double down on it. If you choose a long-form platform like, YouTube, podcast, your website, then pair it with a short-form platform, to promote that content like, Instagram, or Pinterest, Twitter or a TikTok. A bonus tip here, if you are looking to create a professional credibility, whether for your business, or your career, or create a professional network, then I highly recommend making LinkedIn one of your platforms this week. Because LinkedIn is a great platform to become credible as an expert in your field. If you remember, visibility creates credibility, and LinkedIn is the best credibility platform out there. It's also the platform where you will likely see the fastest return on investment, in terms of followers, engagements, and quality connections. If you're interested to learn more about LinkedIn and how to grow there, watch this YouTube video that I have on my channel, and it will really go more into depth of content tips, and brand growth tips for LinkedIn specifically. Once you've done that, let's start with Day 1, action item. Choose your two platforms, and setup your accounts. That means, your name, your picture, a short description. Don't overthink the description, it doesn't have to be perfect. Remember, imperfection is better than not doing it at all. Post links to those two accounts in the project section of this class. Because we're in this together, I'll also choose mine, and bring you along on my journey of creating the platforms, and establishing them. Of course, I have to think back a bit to when I started, but we'll do this together, and you can see some of the hacks that I find. I told you I'm with you on this challenge, so for Day 1, the two platforms I chose, are my LinkedIn, and podcast. I told you I started my podcast, and Instagram as the two main branches of my brand. But I do want to explore LinkedIn, and because it's a great way to attract professional, high income opportunities, this is what I will focus on for the seven-day challenge. Podcasts will be my long-form content platform, and LinkedIn will be my distribution platform, and the way that I will connect with audiences directly. In the next lesson, we will talk about the what. We will talk about techniques that will help you to find out which content to create for your brand. 6. Day 2: The What: Welcome to Day 2 of your seven-day brand challenge, the what. In this lesson, we will talk about techniques that can help you figure out which content to create for your brand. If your personal brand is a garden, then these are your plans. We already talked about your roots, your purpose and vision, your branches, those two platforms you chose last lesson. Now we'll talk about the plans. What kind of content are you going to create on those platforms you chose? One of the most important switches that we need to make is a lot of times people think personal branding is all about self-promotion. But we need to go from self-promotion to value promotion. Because this is the reason why people would listen to you in the first place. Here's the difference between those two. Self-promotion is all about you, your lifestyle, your accomplishments. Value promotion is about what brought you to where you are and how that can help others, too. It's about how your knowledge and skills and values contribute to others in your field, in your industry, or in your community. It's about how you can add value to others. Now a lot of times we struggle to understand what kind of content to create because we don't have anything to sell. We don't have any product, or lifestyle, or service that we can sell others on. We struggle to come up with what should I actually talk about. But when you don't know what you sell, you don't know your messaging yet, and you don't know your audience, the best place to start is you. What helped you get to where you are right now? You don't need to think in a grand way that you have to be super accomplished to share your knowledge. You can start slow and steady. If you're in the tech industry, what helped you get into coding? If you're in the skincare industry, what helped you develop a nice and mindful skincare routine? If you are into fitness, what helped you to bulk up and gain weight? It's easier to learn from a person that's only one step ahead of you instead of decades of so much experience ahead of you because those people who are too far ahead, they can't really retrace their steps. They can't really tell you this is what 1, 2, 3 I did five years ago. But a person who was just a year ahead of you or one step closer to the goal where you want to be, they can retrace their steps very easily. Studies show that people learn better from someone that is just a bit ahead of them than someone decades ahead of them. One great technique to find out what are those learnings you can share is actually to think back to your purpose and vision. What is the vision that you set yourself and how can you achieve it? The how is the content you could create. For instance, I think about this huge vision of I want to impact one billion women positively and I think while this is a huge goal, but how can I create content that will get me there step by step? One step is to educate, to share some of the learnings I experienced in the past years. Another one is to share, prove, and insights, and just inspire by what I achieve and share how I got there, so the process behind it. The other is to inspire through action. Not always do you need to talk about what got you to a specific place. Sometimes you can just do the thing and inspire people by being a role model in that specific area. You might already have some ideas in your mind of what kind of content to create, but maybe you're struggling with formats. Now let's talk about how to find the right content format for you to create. I'll talk about three approaches. Those you can use all of these three approaches or you can focus on one, whatever resonates with you best. The three approaches are personality, industry, and trends. Let's start with personality. One of the big insights that I learned over the years is there's no such thing as 100 percent introvert and 100 percent extrovert. Actually, 70 percent of people are somewhere on the spectrum between being an introvert and extrovert. An introvert would be someone who gets a lot of energy from being alone. They're very independent. They like to work on their own timeline and secluded most of the time from people. On the other end of the spectrum, extroverts are people who get energy from being around others. They're very, when we say extroverted, it means they are seeking the energy of other people. They are seeking to be around others. That is something that inspires them and pushes them, and they don't really feel drained after they spend time with a lot of people, they feel energized. It might be that you're somewhere on the spectrum, and I found content formats that work for people that are more on the introvert spectrum or on the extrovert spectrum. Don't worry, this doesn't mean that if you think you're an introvert, all the content formats on the extrovert spectrum are not made for you. That's not true. You can pick and choose. But to make sure that you don't overwhelm yourself and you don't lose energy as soon as you create content, you should be aware of how those content formats affect your personality. Some of these formats are also specifically designed for people who don't want to show their face on camera or who don't want to create content showing their face. Those specific formats are valuable, just as valuable as the content formats where you might show your face. A lot of times, brand strategists and influencers say, listen, you cannot build a personal brand if you don't show your face. That's simply not true. There are a lot of people who don't constantly show their face, who might have one profile picture, and then just create content where their face is not visible or they have created a name for themselves without people even knowing how they look like. Don't worry, there are always alternatives and you can find what works for you best. When we look at the spectrum, you can see on the introvert side are mostly written content, so books, blogs, but also a podcast, so audio content. You could think about pictures, whether that's pictures without showing your face, even videos without showing your face. Then in the middle, you got more vlogs documenting your journey. Really, videos that are talking head videos. So videos where I can see you talking to me or when you interview people. On the real extroverted spectrum, of course, are live streaming and public speaking, things like that. But that doesn't mean, again, that you have to forget about all of these content formats if you consider yourself an introvert. I don't want you to pigeonholed yourself in one area. This is just something to guide you along to say, listen, I want to start slow. I want to start out being super confident and comfortable with the content format I choose. That is why I created this approach for you to see what part of the personality fits to what kind of content. I also have video content around how to create videos without showing your face that you can find here. Make sure that you check that out if that is something that is interesting for you. The next approach is industry driven. You look into your industry, what industry are you in, and what kind of content format is working well there, and what kind of content format is missing? Let's say you are in the arts industry and you think about, what is working are really the before and after, showing process of a blank canvas, and then the final artwork or images of my art. Those things are working really well. You can see, for instance, on specific platforms or specifically the platforms you chose for this week, this is the content that works well. Do some research or you might already have some ideas of content that is working really well. Put that into the what is working bracket of your industry. What I want you to think about though is, what is missing in your industry? What are people not really doing? Or what do you see not a lot of people doing but you like? What is missing in the art? It could be, for instance, lifestyle and vlogs. What is the mindful artist's morning routine that helps you create better art? Or even books. I don't see a lot of artists creating books, but when they do, they're best sellers. Let's say you are in the tech industry, the same thing, what is working? Of course, opinions are working very well. Tweets are working very well. You see a lot of the tech industry congregating on Twitter. This is where you should be. However, you also need to think about what is missing. For instance, in the tech industry could be what is missing are educational videos, maybe shows, or even also vlogs. Maybe it's missing to see what is the day-to-day of a tech person, someone who's a coder or even a non-coder who is working in the tech industry. When I talk about shows, it's more like the entertaining way of talking about tech or talking about the newest innovation. Maybe you have a TikTok show where you talk about the craziest innovations that come up every week and you walk people through it. As if it would be your TV show with a backdrop of the innovation coming up or cool videos coming in while you do a voice-over. So think about innovative ways to reframe content in your industry. Or let's say you are in the health industry and you know what is working very well since forever are cooking or workout videos. That's something that you probably should explore. But if you want to go and crush the competition and really get those eyes on your content, you need to know what is missing. What is missing in the health industry could be, for instance, tweets or short opinions or unpopular opinions. That could be like a daily tweet, or daily reminders, or super quick recipes that you share in a creative way over a Twitter account or a podcast even. So think about what is not there that I would like to see in my industry, and then create that kind of content. I want you to look at this. Even if you are not resonating with some of these approaches, try it out at least one per column and you can see what works. So just try to fill out what is working and what is missing in your industry. Other ways to find out different content formats, of course, are trends. Now, trends are very specific because they evolve and change with time. You might think, listen, I don't want to follow trends. I don't want to do dance videos just because they work well. That is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about trends in a strategy. If you see that a lot of social media platforms right now are pushing short-form video content, then you should try to create short-form video content. How that video content looks like is your decision. It could be you actually following trends and dancing on social media. If that's not your thing, trust me, I know there are alternatives. You could do voice-over videos. You could take a photo or a visual and turn it into a video. You could do vlogs without showing your face. You could do a lot of different things. You could do point-of-view videos. You could do how-to videos where I only see your hands doing things. There are a lot of creative ways to use trending strategies. You need to understand those strategies, though. Trends are a great way to figure out how to create content and then how to also get the attention to your content. When you think about trends, don't think about trends in terms of style, but in terms of formats. For instance, vlog styles are very well-received right now because people want to have that personal connection to you. They want to know what's happening day-to-day. That is across a lot of platforms. YouTube has had it. Now it's really coming into Instagram, even Pinterest, or even LinkedIn. Now, think about other trends like SEO. SEO is now moved from just the search engine platforms like YouTube and Google to social media platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram. You could also think about trends that are coming up on some platforms that you might predict come up in more traditional platforms as well. For instance, micro-content that you see on social media platforms moving into a professional platform like LinkedIn. This could be a trend that you can really jump on very early and write that trend so that more people can see your content. Now you might already have a good overview of what kind of content formats you want to create. Now let's talk about the topics you want to talk about. For this, I created a content matrix and it's set up into three pieces: show, share, and tell. We will be brainstorming topics for each of the columns and then picking those topics throughout the week to actually create already. Let's look at the matrix and what each part means. The show metrics is really about showing what you do, how you do it, the process behind it, and how people are using it. So it could be tutorials, vlogs, behind-the-scenes, processes, before and afters. Whatever format you choose, whether it's a video, or it's a picture, or a text, it should show your work, or how people use it, or the process behind your work. The idea of the show column is to show yourself as credible to create inspiring content and to be educative. For instance, let's say you are an artist and you show me how you create an artwork, that is both credible because it shows me how an amazing artist you are. It's inspiring because I can see the before and after. I can see your process and how you get to the endpoint, and it is educative. As an aspiring artist, I can pick some of the tools or techniques that you use and learn from it. The goal behind the show column could be to position yourself as a leader and show yourself as more credible to create transparency. Really let people into your work and to make your consumer the hero. For instance, when you show your work as being used by other people, you basically showcase your consumers and you make them the center of your content. Let's look at the share column. This could be in the form of casual talks, inspiring interviews, voice-overs, but also short stories or reactions. The type of content should be either entertaining, inspiring, or building community. Because the goal behind it is to find like-minded people, people that have something in common with you. Either your same opinions or the same visions, and values, and beliefs, mindsets. The idea is to build community, be more relatable, or inspire action. While the share column can also position you as an expert, because as always, we think about visibility equaling credibility, it can more go into your personality and your character. You share your professional opinion about where you see your industry moving into, but at the same time, you bring in your personality into it. Because what you don't want to do is just reiterate a popular opinion that already exists. You want to share an opinion that makes you look good and incredible and like an expert. But that's also unique to you and who you are and gives a bit of background of why you believe that or why your opinion goes into one or the other direction. So what are some of the opinions, feelings, thoughts that you can share? This can really go from professional to truly personal and emotional. For instance, sharing a personal story of where you overcame a challenge or something where you learn something on your way and now your beliefs about the industry or your field or how you do things have changed dramatically because of it. The last column is about telling. This is about creating content that shares your learnings and value with your audience, either with industry peers, with your fans, or even mentees. It could be in form of talking heads, your top tips, or even tutorials. The content style is mostly focused on being educative and motivating. The two major goals here is to either position yourself as an expert and create value for your audience or to motivate action. So really to share some tips for people to learn from to actually apply in their life. Think about what can you tell. What are some of the biggest value pieces that you can share? We talked about this before. Don't worry about being an expert and 500 years in front of other people. But think just that step ahead, that small step that you're ahead of other people, that little bit more knowledge that you know. Those small learnings that you can share. So now let's come to Day 2 action item. Per column, I want you to write down and brainstorm six titles. So topic ideas or titles that you can come up, six for each column. Then I already want you to pick one and create it. Again, don't overthink it. It could be something that didn't take you five minutes, or it could be something where you want to really start with a bang and work a little more on. But it should be done today. For Day 2, I took some time to brainstorm content ideas. Anyone who knows me knows that I work much better and more creatively when I'm outside in nature. So I took my laptop and went down to the apple tree. So far I have created a lot of tell content, so learning-related content. But I want to focus much more specifically in this seven-day challenge on show and share content. Because some of my first vlogs got a lot of traffic on YouTube, and that's something that is missing on platforms like LinkedIn. So I brainstorm some more process-focused and inspirational vlog-style content ideas. I also went back to the industry brainstorm, so what is working, what is missing, what I can try, and thought about voice-over videos, inspirational videos, personality-focused videos, and things that talk more about how to create a campaign from a documentation point of view and not just telling them. So showing the process. The first content piece I decided to go with was from the share column for a LinkedIn video. So I went with an inspirational voice-over and put it over some footage that I had from a Vogue shoot I did. Remember, it's not about perfection, it's about momentum. You want to get into the habit of creating. So just try out your content piece. You never know how people will react. The problem with making plans is that our imagination is limited to our reality. You can only extend that reality when you take a leap of faith. Once you're done with this, in the next lesson, we will talk about you. We will try to discover what makes you unique and how to communicate that uniqueness to the world. 7. Day 3: About You: Welcome to Day 3 of your seven-day brand challenge about you. In this lesson, we will discuss how to discover what makes you unique and how to communicate that uniqueness to the world. I name my podcast and business Shared Diversity because I believe that the one thing we all share is our innate diversity. We are multi-dimensional human beings and we have a lot of diverse interests, skills, passions, experiences, and when we share them, it makes us enjoy life more and it makes us all learn from each other. But sometimes that diversity can be scary because we think we need to water down our character or our personality. A lot of people in personal branding talk about niching down and focusing on one or two things so you don't confuse people. But the thing about personal branding is you want to get paid to be who you are, and who you are is a diverse human being. You have so many different interests and skills and viewpoints and opinions, and you will evolve with time. Your personal brand should evolve with you. If you're only known for one niche or one action or one industry or one context, then how are you going to help people to grow with you? You want to invite them into your space and to connect with you on a more unique level. Focusing on the one thing is very difficult. What if I want to be known for all the things and create great things with it? That is what this lesson is about. Maya Angelou said, "If you're always trying to be normal, you'll never know how amazing you can be." But that's further claim. If you're always trying to fit in, you'll never know how successful you can be standing out. Although personal branding is not about self-promotion, we already covered that, you do want to create a unique identity that people can relate to and you eventually can get paid for. You're not just another coder, or just another artist, or just another skincare vlogger, but to be uniquely you, irreplaceable because only you have your story, your viewpoints, or your identity. To get there, you need to figure out your unique advantage. Some people might even call it an unfair advantage, something that makes you stand out amongst your peers. This could be your academic background, your upbringing, your skills and hobbies and special interests. It could even be the money that you have or the city that you live in. For instance, for me, what makes me unique in my industry is that I have a professional career path. I work with corporate brands, some of the world's biggest brands, but I also have a social media following. I have an online presence. It is unique because traditionally, you're either a career person or you're an influencer. But I'm in the middle, on top of that, I'm also a business owner. That's something that makes me stand out. When I work with some colleagues in my career path, they can't really relate to what it means to create content online because all they focus on is their career and their corporate's growth. If I'm in the influencer space, all they talk about and care about is growing on social media and building a social presence. When I'm in the entrepreneurial space, they want to use the both. They want to create a social presence to drive traffic to their business, and they want to work with corporate brands to upscale their business practices, but they don't know how to merge those two. This is where I come in. Maybe your unfair or unique advantage is that you went to a really prestigious university or you live in a cool city, maybe you have a rare skill, or you know a lot of languages, or you read 50 books a year. But your unique advantage could also be something that looks negative at first or second glance. Something that you might consider as a disadvantage could actually be an advantage. Maybe you didn't go to a fancy college and had to learn everything by yourself. Maybe your parents are immigrants and you needed to integrate into a new culture and language. Or maybe you're that one person that is marginalized or underrepresented in your industry or job. Now why could those be advantages? The fact that you didn't go to a fancy college means you are a self-starter, you learn things quicker than the normal learner because you had to learn them by yourself. Or the fact that your parents are immigrants made you understand cultures and how to integrate into them easier. It also helped you learn a lot of languages because your mother tongue might not be the language of the country you live in. That means you're more qualified to take on international jobs. What about people who are underrepresented in their fields? It makes you stand out, and that attention, you can use that attention to your advantage. It helps you be recognized as that one person in the team that's different. It also helps you to create a community faster because people can identify with you. For me, that unique advantage was that I started working very early on. I had my first not real jobs when I was three years old as a child's model. So I would model children's clothes and toys, which was a lot of fun as a child honestly. But it sounds weird to people. Then I had my first official job when I was 13. I started working as a waitress, I started teaching dance in my high school, and I also started teaching tennis and hosting tennis camps later on. It was a unique advantage that wasn't really positive at the time because the reason why I wanted these jobs was because I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't grow up with a lot of money, my family was struggling with it all the time, and I needed to find ways to make my own money to spend on things that I liked, like clothes or going out. While the kids in my high school would just get pocket money, I had to work for it. But for me it was a great advantage because I learned how to save money, how to make money, how to invest money very early on and much earlier than my peers. This job experience helped me understand what I like and what I didn't. It also helped me apply for companies faster because at the age of 18, I already had five jobs on my resume, and at the age of 21, I had my first manager position. Think about what are unique or unfair advantages that you have, both that are outright positive and those that might seem negative, but could actually turn into an advantage. What makes you stand out? Here are some questions that might help you get there. Let's start with diversity questions. What are the top things that you love in terms of hobbies, interests, experiences, or skills that people get surprised by when you mention them? Which of them would be relevant to your space? Let's move on to otherness questions. Things that make you feel like the other or like you don't fit in. Those can actually help you stand out. Complete this sentence. The industries, fields, or professions I am interested in are? What differentiates me from others in the industries, fields, or profession is? My unique insights that do not exist in this space yet are? How these unique insights would benefit this space? The reason why we want to look at this is if you were trying to stand out, you really need to be embracing that uniqueness, that thing that you might feel holds you back can actually propel you. Something that might seem different than everyone else in the field. That's actually good because we don't remember same, we remember different. Embrace that diversity, embrace that otherness. If you're struggling with saying, hey, I'm a very private person, I don't want to lay out my entire life story out in the public and share it, then this video will help you. I created a video where you can find the sweet spot between the private, the personal, and the professional. Here's an example from my life. My personal story and my personal identity is that I am a Muslim woman and a woman of faith. I need the environment and values around me that fit to who I am and who I want to be as a moment. My story is I did not have that environment that fits to my identity, that fit to the person that I wanted to be. So I had to create it. Now professionally, I was thinking how can I make this happen? I could go to a thousand networking events and waste my time meeting people that don't understand who I am and that would not be role models that I looked up to. Instead, I looked at my qualifications, which was broadcasting and podcasting. I used that to make my story my reality, to pick and choose people that I truly admired to interview, to connect, to collaborate with. In the meantime, I was creating content and building my brand. That is my personal brand story, my identity, my story of struggle when finding the right people to have in my life, and then professionally, to look at my qualifications and see how can I make this happen through what I know professionally, what I have learned, what I've experienced. Focus on your personal stories, identity, and passion, and your professional experience, viewpoints, and opinions. The personal side is about your story, your identity, your passion. On the professional side, it's about your professional experiences, expertise, and professional opinion. Think about what kind of personal story can you create and merge with your professional experience to create a brand narrative that people can relate to. Once you watch that video, we move on to Day 3, action item. Write down a personal story that you can combine with a professional experience that helps you create a brand narrative that people can relate to. To do so, pick one content idea from the show/share/tell matrix and create them. For Day 3, I thought about a personal professional story. Professionally, I help companies build more purpose-driven brands, both sustainable brands and inclusive brands. But I haven't really talked about why that matters to me so much personally. I thought about a story I wanted to tell on my YouTube channel. It was a story about a cherry tree and me growing up and why growing up on secondhand clothes helped me connect better to sustainability and how that influences the way I help brands build more sustainable products and solutions. It's a video I wanted to do for my YouTube channel, but I thought it's a great story from my podcasts as well. I turned it into a podcast. A lot of times you don't need to come up with new content, you can recycle or repurpose content from another platform for the format you choose now. As-Salaam-Alaikum. In the next lesson, we will talk about them, meaning your audience and your brand backers. 8. Day 4: About Them: Welcome to Day 4 of your seven-day brand challenge. In this lesson, we will learn techniques on finding your audience and brand backers. This is all about, who do you want to attract and who not? Unlike a business brand, in a personal brand, you don't have a specific audience that you sell to. In a personal brand you have brand backers, people that will back you up on every part of your journey, your personal journey, your career journey, or your business journey. This could be, for instance, on a personal journey, this could be your friends and family, your community, your mentors, or partners. On your career journey, those could be people from your past, present, or future. From your past, meaning people like you who are five years behind you. People that look up to you. From your present, that could be peers, industry colleagues, or even former schoolmates or college peers. From your future, those that people who are years ahead of you. Those could be mentors, sponsors, or people you look up to. In your business, those could be your business partners, your existing or potential consumers, clients, or customers. It could be potential or existing employees and fans of your business. How can we define them? We will take a strategy that the world's biggest brands use to define their audiences. It's called, personality-led lead segments. Those personality-led consumer segments are usually used not in product campaigns, but brand campaigns. We'll talk about this later on Day 7. But the biggest difference is here, it's not too much about selling a product or a brand, it's about selling a vision, a purpose, the deeper meaning behind what the brands stands for. This is where we don't talk about age, gender, and all the other demographics, we talk about personality. In this technique, we will divide your audience into three consumer segments. I know a lot of people focus on you have to follow your niche and find that one consumer segment that will follow you and love you, but in reality, a lot of people are, as we know, diverse. That is why it's very difficult to only focus on one. In this lesson, we will focus on three and creating three personality-lead consumer segments. Here, we choose three different audience segments based on personality. Let's say you are a skincare expert and your purpose is to transform the skincare and beauty industry to become more earth-friendly. Your three consumer segments could be, skincare starters, beauty professionals, and sustainability activists. As soon as you have those three segments, you can create content that appeals to them. Because one piece of content could be too high a level for the first segment but could be exactly right for the third. Let's keep on the example of a skincare expert who wants to advance sustainability. The first consumer segment are skincare starters. They are just learning, they're very naive, they're looking for guidance, and they're absolute fans of you. Content that you could create for those skincare starters are, how to wash your face, my everyday skincare routine, five ingredients to avoid when you have dry skin. Let's look at the next consumer segment, beauty professionals. They are looking for opinions, discussion, advice, and they are peers to you. While at the skincare status we're fans, the beauty professionals are peers. Content that co-resonate with them would be, for instance, pre-makeup skincare hacks, retinoid product that you should know about, the problem with the skincare industry. This content is too high a level for skincare starters, but it's exactly right for beauty professionals. Let's look at the last consumer segment, sustainability activists. They are looking for opinions and shareable content. They are the community. What they are looking for is content like how to make your own toner, my sustainable packaging rules, a beauty brands you should avoid that harm the planet. Think about what was those three consumer segments be for you and what content can you create for each of them? Let's come to Day 4 action item. Pick your three audience segments and list an ideal person that perfectly represents that segment. Ideally, that person could be a person that actually exists in your life like someone that you know and that really identifies with that segment that you chose. Because whenever you create content, you can think about that person, you can have that person in mind and think, would that resonated with them or not? In the next, I want you to pick one title from your show, share, tell matrix, and create one piece of content that would resonate with one of those consumer segments. You can choose whichever you want, but makes sure that you keep that ideal person in your mind. For Day 4, what I did is I went through my brand backers, both offline, people I meet and online, like followers. I thought about who were the most engaged? Who are interacting the most, commenting, asking questions, sharing posts, private messaging, asking for meetups? Also where does the income comes from? Job offers, speaking engagements, clients, or who are asking for one-on-one consulting sessions. Then I thought about what they have in common. I went through three audience segments, young and creative, but I scratched the young because that's a demographic, it's not really a personality. Business owners, but specifically those who are advanced, they want to build a brand to really become successful as entrepreneurs and professionals, but specifically career professionals who are looking for purpose. Then I picked the last audience segments, purpose professionals and one with an idea from the share column of my content brainstorm. I went with a written post about what I learned from interviewing Stan Smith because it was really about finding purpose and working for purpose or creating sustainable solutions, an inclusive solutions. But it definitely went with the purpose professionals, it could also resonate with these other audience segments. Don't overthink sometimes it might resonate with one or two and sometimes it really resonates with all of your audience segments. You just need to know who is the primary audience segment you want to target for a specific content piece. Once you're done, we will move on to the next lesson, their value. We will define what people will love about you and your brand. 9. Day 5: About Value: Welcome to Day 5 of your seven-day brand challenge about value. In this lesson, we will define what people will love about you and your brand. As we already discussed, personal branding is not about self-promotion, but value promotion. In this lesson, we will define what that value is. Because when someone provides us with value, whether that's education, entertainment, a sense of belonging, we become loyal to them, and how you can do that is by bridging the value gap. Fill the gap between where your audiences are right now and where they want to be. Because we already talked in the last lesson about your three consumer segments, we will focus on those three consumers. Look at your consumer segments, each one, and think about what is their present look like and what is their future version of themselves looks like. You will fill that gap. You will be that person that brings them from the present to the future, from the neutral or negative to the incredibly positive; that can be in different ways. It's not just helping people become a millionaire. It's also about changing people's feelings or sense of belonging. For instance, your consumer segment present could be, I feel demotivated, I feel a bit sad, I feel dull and their future could look entertained, excited, fun, laughing more. You as a comedian, fit right into that gap. You bring that from that sad, dull present to the fun and exciting future. Let's say you're a skincare blogger, your audience segment right now is insecure about their skin. Their future looks healthy and confident, and they really feel good in their skin. You come and fill that gap between their present and their future. Investment experts present, poor, negative relationship with money, future; financially stable or at least a better relationship with money. Let's say you are an art and mental health blogger. Your audience segment right now is lonely and bored and the future looks part of a creative community. It's not just about helping people achieve a goal. It's also about bringing them into somethin g that would help them achieve that feeling that they want for the future. Not just being a millionaire, but being surrounded by people who are performers. Let's come to a career path. You are a diverse hiring manager. The present could look like a non-inclusive workplace. The future could look like a robust diversity strategy. You fill that gap. What is this gap that you are filling? Because if you help them get to the future, they will love you and that's exactly what we want to talk about today, is how to get people to love you and your brand. In this lesson, we will talk about how to create the love statement. Really the statement that will help you figure out why people would love you. To get there, we need to know what people gain from you and because we're all about acronyms, this is a great place to start the gain. In order to know why people love that, you will need to know what you help people gain. This could either be a goal, an answer, an identity, or a novelty. If what people gain from you is a goal, your promise is to help them achieve a goal. If what your consumers gain is an answer, your promise is to create content that answers your backers' most burning questions. If what you help people gain is identity, your promise is to be relatable and give them a feeling of belonging. Lastly, if you help people gain novelty, your promise is you're doing unexpected things in unprecedented ways in unexplored places. Of course, it could be multiple or all of those, but you need to figure out where is your most prevalent and it could also change for each of the consumer segments. So look at each of the consumer segments that you chose in the last lesson and then think about what do you help people gain. Is it achieve a goal, find an answer, have a sense of belonging, identity, or find something new? What we'll do from there is define your love statement. This is how it looks like. My name is, and I am. I offer for, who, and want to. They love my brand because. Because this is quite big statement, we want to break it down into your different consumer segments. Each love statement for each consumer segment, or if you want to bring them together, that's also super fine. Here are some examples of how you could fill that up. My name is Sara and I'm a mindfulness teacher. I offer self-defense and meditation training for young mothers who have experienced abuse in their marriage, and want to become mentally and physically strong to start a new life with their children. They love my brand because they can see themselves in them and what I've overcome myself and can feel both safe and empowered in the spaces I provide. My name is Ruqaiya and I'm a comedian. I entertain the East African Diaspora living in the UK and want to discuss politics and social and environmental issues, but have a laugh at the same time. They loved my brand because my jokes reflect their diverse interests, speak their language, and provide insights into taboo topics most are afraid to tackle. My name is Maisa and I'm an artist. I offer photography programs for young entrepreneurs who don't have funding and wanted to create a website, product shoots, or social profiles without paying freelancers. They love my brand because of my style and design and because my programs are hands-on, no-nonsense. As you can see why people love their specific brand varies, because it could be style, it could be the way in your character, it could be like a sense of belonging and identifying themselves with you. Figure out what would you think people would love about you and your brand. Then we will get to the Day 5 action item, pick again and write your last statement. Then pick one title from your show/share/tell matrix and create it with that gain and love statement in mind. For Day 5, I went on a hike because I wanted to reflect on my audience segments. I figured all of them have different starting points and they have different places they want to be in the future. The gap that I fill will be different for each segment. The creative audience segment might just try to figure out what they want to do in the future. The brand entrepreneurs are already advanced. They already have a business. They already have a sense of purpose, but they don't know how to scale that business by building a brand. The purpose professionals probably have the highest income, but they are looking for purpose and meaning in their career. What I can give them as a gain will be different for each segment. At the same time, what they will love about me and my brand could be many things. What I did is I went through messages, feedback, things that people have told me that they like about me and my brand and I saw some commonalities. Some said that they like that I talk about my personal experience and they can identify with me and what I say. That's definitely identity as a gain. But some of them also said they love the way that I speak and the design of my visuals. It makes them feel calm and elegant and accepted. That is something that's more intangible, but definitely something I need to figure out how to double down on, so I can make more people love the brand. What I chose for Day 5 as a content piece is a video from the share column. It's supposed to be a podcast story, but I thought about doing a video for LinkedIn, so I have one piece of content I can use for both channels. It's about a story in a time in my career where I had to navigate my values and viewpoints for my career advancement and how I thought what would be my weakness was actually turning out to be a strength. I posted it on LinkedIn and the podcast as well, because this way I could use it for both platforms. Once you're done in the next lesson, we will talk about brand identity and define your brands, look and feel. 10. Day 6: Brand Identity: Welcome to Day 6 of your seven-day brand challenge, brand identity. In this lesson, we will talk about the look and feel of your brand, how your brand will look like and what feelings it will invoke. Let's get into the look straight away. Your look expands from the online to the offline. You want to make sure that there's a consistency between how your brand shows up online, the kind of colors and designs and style, as well as how you show up offline and when people meet you. If you have a very minimalistic, very sleek, elegant, white-black design online, but in-person you're super colorful, that is a disconnect. You want to make sure that your character and the way that you dress also reflects in your personal brand's design online. For this, I have set up a mini-test for you where you can really look at different aspects of the look that you want to have, and then choose on which spectrum you are. Ideally, what you want to do is pick a extreme. Look at the extreme of each side. But even if you want to go a bit in-between, either go very in-between or super extreme, so you have a better understanding of how your brand will look like. Think about any occasion you're in, whether you meet friends, or you are in a business environment, or you are in a career or corporate environment, how do you want to look? Do you want to look the most bright or dark? Soft or strong? Childlike or sophisticated? Minimalist or extravagant? Casual or professional? Funny or serious? Tough love or empathetic? Effortless or put together? Welcoming or exclusive? Natural or structured? Experimental or timeless? Nature or urban? Caring or demanding? The extremes that you chose will affect your style, the clothes that you wear, your design. How you design your visuals and graphics and your website online, the colors that you use in your visuals and pictures and videos, or even overlays and filters, the environments and the scenery that you're in. You could be serious and professional, but still be in nature, or you could be effortless and be in an urban environment. You can pick and choose, but it does really look at the environments and the contexts that you put yourself in. Of course, as well, your ways of speaking. Now, that doesn't really feel like it looks like something, but your voice is an expression of your personal brand as well, so that the way you speak could be either funny, sophisticated, serious, tough love, empathetic, whatever you chose as your extreme look style. Let's move on to the feel. How do you want people to feel when they interact with you and your brand? Let's go back to that skincare expert and the examples that they could choose potentially. Let's say you are that skincare expert who wants to drive sustainability. How you want your content to feel? It could be, for instance, fresh, organic, accepted. Those feelings that you want people to feel, fresh, organic, accepted, will also define what kind of visuals you pick for your brand. For fresh, think about lemons, anything that is light and bright, maybe ice and lighter colors like white or blue. For organic, they choose more natural ingredients that they show on their content or sustainability tips that they share. But organic could also guide into more creating content in nature, so providing sustainability tips or skincare tips, but sitting in the grass while you do it, or using fruit to create skincare products or masks. An acceptor could resolve in using images where you wear no makeup or you talk about body positivity of self-love. The feelings that you choose connected with the look that you choose will create a visual representation of your brand. I want you to pick those three feelings that you want people to have, as well as finalize your look analysis, and then create a Pinterest board that you combine those feelings and looks and visuals together. Let's say, for instance, you think about your style and colors. You want to make a Pinterest board that reflect those. When you say you want fresh organic, you have those visuals like ice and lemons, and grass and nature and the look that you want is minimalist. Think about grass and nature and lemons, not in a overly extravagant way, but in a minimalist setting. Create that kind of Pinterest board and work around it, develop it so it feels like it's you. It feels like it has that look that you want people to see and it has that feeling that you want people to feel. Then we will come to Day 6 action item. Pick one title from your show, share, and tell metrics, and then create one piece of content that has your look and feel in mind. Make sure that you finish your Pinterest board at least a little bit before you create that content because it can really help you get inspired and have ideas on how to visually conceptualize it. Day 6 is probably one of my favorite days. I am a very visual person and I love design. Going through all these ideas of how I want my brand to look like and creating Pinterest boards is my favorite pass-time. What I did is I went through some older blogs, videos, and content that I created and I thought about what did I like about it and where can I improve? Sometimes looking at old content can help you understand what you like your brand to look like. Should it be lighter or more professional? Should you wear higher-quality clothes? Do you like all the colors or would you like to put a filter instead? As a Day 6 content piece, I chose a podcast video again. It's a win-win because it works for both platforms. I took some older files from block videos to create a short video trailer, a trailer that I could use at the beginning of videos to make each content piece look more cohesive and help people identify that design and way of looking as me and my brand. Once you're done with this, we will move on to Day 7. Yes, we're already at the last day about brand strategy. Here, we create a strategy and calendar for your brand. 11. Day 7: Brand Strategy: Welcome to Day 7 of your seven-day brand challenge. In this lesson we will discuss brand strategies and create a calendar for your personal brand. We will cover four aspects or how I call them the four C's. Content, consistency, campaigns, and calendar. Let's start with content. Here it's all about how to optimize your audience growth because we know visibility equals credibility. So we want as many people to see your personal brand as possible, and as many people of the right people. For this I want you to think about the 80/20 rule, 80 percent of your content should be exposure focused and 20 percent should be money-making focused. When I say money-making, it really has to do with conversion, whatever you want people to do. Whether that is to buy from you or to hire you, or to support you or subscribe to your Patreon or YouTube, whatever conversion you're thinking of, that is when I say money-making, because at the end of day, we want to get paid to be who we are. Exposure is all about creating visibility around who you are. Showing your personality, creating shareability, creating character, a sense of belonging, community. It's all that we talked about until now, but in a much more strategic way. Think about how do you make this content more shareable? How do you make this content more relatable? Really think about that piece of content. How do I make people share it? How do I make people want to comment under it? How do I make people want to send this to your best friend? It's about creating content that will facilitate your vision and purpose and build relationships with your audience. Money-making is about conversion, expertise and showing people that you are the best option for them. It really has to do with showcasing your work, what you can do for people, and that you actually offer things. A lot of times in a personal brand we offer so much value but we actually don't tell people how they can help pay us back. When you share a lot of content around how you are the best in your field in finance advice, then at some point you should also say, hey, I'm a consultant, you can hire me or this is when I created a workshop. You can sign up for the next workshop cycle in August. Whatever it might be, you have to create some conversion that will convert your audience into doing things that you want them to do. Then of course, we also have evergreen content, which is SEO optimized content. I told you before I will talk a bit more about SEO, so here it comes. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It's basically making sure that people find you for the things that you want to be found for. When you want to be found as the skin care experts, you want to optimize your content so when people google, how do I set my skincare routine? What are the best practices in skincare? How do I start to clean my skin? How can I create a skincare routine? What are the best skin care experts, that you show up? This means you need to create a lot of SEO content. But you don't need to overwhelm yourself because SEO content is called evergreen content for a reason. You created once and people can still find it 10 years later. SEO content is really long form content. It could be a long website post, it could be a 9-20 minutes YouTube post, but it has to be SEO optimized in a way that people look for it. A lot of how-to videos and some tools that you can use to optimize the content you can find in the resource section. Always think about which content am I creating right now? Is this evergreen content? Is this exposure content, or is this money-making content? You have to be very clear about this and you need to make sure that your ratio is between 80/20, so 80 exposure, 20 percent money-making. Number 2, consistency. Consistency is key. How do you create consistent growth in your personal brand? Number 1, planning, either monthly or quarterly or weekly planning. You need to plan out your content, so you don't get overwhelmed and trying to post in a way and in a manner that is super stressed because you know you need to post right now and you don't know what to post about and then you sit in front of the social media platform for one hour doing nothing. Plan out your content at least a week in advance. Number 2 is batching. That means you create a lot of content in little time, and you batch those tasks. You batch creating videos, you batch editing those videos, you batch writing your articles, you batch optimizing your articles. Whatever you want to do, you group tasks that are similar to each other together and this way you can, again, plan and plan out your content in advance. I have a video on how to batch here, so make sure you check that out if you want to find out more about how to really apply that. The third is calendar. This is really about, has to do with planning and batching but it also has to do with understanding when are trends and seasonality is coming up. When is the next International Women's Day coming up where I should create content because I know a lot of ideas are going to be on women's related content. Or when is the next Christmas or Medan or Earth Day coming up. My sustainability contents should really hit on that Earth Day. You really want to make sure that your calendar is set up in a way that you know in advance what content to create. Number 3, campaigns. Campaigns are all about exponential growth. When you create a campaign you invest in an extraordinary amount of time and effort and energy into creating something that will give you extraordinary results. It doesn't have to be a lot of time, it just has to be more than you usually use on your content. If you are creating a campaign, it's really about growing in a short amount of time with extraordinary tools. I can give you an example. There are content campaigns. Those are a series of content that has to do with a specific theme. Here again you can use seasonality. Let's say for instance, you are dead skin care expert. You could create seasonal campaign for Earth Day and create a series of videos around how to create your own skincare products sustainably. It's the content campaign because you prepare people, you say the next two weeks are going to be all about sustainable skincare hex and people get used today, they tune and it's like a TV show. It's the campaign because it has a series of different content. The next is a brand campaign. This is really different than a product campaign. It has all to do with your purpose and vision, and inviting people to share that vision with you. You create a piece of content that plugs into the mindset of your audience and who they want to be. Think about that, imitate who you want to become. Also invite the audience into that. Brand campaigns are things like, Think Big, Just Do It, Impossible as Nothing. It doesn't have to do anything with the product, it has to do with the brand, vision, and purpose. Then we have product campaigns. Product campaigns are about any product service, anything that you offer. You create a campaign around the functionality of the product or service or what you offer to your audience. What makes it special? How can people learn from it? Number 4, calendar. Here's where we're developing a calendar together. I created outline for a calendar for you, where you really have those aspects that we talked about, specifically planning as well integrated into. You should at least have one or two days for creating and scheduling your content or creating or planning your content for the coming week. Then you want to look at your calendar and spread those two platforms evenly. You know, for instance, LinkedIn two or three posts a week are totally sufficient, but for instance, you chose Instagram as a platform that needs to have more regular posts. Let's say you have Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, both LinkedIn and Instagram content, but Tuesdays and Thursdays only Instagram content. Again, you use Saturday and Sunday to create and schedule. You want to make sure that you create a calendar that fits to you and your lifestyle, so don't get overwhelmed. Let's come to Day 7 action item. Create a one month of content planning, and then pick one title from your show share telemetrics and created with the thought in mind, is it exposure or money-making content. If you want a bonus, also have a thought about how to SEO optimize that piece of content. For Day 7, I want to focus on SEO optimization and moneymaking content. Having a podcast is great because you can turn your audio into an article. You has so much content to work with where you can put keywords and SEO optimization in so that people can find you easy on Google. For moneymaking content, I chose to talk about a reason keynote speaking engagement. Because I don't create enough money making content, I really wanted to focus on that. I create a lot of engagement content, but I don't tell people enough that they could actually hire me. What I did is I created a podcast and turn it into an article where I talked about a keynote and what I learned and what I talked about. Then I shared that article and podcasts on my LinkedIn so people could know they can hire me. I'm excited to see what you come up with. 12. Conclusion: Congratulations, you made it to the end of your seven-day brand challenge. If you are that brave, please, please share your content in the Project tab of this class. Just share the links to your platforms and the content pieces you created on Day 1-7. You'll never know who might see the content and follow you. I'm personally really excited to see what you created. Remember, your personal brand will develop over time so you might revisit the challenging thing well. I came a long way, but that is exactly what we're looking for. I never really deleted my old content because I feel there is power in progress and growth. As a perfectionist, I really need to train myself to be more imperfect. Remember, don't be afraid to create content because it's not about perfection, it's about momentum. If you have any questions, feel free to share them in the Discussion page of this class, I'm happy to answer them. Please hit the Follow button next to my name so you will never miss another class that's coming up. I'm excited to expand more on the content that I shared and create more tools and strategies to help you build a brand. If you love this class, please leave a review because this really helps us to reach more people. Share this with a friend that you think might be super interested in this class as well. To find more helpful content complementing this class, feel free to visit sinaport.com/courses. Thank you so much for watching and I'm excited to see you in future classes [MUSIC].