Personal Branding is a very important part of the Business!!!

You might think that having a successful business is enough, but it isn't in today's competitive landscape. There's one thing that can help separate you from your competitors and that's a personal brand.

Step one, focus on one channel. Sure, eventually you want to leverage all the channels out there but when you're starting, you need to just pick one channel. It's hard to deliver great content on many channels at the same time. So, what's your strength? Is it spoken words? Spoken word is like video or podcasting. Or, is it written word? Is it blog content, social media? Whether it's Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook. Some of these channels accept both written and spoken and here's the beautiful part, when you create content on one of these channels, even though you're focusing on just one at first, once you get it down, you can use that same content on other channels as well.

For example, when you create video content, your team will always put it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. In other words, that same video and spreading it in four different places. That's what makes it super effective. You also want to look like "Hey, where's my audience hanging out?" Are they hanging out mainly on Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter?

Sure, you have an audience on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, but did you know that you can generate more revenue from LinkedIn than any of the other social platforms? It could be because LinkedIn is a B2B social network and I'm in the B2B space but the point I'm trying to make is not all channels are equal, even if you're getting the engagement.

So, don't just look at numbers on "hey, this channel is going to get me a ton of likes or comments." Look at what's most relevant for your audience. Where are they going to be? Where the decision makers going to be? Where are the buyers going to be?

The next step is to document your journey, your struggles. If you look at Gary Aviv, he's done really well, not because he creates a ton of content. He's actually just living his life and documenting it and he has someone following him around. Now, you probably can't go as above and beyond as Gary is because he has the capital to spend. You know, camera crews and all that kind of stuff but it doesn't mean that you can't get started on a budget, you can just bust out your phone and document it yourself. You don't have to have a full-blown production, just like he does. Now, why does this work?

Well, people are curious about your life. Just think about Keeping Up With The Kardashians, they're known globally, why? Because they just live their lives. People like that. They prefer that over something that's very scripted. Now, they also want to know things like how do you go about your life, your processes, the struggles you face, what problems are you solving? How do you build relationships in your industry? What your mindset is and how you think about things compared to other people? How do you keep growing and learning every single day? These are just random things that people will be interested in and you sharing that, even if it's not 100% related to your business, that's okay. It'll help build up your personal brand.

The next step, research topics that people are interested in. You can't just create content around whatever you want, it has to be related to the industry you're in. So you can use Quora, what are the most popular questions people are typing in and answering on Quora? Look at Facebook groups, what are the most popular ones in your niche? What are they talking about? It shows you all the popular content based on social shares, search traffic and back links. Same with the keyword ideas report in Ubersuggest, it shows you all the popular keywords that people are typing in. Whether they're questions, prepositions, comparisons or just general keyword suggestions from Google Suggest. When you have that, that'll help you figure out what content you should be creating and then of course, you want to go and try to create the content around those subjects.

The fourth thing you want to do is listen to what people are saying in the comments and create content around that as well. Look, comments are super important, people who engage with you matter. If someone takes the time to leave a comment, you should take the time to respond. Now, your response could be a blog post, it could be a podcast episode, it could be a video, it could just be that you respond to their comment but by helping people who are leaving comments, you're going to build rapport with them, your brand's going to grow and in the long run, it's going to create a huge, massive effect. Then, you want to reach out to the people personally who inspired you to create that content.

For example, I had a guy named Khalil, who encouraged me to create a blog post on FAQ Schema. I reached out to him and I let him know I was really thankful and how I appreciated his feedback and advice. That meant the world to him and it meant the world to me as well. We now have built a much better relationship, every once in a while I'll text him back and forth but you need to show your appreciation to other people.

The fifth thing I want you to do, is to do a podcast and interview tour. Here's what I mean, two things, one, you search on Google for podcast interviews with other people in your niche. You want to make a big list of all those people who are a good fit for you to also be on their show. Hit them up, tell them, "Hey, I want to be on your show, "Here's my background,I've been on other shows." If you haven't been on other shows, no worries, you don't have to mention that but what you do need to mention in the email is three different topics you can discuss with them on their show that would benefit their reader. Tell them, why is it a good fit for the audience, why their going to learn from it, show some stats, some data, this will help you build your brand.

Then, the other thing you want to do is offer people in those podcasts something for free that they can get on your website whether it's a master class, a ebook, a complimentary consulting call, I know that's going above and beyond, most people won't offer that, but whatever it may be, something where you can get their email list grow your brand, continually help them out and educate them. And of course, make sure you're also considering creating your own podcasts as well. When you're on all these other podcasts, you could promote your own podcast and get more and more regular listeners. The sixth thing I want you to do is interview other authority people in your niche. If you want to be a huge personal brand, if you want to build up your brand and be well known asa authoritative figure more than most people, the quickest way to get there is to associate yourself with people who are already well known.