Content is key to personal branding and determines how customers perceive your brand and through various types of content, you set your voice and tone, your message, and your values.
Your content marketing strategy is the basis for everything else
Any type of content you plan to create should serve a single purpose: to strengthen your personal brand and express your core values. As a personal brand, your online presence represents who you are as a business and content plays several important roles including:
- Building trust. When you produce consistent content that’s helpful to your audience, you will build a true relationship with them. They will know they can trust you to help them solve their problems.
- Demonstrating authority. The material you put online helps you demonstrate your skills and expertise in your industry and showcases you as an authority.
- Gaining exposure. Any type of content you publish – from blog articles, videos, social media posts etc. – will gain you exposure and bring others into your sphere. With carefully crafted content, people will find you when they’re looking for information.
- Generating leads. Content can be used as part of your marketing funnel to generate and qualify leads. Each part of the sales funnel will need a specifically crafted type of content to give you the best results.
Before you delve into creating content that you think would be interesting, think about what type of content would truly attract the audience you identified earlier. To make this easier, go back to those identifying factors you unearthed in the previous chapter – demographics, what makes them tick, what worries them – and start from there.
Why was that information so important? Because the best performing content is the one that solves your audience's troubles; let that be your guiding thought. Identify common problems your audience faces and then think about how you – your personal brand – solves these problems for your customers. Address these in articles, blog posts, videos, and on social media so you can really make an impact.
Types of Content to Create
Remember that everything you create should be consistent with the tone and design elements you identified when building your personal brand guidelines from the previous chapter. Your content should be recognizable by your audience and consistency is key here! But what type of content works best? Well, this tends to require some testing. Here are some ideas on the kind of content you can create:
Show the Results
Think about a case when you’ve got some outstanding results for a customer or client. What did you do to achieve this? You can write a blog post, article, or even a case study that will address this problem, and then you can offer a solution you know will work.
Include your customers
You can also create content that showcases a person you’ve helped. You can either do a case study, or you can even go for a featured testimonial from the customer. This type of content presents a solution, but also shows your expertise in action and includes a personal element.
Educate your audience
The best way to give back to your audience for trusting you and sticking with you is to teach them the things you know. Articles are useful, but webinars are better! They can focus on specific issues and teach your audience how to do something step-by-step.
Tell your story
Open up. Reveal to your audience how you came to do what you do now. Storytelling sticks with people, but only if you have a good story arc. I suggest you start with a problem you faced (and they face now) and explain how you solved this problem and learned how to help others.
How you publish your network marketing content also plays a big role in success, and here’s my go-to reminder list:
1. Connect
People buy based on emotions, not reason. Always focus on the emotional connection with your content by making your content personal whenever possible. Always be authentic, and make sure you interact with your audience directly.
2. Post new content regularly
There’s no greater sin for a personal brand than to gain followers and regular customers, and then just stop with any content and updates. With the competition in network marketing this is also particularly important! Exposure and more customers might have been your initial goal, but they won’t stick with you if there’s no sign of you.
Take a Facebook business page, for example. You find a business with products you’re interested in, only to see that their Facebook page, their site blog, and their Instagram has had no new updates for over a year, would you still be inclined to buy from them?
If you update your blog weekly, your audience will expect that new blog post every week. If you like to share inspirational quotes on Instagram, your audience will wait for them. Your publishing schedule is a big part of your online identity. It’s not just about tone and voice; it’s about being consistent.
3. Focus solely on offering value and helping people.
There’s nothing worse than seeing a blog post that’s just a blatant promotion of products and services. Would you buy from this type of network marketer? Chances are, you would think they are not genuine and are only interested in sales.
When you create your content, avoid asking for anything in return. Create it for the sole purpose of helping your readers and teaching them something new. That’s promotion enough and will express your personal brand as a genuine personality who wants to help.
When planning and creating content, always keep in mind your personal branding goals and make sure the material you make helps you reach these goals.
Publishing content is not the end of it; you also have to look at the metrics! See what type of content resonates best with your audience – blog posts, videos, social media posts – and focus on them, but we’ll talk in detail about that in our next chapter.
Check out 10 other Ways to Stand Out Online As A Network Marketer by clicking the image below:
