Happy Sunday folks,
What’s on my mind lately for this fine solopreneur blog post?
Good question…
I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about content creation as a solopreneur.
I’m always thinking about how to keep building my personal brand because I think:
- good marketing is under-rated in a world full of sales teams and paid ads (especially as those costs go up)
- personal branding – and building a real relationship with your target market – is the most valuable form of marketing (especially as people get better at spotting ads)
- building a personal brand is low hanging fruit for solopreneurs or co-founders of any kind of company (we see it now more than ever)
- building a personal brand is also a longterm investment in yourself, because it can benefit the company you’re building right now… and also any other company you may start or build in the future
I’m not saying everyone should build a personal brand… but I do think everyone could benefit in some way from it.
What’s the easiest way to get started?
In my opinion, pick 1 or 2 platforms (LinkedIn, Tiktok, FB, IG, Youtube, Twitter, etc.), pick a key topic or theme or target audience, and just start creating content.
The reason I say 1 or 2 is because if you try to post on too many of them, you’ll either be too intimated to start or burn out (unless you have or can pay a team to help you with it).
I’ve been working on my personal brand for years, and am constantly honing my strategy to get the most output from as little input as possible.
Why?
Because I’m busy building solopreneur businesses, like many of you, and so building a personal brand has to fit into everything else we’re doing of course…
Here’s what I think is the best way to get started, building your personal brand and doing solopreneur marketing at the same time:
1) Pick a key topic or niche or industry that you have an on-going interest in
- Are you a corporate lawyer? Boom there’s a topic.
- Are you addicted to cooking? Content for days.
- Do you play board games every second Thursday with your friends? Bingo (see what I did there?)
2) Think about the 1-2 ways you prefer to create content based on your strengths and interests
- Are you a good writer? Blogs, emails, etc.
- Love recording/editing video? Vlogs, How To videos, comedy skits, etc.
- Strong talker and a face for radio? Podcast, etc.
3) Pick 2-3 platforms, MAX, to start posting and repurposing content on
- Video? Probably Youtube and Tiktok (post on Youtube, cut snippets to post on Tiktok)
- Writer? Blog, LinkedIn, Medium, etc.
- Podcast? Any platform is fine, I push my podcast to most of them
- Pictures and shorter form writing? IG, FB, Twitter, etc.
4) Start posting content, and don’t expect any form of success for at LEAST 1 year
I remember hearing a crazy stat – don’t quote me on this – but only something like 5% of podcasts on iTunes (or whatever Apple calls it now) have more than 10 episodes.
Why?
Because everyone and their mother got excited, created a new social media account/podcast/etc., posted 5-10 times, gotten 4 likes and 1 comment, realized building a following actually takes consistent work and gives up.
I’m convinced that the one thing that every successful “influencer” has in common is they post good content consistently.
Period.
Forget the optimized hashtags (for now) and just focus on that, and you’ll have a great foundation/following after 10-12 months.
Want to know my personal content creation strategy? Unfortunately I only share my personal strategies (including how often I post, which platforms, etc.) with my email list – make sure to sign up here and you’ll get all the best stuff!
Thanks for reading and keep grinding.
