Tips for personal branding - a solo episode of Get It Girl podcast with Cynthia Johnson:
1. Introduction to Personal Branding: The hosts emphasize the importance of personal branding in achieving success in various aspects of life, including career and personal growth. Cynthia Johnson, having built her career around personal branding, shares insights and practical tips.
2. Foundation Building: Cynthia suggests starting personal branding by auditing one's online presence. This includes searching oneself on various platforms and making decisions to keep, kill, or consolidate visible profiles and content.
3. Image and Bio Update: Key visual elements like headshots and textual elements like biographies should be updated and consistent across platforms. This consistency helps with recognition and professional branding, akin to a logo in traditional marketing.
4. Choosing Platforms and Content: The podcast advises on selecting the right platforms based on personal comfort with different types of content (e.g., audio, video, written) and the intended audience. The importance of consistency in the presentation and scheduling content production and engagement is emphasized.
5. Engagement and Feedback: Active engagement with one's audience and responsive adjustments based on feedback are highlighted as crucial. This iterative process helps refine the branding strategy over time.
6. Long-term Strategy and Measurement: Cynthia discusses the importance of sticking to a chosen strategy long enough to measure its effectiveness. She recommends scheduling regular reviews of one's branding efforts to ensure they align with personal and professional goals.
Tips for personal branding - a solo episode of Get It Girl podcast with Cynthia Johnson:
1. Introduction to Personal Branding: The hosts emphasize the importance of personal branding in achieving success in various aspects of life, including career and personal growth. Cynthia Johnson, having built her career around personal branding, shares insights and practical tips.
2. Foundation Building: Cynthia suggests starting personal branding by auditing one's online presence. This includes searching oneself on various platforms and making decisions to keep, kill, or consolidate visible profiles and content.
3. Image and Bio Update: Key visual elements like headshots and textual elements like biographies should be updated and consistent across platforms. This consistency helps with recognition and professional branding, akin to a logo in traditional marketing.
4. Choosing Platforms and Content: The podcast advises on selecting the right platforms based on personal comfort with different types of content (e.g., audio, video, written) and the intended audience. The importance of consistency in the presentation and scheduling content production and engagement is emphasized.
5. Engagement and Feedback: Active engagement with one's audience and responsive adjustments based on feedback are highlighted as crucial. This iterative process helps refine the branding strategy over time.
6. Long-term Strategy and Measurement: Cynthia discusses the importance of sticking to a chosen strategy long enough to measure its effectiveness. She recommends scheduling regular reviews of one's branding efforts to ensure they align with personal and professional goals.
Welcome to the Get it girl community where yes, you can have it all. We are redefining confidence and life, business health and happiness. If you are
Cynthia Johnson:
motivated, full of drive a go getter and looking for ways to achieve it all without losing yourself to the constant grind, this space is for you.
Ashley:
We're teaching you to take control of your life to boost confidence to feel good inside and out, which then spills into every aspect of your life. You show up better for yourself, your relationships, your career, your passions.
Cynthia Johnson:
We also focus a lot on bucket lists to help ignite that passion and adventure in you when it comes to different seasons in your life, to relationships, travel, food, and so much more.
Ashley:
So look in the mirror and say it loud and proud. Yes, you can have it all. Get
Cynthia Johnson:
it girl, we are changing the conversation around women and success from empowerment to celebration of achievement. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Get it girl podcast. I am one of your hosts Cynthia Johnson. And today I will be doing a solo episode about one of my favorite topics, personal branding. I've built my entire career on personal branding, I wrote a book called platform, The Art and Science of Personal branding. And I started an agency Bell and IV, all around personal branding. My goal and personal branding has always been to help people realize both their innate potential beauty and also to find their place in their work. Oftentimes, we go to work, and we, we know what we're there to do. But we don't necessarily know why we're there or the important role we play. And for a lot of people, the hardest part is getting started. So today, I have a few tips on just how to do that. How do you get started in personal branding? And what do you do once you've completed those steps? And how do you measure success as you as you go along? The first tip I have is what I like to call foundation building. The foundation building part is both scary, and also quite fascinating. Because it's all about you. The first thing you need to do is to search yourself, you need to search yourself on Google, you need to search yourself on Facebook, you need to search yourself anywhere you can on the web, and you make a list. The list can go in any Excel sheet, and you say keep kill consolidate, what does that mean? means that there are profiles out there. And there's media out there. Sometimes this could be everything from a an old Facebook page to a new Facebook page. Maybe it's your address, and someone pulled from the web. And maybe you realize that those old Yelp reviews you have are public. What you want to do is look at each of those things. And you want to go okay, which ones do I keep? Which ones do I need to get rid of. And then which do I need to update desperately? Usually all of them. Once you've done that handed off to your mom, have your mom's search, have your closest friends search for you have your husband search for you, because people who know you actually see a different version of search results most often than you will or even a stranger would. And just make sure you have a really clear idea of what is out there about you. I tell people this is much like your credit score only differences. When people look up your credit score, you know what they're going to find. And you know what it's going to tell them with personal branding, a lot of people aren't googling themselves, they aren't searching themselves. And because of that, they don't know what someone's going to find. And often the thing between you and that next opportunity is whatever they see in the search results. Google your phone number, Google your addresses, create that list, get started. Step two, he found the list, you know what you're going to clean up, you know what you're going to keep you know, you're going to consolidate what now. Now you need to update the image. So I like to say your headshot is your logo, and that one picture everywhere on the web. And then your bio is your tagline. Who are you? What do you care about? Figure those two things out? Now, when I talk about bio, what is it that how do we want to portray? Well, first things first start with what you do, not where you do it. But what you do. So for me, I am a marketer. I'm a marketer, by trade. I'm an entrepreneur, and I also happen to be the CEO and co founder of a branding agency. I do that because I want people to know that I come first, that my focus and my emphasis of my expertise is first and foremost. And then it can transition from place to place. Second thing is where have you done it? Where do you do it? And then the third is should we contact you and for what why? We hear a lot the agency people aren't reaching out I don't know what to do with their mate. Maybe they're not rushing out because it's a little bit too difficult. Or maybe there's one too many steps to get in touch with you. Or they're nervous. They don't know why. I'd love to reach out to somebody but ah You're taking clients, I don't know, it doesn't really, her image isn't really telling me. So make sure it's what you do, where you do it and why. And if people should contact, you should always be included in your bio. There's three bios, there's your social media bio, which is the one line about 140 characters that go in all of your social profiles. Then there's your medium bio, which is the one paragraph, and then your full bio, which can go on your website or, or you know, anywhere else where someone would want a full description of who you are and your your past, present, and future. Okay, so now you have your headshot, and your bio. And everyone says, Well, why would I want to use the same picture across all channels, you want to use the same picture across all channels, where you would like to be recognized, because much like a logo, your headshot or your picture appears in multiple places. And it's a reminder, it's actually a reinforcer of who you are and what you do. Similar to if you saw McDonald's logo down the street, or you saw McDonald's logo, on, you know, an advertisement, if they were changing their logo everywhere, it would be very difficult to identify McDonald's. So anywhere professionally, that you would like people to recognize you keep it consistent. Once you have that, that headshot. Make sure the title the file, the headshot file that you're uploading everywhere, is your name. The reason this is important is because Google, although is learning to read images, it's actually much better at reading the file names. So if you name your picture for me, Cynthia Johnson, maybe I'll put the year in there 2024, upload that image across all channels, along with your new and fresh bio, and do it all at once. Same day, knock it out. You don't need to slowly change things over just make that big change, make that big transition transition the same day, and give the web give the Google search engine results 30 to 60 days to crawl those pages. And soon, you should be seeing a different version of you in Google Search. Third is alright, I've set it up. Now what do I do, I don't know what to say. What needs to happen next is you need to pick one place, and one kind of content to start. So for me, when initially, when I started building my personal brand, I started on Twitter because I love the short form quick communication content. And I would pick one time a week, right set an hour aside, and I would host a chat about marketing and social media, a topic that I really loved. And I built a huge following there. However, just about 1.4 million followers at Cynthia live. And I use that platform for a long time because the type of content that I was creating, and also the way in which I was able to engage with an audience, it felt very natural to me, I was able to then transition that audience or portions of it across different social media platforms. The question to ask yourself is, what am I comfortable with? Am I someone who loves audio? Do I like to talk? Am I someone who loves to create video? Do I love communicating back and forth? Or do I prefer to produce content and let it let it live somewhere? Am I a writer? Or am I more of a curator? Meaning do I like to comment on other people's content? Once you decide that find the best platform for you to do it. If you're someone who loves to share other people's content and commented on it professionally, LinkedIn is a great place. If you love short form quick chats or even audio. Twitter is a great place. Do you want to go live show your beautiful face, obviously Instagrams a great place to be. And then if you're someone who prefers to produce video content, and or audio, I would look into Facebook or YouTube because they support both. And if you're really wild and free, like my co host, Ashley, get yourself on Tik Tok because the audience is great there. And if you have the time, the capacity and the energy to produce content in that way, go there and do that. It is a it is a beautiful, wonderful platform that I wish I had more time for. Okay, you've got your platform, you have your content type. Now you need to schedule, schedule yourself a time where you one produce the content, or plan the content. So for my Twitter chats, I would sit back, I would plan the content. For these podcasts. We pick a day at a time and we plan the content. And then we go in and we produce it and then we share. So what are you going to talk about whatever your expertise is, keep it simple. People are not an expert in what you are an expert in. So find the small, the small baby steps to get started. The little intricate details that you think of every single day, don't even realize you're thinking of it. Those are the things that most people who are in a learning phase or who are trying to absorb content want to know. Other experts are probably like you out there trying to find the next best thing. So really looking at your day and say what is it that I can talk about where can I add value and how do I Turn it into the short, quick conversational pieces. And again, citizens have time to communicate with that audience. Make sure you're answering comments, replying to people, and then sharing sharing other people's content as well. It's called Social Media for a reason. So you want to make sure you're engaging on top of producing content, even if you prefer to produce. So where are we recap? First foundation building? Search yourself, create that list, what am I keeping? What am I getting rid of? What am I cleaning up to update that bio, make sure you have that beautiful logo headshot ready to go? file name, your name, and then upload it across all your professional channels, same day all at once. Third, identify the content piece. How do I like to communicate with the world? What am I most comfortable with? picket. So let's say that is video. I'm a video person, I'm ready to go. Pick your topic. I'm going to talk about marketing in healthcare. I don't know why I've said that, probably because it's what I do a lot of the time, work with a lot of doctors. Now we're going to talk about marketing and healthcare. Great video, I'm gonna do it on tick tock, amazing. I'm now now I'm gonna set aside that time on my calendar, to plan my content, to produce my content, and to post my content, and I'm going to keep it on a schedule and keep it consistent, then maybe it's 10 minutes a day, throughout the week, three times a week, go and comment on people's on other people's content, you know, reply to your to your audience, make sure that you're engaging with them. And then the third is measure it is this working is the content I'm producing, actually yielding results. Give yourself some grace, give yourself some space, you don't need to measure every single day, I would actually say give it 30 days, maybe six weeks, go back, look at what worked and what didn't and then revise the plan. If you're having trouble building an audience, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Find other people that you follow, see what they're doing, see where else they are on the web, and try and test and model there's but as long as you stick to your platform, stick to your content type, stick to your message. And you are our visible and we can see we understand who you are. The next piece is really just getting it in front of the right people, the right partnerships and collaborations. And moving forward. If you find three months, four months down the road, that the platform is not working for you. That's an that's when you maybe want to change it up. Maybe Instagram is better, or you know, Link. LinkedIn is somewhere where you feel your content would actually resonate. Make that decision. But give yourself give yourself time, three to four months, measure what your actions every four to six weeks, and then make those decisions on content change. And also platform change. I will tell you, it isn't overnight. But it gets easier. The first six months to a year are definitely the most difficult because it's trial and error. And you're getting feedback from all different places. It's amazing how once you break 100,000 followers or 200,000 followers, or views or you're starting to put your content on more professional, larger platforms, all of a sudden the feedback starts to go away. People are really just supporting you and cheering you on. So if you can get through the tough, foundational building starter pieces in those first six months to a year, I promise you, there's a ton of benefit and a ton of light at the end of the tunnel. And if you have any questions, you can always reach out to me Cynthia apps@live.com I'm here with Ashley once a week sometimes solo on the Get it girl podcast with tips and tricks for you. And then you can always grab my book platform, The Art and Science of Personal Branding. Anywhere books are sold, check out my website, Cynthia live.com. And again, please reach out I love love love supporting people on their journey through personal branding because it's important because you're important. Remember that and I guess we'll just see you next time. Thanks.
Ashley:
Thank you for listening to the gadget girl podcast. If you're not already, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a new episode.
Cynthia Johnson:
Our number one goal is to connect, inspire and to build a movement where you never feel alone. See you in the next episode.
