Personal Brand Studio 🎬 How Personal Is Too Personal? Finding the Sweet Spot
Lesson #5: how to build authority and connection online
Welcome to the Personal Brand Studio 🎬
A digital course to build your personal brand and monetize it.
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- Based on my experience publishing 3 books, landing a book deal with Penguin Random House and growing a digital tribe of 15K+ online.
How personal is too personal?
The previous lessons covered how to create your vision and content pillars.
We are now moving on to the exciting part: the action!
Let’s make some noise online.
“Is it unprofessional to share personal things online?”
“How do I draw the line between personal and work?”
“I’m too shy to post anything about me.”
I coach clients on personal branding, and these are some of the challenges that keep them from posting online.
The best way to tackle this is by unwrapping the concept of personal brand.
What the heck is a “personal brand”?
There are 2 elements to a personal brand:
1. Personal: who you are.
2. Brand: what you know and do.
You need to show both.
They are two sides of the same coin, and if you remove the personal element from the equation, a bot somewhere will replace you in a heartbeat.
Your personality is your competitive advantage: you are 1 in 8 billion!
To succeed in the world of online creation, you need to show what you do and who you are. There’s no way around it.
If you want to develop a robust personal brand that supports your business by bringing leads and clients, you need to build brand authority, but you also need to make it personal.
Keep it human.
Why you and not someone else with the same expertise?
Why you among a gazillion copywriters?
Why you as a public speaker?
Finding the sweet spot
Let’s say you want to hire a writing mentor, and you are debating between 2 coaches on LinkedIn:
- Karen has a solid portfolio, great client reviews, and a lot of experience mentoring writers. She usually posts work updates, and you don’t know much about her outside what she does.
- Phil is also very qualified, and his testimonials are great. He also happens to engage with your posts and support you, and he often shares posts about his hobby, cycling. After following him online for a few months, you have built a rapport with him, and you like his personality.
Does that make Phil unprofessional?
Which one would you go for?
I’m biased because I’m a cyclist, but most people would pick Phil.
Phil has become relatable and likable. He regularly pops up on your feed, sometimes talking about his work and other times sharing his cycling adventures and the best coffee shops in town. You get to know him and trust him.
While Karen has only built authority, Phil has built authority and connection by showing what he does and who he is.
That makes the decision a no-brainer.
We are humans first
The online world is not that different from the real world.
We tend to work with people we like, choose partners we get along with, and make decisions based on personal connections all the time.
To prove my point, last year, I had to pick a professional photographer for my new book cover and shortlisted 3 with great portfolios. I ended up choosing George Papadopoulos because I get along with him, I enjoy seeing his personal updates online, and I want to support his business.
We had a blast during the photoshoot, and this picture became the book cover of The Flight Home.
For my website design and maintenance on WordPress, I chose Simplement Simon because, besides his great digital skills, Simon is also a writer, and I liked his personality and his articles about being a dad. As a mom, I immediately related to him.
That’s exactly how business is done in the online world as well: through personal connections.
People connect with you > people trust you > people choose you.
Remember the magic formula: authority + connection = trust
How to build authority AND connection
Don’t worry. You don’t have to start posting duck-mouth selfies and sharing what you had for breakfast.
It’s all about keeping a balance between showing what you do and who you are. Some creators have great engagement without ever posting a single picture.
Here are 6 ideas for posts to build authority and connection online based on my LinkedIn experience getting clients, public speaking opportunities and invites to podcasts (see more on my website).
What my paid subscribers are saying:
“Veronica is attentive to those who are new to writing. She replies and comments which makes me feel heard.” — Karen Esbenshade.
”Great written… and helpful strategies to grow and build an income as a writer… like it👍” — Katja Groesser
“As a beginner writing online (still not sure what i am doing and need to work on the vision part), who quit my 9–5 to reflect and connect the dots, I feel very inspired by your story, content and lemons, Veronica.” — Andrea Unanue