CHAPTER 11

Nourish and Mobilize Your Network

 

Turn Fans Into Promoters

Don’t toot. Let others tout.

Now that you have updated your network and are actively building it, you need to nurture those relationships, increasing your visibility and credibility to get the people who know and like you to promote you. In a sense, you’re creating your own personal sales force of professionals who are eager to tout your brilliance so you don’t have to toot your own horn. This is always a welcomed message by my friends who consider themselves introverts. No chest pounding. No screaming from rooftops. No “me-me-me” required. The technique you’ll use to groom promoters also happens to be my favorite four-letter word:

Give.

And when you give in this case, you’re giving value—helping others be more successful, and further reinforcing that message you crafted in chapter 3 by sharing your intellectual property.

In the field of branding, this is called content marketing. The definition of content marketing (from dictionary.com) is “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its services.” In this case, the “service” is you.

MINDSET RESET

The goal of content marketing is to get your audience to engage with your material. It makes no sense to spend time and money on creation and curation if it doesn’t affect the people you seek to influence. Creating this engagement is challenging because there’s so much noise. We are bombarded with an ever-increasing amount of content to absorb.

Fun Fact

And the noise is getting louder. The only thing no one is making more of is time. My biggest fantasy is to be able to buy time. I think about it a lot—perhaps too much! I’d buy an hour most mornings for some extra sleep and I would have bought hundreds of hours while writing this book. My clients tell me they would likely buy an hour a day or so to spend building their brand. But until that dream becomes a reality, we still have just 24 hours a day. That means as a content creator, you’re facing increasing competition for eyeballs with no increase in the amount of time you have to build your brand.

Update, Create, Curate, Restate, Evaluate

When building a brand communications plan that connects with your people, focus on a series of actions I call the Five Ate Plates. Think of it as a carefully crafted five-course tasting menu in a world overrun by generic junk food. All five actions end in “ate,” and they are all designed to serve up nutrient-rich messages that your audience is actually craving.

You’ll find a lot of analogies and references in this chapter to food—which will hopefully whet your appetite to try some of the activities that will help you build a sales force of people who can help you spread your message.

The ideal communications plan uses a balanced combination of these techniques to build engagement with your target audience. Let’s look at each one individually.

Plate 1: Update

The purpose of updating is to remain visible to your community. The third of the 3 Cs of a strong brand is constancy—staying in the purview of your target audience (Figure 11-1).

Updates can come in the form of LinkedIn posts, tweets, Facebook, and LinkedIn live videos, and so forth. But use them in moderation. Don’t update because you’ve told yourself you have a quota to meet. Instead, provide information that’s relevant and timely—content that helps keep your audience up to date.

Effective updates can include:

• pointing to a newly published article

• checking in at a relevant location—like a professional association event

• sharing something you learn from a workshop

• linking to a quick live video with a valuable insight from a conference you’re attending.

When you share an update, you’re making your connections and followers aware of what’s going on in your world, providing knowledge that could be valuable to them. Sharing an update is the best way to let them know what’s going on in your world. It’s the digital equivalent of a postcard. Just sharing a few sentences—“I learned at yesterday’s AMA meeting that marketers are going to spend 20 percent more on video in 2020”—is a simple yet powerful way to deliver value to decision makers while staying on their radar.

Plate 2: Create

Content creation takes a lot more time than updating, but it is one of the most powerful ways to differentiate your expertise and get people to know you and want to support you. The LinkedIn long-form publishing platform gives you the opportunity to convey your thought leadership and remain visible. It also helps you enhance your credibility by backing up what you say in your profile with your content and your unique point of view. And you can make your thoughts known to half a billion members—growing your reach. Of course, you don’t need all of them to look at your content. You just want to attract the members of your 5D community (remember selective fame?). So here’s some good news: While the content noise is increasing, only 1 million LinkedIn members have ever published a blog on the platform, according to the content marketer Foundation. That’s less than 0.2 percent of LinkedIn members. That means there’s still an opportunity to be a leader on the platform.

It’s very easy to use (you can paste content from a Word file)—and your posts only need to be between 600 and 1,000 words. When you use this feature regularly, it becomes a repository of your ideas on your preferred topic. Just remember, don’t blow hot air. What you share needs to be a clear reinforcement of your brand message (how you want to be known), while ultimately delivering valuable information to your target audience. Emphasize potency, not puffery.

Content creation can include:

• writing a blog post for LinkedIn

• producing a thought-leadership video for YouTube

• publishing the PDF of a slide presentation to SlideShare

• creating an infographic and posting it on Instagram.

Remote Control

Because content creation takes more time and effort, you want to make sure it’s going to yield high levels of engagement and support your goal of inspiring people to become your brand ambassadors. To help you reap a higher return on your investment of energy, I created the Strawberry Test. It’s a way to find the “sweet spot” in your messaging.

Although you need to be aware of the kinds of content you like to create and what your target audience desires, certain types of content have been shown to attract the most engagement (measured by views, likes, comments, and shares). High-engagement content sits at the intersection of three traits (Figure 11-2): inviting, bite-sized, and healthful.

Inviting. With so much content vying for our attention, we are only attracted to the truly enticing messages. In a split second, we’ll decide whether to keep reading—or not—so the message needs to be immediately compelling. This means your headline, caption, or intro words have the most crucial part of your content. (More about that in a moment, when you’ll learn how to add your own secret sauce.)

Bite-sized. In our world of 280-character tweets, two-minute YouTube videos, and Snapchat pics that last for just seconds, we want content that doesn’t require a major time commitment. It needs to satisfy—but quickly. If it’s a full-blown whitepaper, the executive summary or bulleted list of takeaways needs to be succinct.

Healthful. “What’s in it for me?” is the mindset and mantra of most social media viewers. People will only invest in your content if they believe they’ll get something from it. They may want to learn and grow, solve a problem, or relieve stress with laughter. This is the “nourishment” element. That’s why you need to ask yourself the following question:

How can my content help the reader or viewer?

Your answer determines whether it’s worth your effort to produce that content. The level of viral sharing gained by a message is directly proportional to how valuable the message is to your target community. And the payoff needs to be obvious at the beginning of your content (think goldfish!). People aren’t likely to stick with you until the end if they don’t get connected at the beginning.

I’ve often thought that the most potentially viral content is like a strawberry. Strawberries are inviting, bite-sized, and healthful.

Of course, when you’re creating content, not everything can be a strawberry—and it doesn’t have to be. But seek to develop materials that meet at least two of the three characteristics.

Twizzlers: Inviting and Bite-Sized

Twizzlers (my favorite candy!) meets two of the criteria. But they’re full of empty calories. Where’s the health (value)? Think of this as a quote that you’ve added to an interesting background (using your PBID texture). It’s visual and interesting—but it doesn’t provide the viewer with anything earthshakingly valuable.

Watermelon: Inviting and Healthful

Some content, like a whitepaper, is more like a watermelon. It’s sweet (inviting), but not exactly quick to consume, requiring a real commitment. Sometimes, though, this is what’s required to get your message across.

Prunes: Bite-Sized and Healthful

There’s some valuable content you’ll want to create that does not require a major commitment to consume. But it may not be the most instantly enticing material. For example, a list of helpful tips.

Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry: Inviting, Bite-Sized, and Healthful

To make your content even more attractive and hopefully viral, dip it in chocolate. Think of the chocolate coating as the headline or title and first few sentences (or seconds of a video) and the associated image—drawing in the viewer the same way the chocolate-covered strawberry in the Godiva store window calls you in from the street.

Fun Fact

The “inviting” element is most important because without it, people are less likely to make that initial interaction, no matter how valuable and easy to consume your content is. So when creating content, put your fresh-picked words (or images) through my Strawberry Test. And don’t publish them without dipping them in a rich chocolate coating.

Plate 3: Curate

If you’re feeling like you don’t have the time or desire to create your own content, steal other people’s content. OK, I don’t really mean “steal”; it’s more like borrowing. Content curation can be your best friend when you are loath to create your own material. Share others’ posts, disseminating information that you find interesting and valuable with your connections and groups. When you do, you’re enabling them to see potentially helpful content that they otherwise might have missed. Most websites that distribute content, like Forbes, Inc., and Fast Company, make it easy for you to share their content via LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook directly from what you’re viewing.

Do This, Not That

Do offer your point of view with your commentary; for example: “This is a really useful article, especially for first-time managers.”

Don’t just click “share” without adding your unique perspective.

A word of caution: If you just click “share” and send content to your connections and groups, it does little to build your brand. You need to add your commentary and point of view—why you think it is valuable. For example, you might say, “This is a really useful article, especially the last paragraph.” Or “This piece is a powerful overview; the only thing I would add is …” Or “This is a well-written piece, but I disagree with the author about her second point because … ”

Plate 4: Restate

My personal branding technique for expanding visibility with minimal effort is called—wait for it—being lazy. By that I mean reusing and repurposing the content you already have available. This amplifies your message and delivers brand consistency, communicating different forms of the same content in distinctive ways to the members of your brand community. So repurpose your blog posts for your activity updates, turn an article into a series of tweets, and embed whitepapers and articles in the Summary and Experience sections of your LinkedIn profile. Never look at any piece of content you create in isolation. Always ask yourself, “How can I reuse this content to increase my visibility and add value to my brand community?”

Plate 5: Evaluate

It’s powerful and even fun to regularly share your knowledge—and have conversations—with your community, but to what end? Get ready for the final course in our tasting menu: metrics.

You need to measure the effectiveness of your activities and the power of your digital brand. This allows you to focus on those activities that have proven to deliver the greatest impact on your career success, and it lets you ditch those that just aren’t working for you.

The great news about digital branding is that most of what you can do can be measured, so you can check in on how your personal brand is growing.

Here are the metrics to check regularly:

• network growth

• LinkedIn visibility

• engagement

• opportunity.

Network Growth

Social media people metrics are calculations related to the number and types of people in your brand community. That includes both connections and followers.

If you’re active in your field and the related online communities, your network should be growing. In LinkedIn, you can have up to 30,000 connections. So remember to add people to your LinkedIn network as you meet them. And reach out to those LinkedIn members you’d like to have in your network. Track your number of connections over time to ensure it’s growing. Do the same with your Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers, SlideShare followers, and so forth.

If you’re adding content to your social media accounts regularly, and you’re engaging in discussions with fellow members, you should see your numbers increasing.

LinkedIn Visibility

Who’s viewed your profile? This is an important number to watch over time. The more engaged you are in LinkedIn, the more this number should increase. If you haven’t paid close attention to this number, find it (it’s the first number you see when you look in the left column on the home page). Then make a commitment to check it out weekly or monthly to see if your LinkedIn actions are translating into more people checking you out.

Search appearances is a measure that also helps you see if people are able to find you. It increases when the words in your profile (especially in your headline) match the words people are typing into the search box. Targeted networking is important. It’s also important to help people find you. I call it planned serendipity. You don’t know who’s looking for you, but you need to be visible and available so they can find and connect with you. Know the keywords that are critical for being found in your field and make sure your profile is replete with them—especially your headline. Also, remember that the more connections you have, the higher you will rank in searches, and the number of connections you have also affects how frequently you turn up in searches.

“People also viewed” is an important section to check regularly. It’s located in the left column of the home page. Take a look, then ask yourself these questions: Are these people in my community? Are there other thought leaders and experts with whom I’d like to be associated?

Engagement

This is the all-important measure because it focuses on interaction and endorsement. The industry term for this is social proof, and achieving “proof” sometimes depends heavily on perception. According to Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University and the author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, “We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.” That means in situations where we feel hesitant or insecure, we often assume that those in our orb (thought leaders, colleagues, superstars, and so forth) are more knowledgeable about the topics related to that situation.

That said, for digital branding, my ultimate goal is community minded. Thought leadership shouldn’t be about exploiting the insecurity of your followers; it should be about empowering all members of the community to share their knowledge and gain influence through their bona fide expertise. So I abide by a narrower definition:

Here are four types of social proof that are relevant to career-minded professionals who are building their digital brand:

Expert Endorsement. This is when respected members of your industry or topic recommend you and your content. We talked about this kind of social proof in chapter 6 when we referenced raving recommendations—getting testimonials from people who count and posting them to your LinkedIn profile. It’s called brand association. When you are connected to an organization, title, and company that’s respected, some of that rubs off on you. You see this form of brand association all the time but may not realize it. When you stay at a Shangri-La hotel, there are Bulgari toiletries in the bathroom. The placement of those products reinforces the brand attribute of luxury with the Shangri-La.

Community Connection. This proof comes from the numbers. When you have a lot of Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections, people assume “you’re somebody” and will be more likely to follow you and your content. In LinkedIn, the Endorsements feature plays a role here. Your overall number of endorsements isn’t very important. The number of endorsements for your most important skills, on the other hand, is extremely important—especially for your top three, because they’re the only ones people see when they check out your profile (unless they click “see more”). Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, but in personal branding we need to focus on attracting the right crowd of decision makers who are just as committed to your field as you are.

Social Interaction. This comes in the form of views, likes, and comments on your content. When you have posted a YouTube video and it gets 1,000 views, that number alone is an endorsement of the video.

Social Volley. This is a special kind of social interaction because it creates the much-desired viral element of social media. It’s all about shares. This social action is different from “social interaction” described above because it more rapidly moves you from the second to the third phase of brand success—where others become your personal brand sales team.

Shares are important because they speak to how viral your content is. When people share your content, they’re making it available to their connections—significantly amping up its visibility. That’s when your fans become promoters and actively share your content with their brand community.

Opportunity

This is a more qualitative measure. Since you started putting effort into building a socially engaged brand, what opportunities have come your way? To determine these, think about your goals. Why are you building your brand? What kinds of opportunities are valuable to you? You might consider these measures:

• requests to speak at events

• press outreach for quotes or interviews

• authors seeking content for an upcoming book (or a co-author)

• job offers or messages from recruiters

• messages from fans who want to work on your team

• colleagues with expertise who want to partner on a project

• internal colleagues reaching out because of your external visibility.

PONDER THIS

Tips for Mastering Your Content Marketing

For maximum effectiveness, each of the first four “ate” actions—update, create, curate, restate—should be infused with the following four qualities:

Be authentic. Before you start posting, think about how you will exude your personal brand in your communications. You want to be memorable, so know your writing style and use it consistently. If humor is part of your brand, write with wit. If structure and organization are your thing, organize your content with headings and lists. If you are more of the contrarian, make that a regular part of your commentary. And throughout the message itself, of course, choose a voice that’s authentic. If you really can’t tell a joke, don’t try to be Ellen DeGeneres—only Ellen can be Ellen.

Be professional. When posting your own content, make sure it is grammatically correct and written in the style used by your industry. Posting questions to the group is a great way to spur conversation around a specific topic and see your colleagues’ various points of view, but even a one-sentence message like that should be proofread carefully.

Be engaged. When someone takes the time to comment on your post, take the time to respond. It’s the right thing to do, and it helps you build relationships with those who are interested in your content while keeping the conversation going.

Be appreciative. Remember to acknowledge and thank those who post valuable comments and who add to the conversation in your posts. It’s especially important to thank those who share your content. Also, thank your fellow group members who provide content you find useful in doing your job or expanding your mind.

Summing Up

Now you’ve identified your strategy for being ever visible, available, and valuable to your target audience. When you act on this regularly, you provide fuel to your fans, which in turn ignites others to join your brand community. You are well on your way to becoming a revered brand. But perhaps you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, or you’re asking yourself, “How could I possibly make all this happen?” Not to worry. In chapter 12, I’ll share with you a technique for turning one activity into a full year’s worth of digital branding. I’ll also show you how to move yourself outside the normal hierarchy at your company by becoming a digital brand ambassador.