How to Build Your Personal Brand in a World of Social Distancing

Face-to-face meetings are the best. Highly personal, very effective…and currently not encouraged due to the Coronavirus.

For many in professional services, the marketing plan has relied almost exclusively on lunches, on-site visits, and meetings in a conference room. This approach was effective but hard to scale.

How do you deploy a high-touch, personal approach to building business relationships when social distancing is the “new normal?”

Things are very different now. In this new normal you need a robust digital presence to make up for the lack of face time. Now is the time to evolve your personal approach, and build in a more scalable, effective, and safe method for communicating by publishing digital content.

Keep reading to find out how a 3 hour investment of your time can yield more than 90 days of dynamic content and social media activations.

Effective Communication

Did you know that 93% of communication is nonverbal? To break it down even further, 55% is body language, 38% is tone of voice, and 7% are the actual words spoken.

The phone gets you about 45% and it’s not scalable. It’s hard to reach people in an office these days.

Effective communication now must incorporate a digital publishing strategy.

What Does It Mean to Get Published?

Publishing simply means documenting, recording, and/or writing down your knowledge and expertise in a coherent, organized and compelling way. And, you must put it somewhere where your prospects and customers can find it.

Digital publishing means leveraging tools like LinkedIn or a media partner, like The Business Journal, to illustrate the value you add.

Here are two options to get started on the path to becoming digitally relevant.

Option 1 | Write One Blog Post

If you find yourself answering the same question via email and phone all the time–then that’s a blog post. (Otherwise known as answering frequently asked questions in your own words, with your specific take on the topic.) Just write it down and the next time someone asks, shoot it to them. It will save both you and them time. We’ll talk about where to publish it in a minute.

Option 2 | Shoot One Video Using Your iPhone

It’s proven that video is the most powerful and effective way to establish emotional connections when you can’t be physically present.

Videos can work on your behalf 24/7/365 even when you’re not physically there. If you’re authentic and simply share what you know, those videos can establish an emotional connection–and give someone a sense of what it’s like to work with you. They hear your opinion and your voice and pick up your non-verbal signals.

Educate or Promote?

Be sure to focus on industry education or analysis and not just product promotion. Your prospects and customers will appreciate your knowledge and expertise. They don’t want a sales pitch.

Distribution Methods

Now you’re ready to invest some time in LinkedIn. Make sure your profile is up to date with a professional picture, images, media and details of your career. Your profile should not merely focus on your titles and pay grade. It should convey the impact you’ve made for your clients.

Take some time to also send out connection requests. I can send you a worksheet to help you build your profile if you want help.

Now that your profile is up to snuff, spend 15-20 minutes per day in the feed. Liking and commenting on your connections’ posts and articles.

Take the newly created content (blog or video) from above and “publish” it on LinkedIn. You can do it as a post or an article. It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

One and Done?

One and done won’t do the trick. You have to be consistent, but today we’re only focused on getting started.

If you’re stuck or want to move faster, then we’re here to help.

We have a simple and effective way to help you build a library of compelling and educational content.

For example, a one hour webinar can be ‘atomized’ into many smaller video and audio vignettes. These vignettes then feed your blog and social media strategy for months.

Here is our webinar planning guide if you’re curious to learn more.

Also, we’ve developed a workbook called “Brand Builder Pro | Digital Selling Model.” It teaches you how to become digitally relevant.

Please contact me to find out more about our BBP Program.

Let’s Do This Together

Now is the time to get started. Your prospects and customers want to see and hear the authentic you.

These are the steps to ramping up your digital relevance.

Are you ready?

© 2024 MADISON, MICHIGAN & MARKET