5 CREATE YOUR BRAND MESSAGE AND BUILD YOUR DIGITAL ASSETS
Your personal brand message will guide everything you do. It is the statement you will reference whenever you are unsure whether you should do something. The brand statement is your mantra and encapsulates your holistic view. It doesn’t just reflect who you are now, it can encompass who you strive to be as well. The best examples of personal brand statements that encompass both personal value and approach to the future can be found in presidential slogans. I know this sounds kind of crazy, but hear me out. Presidential slogans—when they work—are great examples of how individuals can message the focus, passion, and plan that distinguishes them from everyone else.
Some past presidential slogans don’t seem as compelling today, but we can attribute this to differences in communication style from one generation to the next. All of them send a clear message that serves as the candidate’s personal brand statement.
The slogans from 1884 weren’t the greatest, yet it remained the closest election in American history until the 2000 election. Ultimately, Grover Cleveland won.
Cleveland: Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the Continental Liar from the State of Maine.
Blaine: Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa? Gone to the White House. Ha, Ha, Ha.
These are laughable, song-like campaign slogans, but the candidates’ messages—their brand statements—were very clear: Grover Cleveland wanted to prevent Blaine from making it to the White House, and James Blaine wanted to become president.
It turns out that Hillary Clinton wasn’t lying about wanting to “build bridges, not walls” in the 2016 presidential race. Evidently her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also wanted to build bridges. In his 1996 campaign against Bob Dole, he told the world that he would “build a bridge to the twenty-first century.”
Check out these presidential campaign slogans from 1996.
Dole: The Man for a Better America
Clinton: Building a Bridge to the Twenty-First Century
It’s obvious which slogan is better, right? The one with a plan. A presidential campaign slogan needs to identify a plan and a common goal. Bob Dole said that he was “a better man for a better America,” which implied that he was some kind of hero. No one likes a guy with a hero complex. If Dole’s slogan were also his personal brand statement, he would be an egomaniac. Clinton, on the other hand, seemed to be offering a more abstract message; he was looking to the future with a goal. If Clinton’s slogan were also his personal brand statement, he could easily use it as a navigation tool for telling his story and allocating his time.
We are going in reverse here, but Bill Clinton really hit the jackpot in the 1992 election with his running mates and their terrible slogans:
Clinton: Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow
Perot: Ross for Boss
By co-opting a Fleetwood Mac lyric, Clinton messaged personality and hopefulness. Perot’s message? He wanted to be the boss. No one likes the guy who takes a job just to be the boss. Imagine if they used these personal brand statements to guide their decision making and storytelling. Whom would you want to be friends with, to hire, or to get stuck with in a bar at LAX for six hours?
Now consider the first post–9/11 election with George W. Bush and John Kerry. These were their mantras.
Kerry: Let America Be American Again.
Bush: Yes, America Can!
There’s a clear winner here, too. As a brand statement, “Let America Be America Again” just sounds like a crazy guy talking to himself. Who was not letting America be America? If it were Kerry’s personal brand statement, he would be lost. “Yes, America Can!” was more a reminder and a reassurance—still not the best, but better than Kerry’s.
Now fast-forward to 2016 and the election that really brought personal branding into the mainstream.
Trump: Make America Great Again
Clinton: I’m with Her
Trump is a master when it comes to personal branding, and it showed. I don’t know what his personal brand statement is, but if it’s “Make America Great Again,” he should be fairly clear in his objectives. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, did not have a clear brand message. It read as self-focused and ambiguous. If “I’m with Her” were her personal brand statement, it would be a difficult message to parse. (You are with her because you are her, so is your mission automatically accomplished?)
When creating your personal brand statement, you want to keep it short, simple, clear, and actionable. You want it to have enough meaning that you could not only use it as your slogan in a presidential campaign but also believe in it enough to win an election.
Your personal brand slogan does not have to be unique; you just have to believe in it. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan was “Let’s Make America Great Again,” and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan was simply “Make America Great Again.” In 2008, Barack Obama’s winning campaign slogan, “Yes, We Can,” was similar to George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign slogan, “Yes, America Can!” So to create a winning brand statement, remember that it doesn’t matter which side you’re on. What counts is how you interpret your brand statement. If you make it actionable and clear, you can use it as the driving force behind the narrative of your personal brand.
My personal brand statement: “Build a Platform for Change”
Now, let’s write your personal brand statement.
Consider the following:
What is your niche? What do you want to be known for as a thought leader?
Who are the people in your niche who already have a profile or personal brand?
How can you be clear while being unique?
Who needs to know about you? Why should they care?
How do your influencers currently perceive you? (If you don’t know, ask.)
What is your brand voice? Are you funny, direct, relatable, or…?
YOU HAVE TO TELL YOUR STORY BEFORE YOU CAN ADVISE SOMEONE ELSE
Part of personal branding is helping to craft your own story so that no one else does it for you. You want to be the strongest and most vocal advocate for yourself. In this era, most people never have the opportunity to defend themselves because few of us will ask the person directly, for fear of drawing more attention. Instead, we search for the person online and use whatever we find to make our own judgment calls about the individual.
This works in the opposite direction as well. If you want to join a club, get into college, get a job, join a board, work with a nonprofit, get an investor for your company, or even get invited to a private party, who you are online can affect the outcome. If you tell someone you are one thing, but they see something else online, it can have a terrible affect on your life without your even knowing it. Consider this example. You are the best lawyer for a high-profile case. You went to Harvard and have a great success record in the courtroom. But when I pull up your LinkedIn account, you have only fifty connections, and your Facebook feed has a tagged photo of you drinking at karaoke. I would question your résumé.
You have to create the best possible story about yourself in order to convey that to the people researching you online. If you wouldn’t put it on a résumé or hang it in a frame in your living room, you shouldn’t post it online.
This strategy is not to make you seem inauthentic. Résumés and the pictures you hang in your living room represent two major parts of who you are: your career and your most precious moments. Each of these represents how you spend your time—the strongest indicator of who you are as an individual. If you are not on social media all of the time, no problem. Set up your accounts, double-check your security settings, and let them sit. If you love social media, just be mindful of what is visible to the public. The person you were five years ago (let alone ten years ago) is probably not the same person you are today, so update your older content as you would with your résumé and framed pictures.
ONLINE RESOURCES FOR CRAFTING YOUR MESSAGE
These can change over time. Check websites for updates.
Websites and Apps to Improve Your Digital Storytelling
shorthand.com: tell beautiful digital stories
flourish.studio: visualize and tell stories with data
hemingwayapp.com: write with more boldness and clarity
grammarly.com: improve your grammar and spelling
Writing Tools
copyscape.com: check for plagiarism
headlines.sharethrough.com: write better headlines
cliche.theinfo.org: search your stories for clichés
Finding Expert Resources
Facts and Research
embassyworld.com: find embassies around the world
projects.propublica.org/nonprofits: search nonprofits’ financial information
highbeam.com: find articles, magazines, research papers
city-data.com: find city statistics
Politics
openstates.org: find policies and policy makers
opensecrets.org: see where political donations came from
darkmoneywatch.org: find dark political donations
popvox.com: find, support, or oppose bills proposed to Congress
Just for Fun
ctrlq.org/first: find out who tweeted something first
content.time.com/time/magazine/coversearch: search for previous covers of TIME magazine
radio.com: create your own internet radio show
interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews: find old television interviews
Building Online Assets
Building your social media profiles and online communities is tedious. It can be time consuming, frustrating, and difficult when you don’t know how to do it any other way than manually. The tendency is to push these tasks aside and try not to think about them. That is the wrong approach. Avoiding the foundational part of your personal brand will only lead to more work later on.
The first thing to consider when you start building your online profile is your name. Actually, the very first thing you should do is hire someone else to do the initial audit and cleanup (try Upwork or Taskrabbit) because it is really tedious and boring. Whether you hire someone or do it yourself (again, I don’t suggest this because too often people get overwhelmed and give up), you should have an understanding of what to look for and what to do.
The first step is picking a name or variation of your name that you can use on all or most of your social media pages. You don’t want to have to go into every single social media site to see if your name is available: that is way too much work. Instead, you can browse websites such as Namechk or KnowEm to see if your name is available and where to claim all of your profiles at once. You won’t be active on all of these profiles, but you never know when you will want to be active on a site later. This is why claiming your name once and permanently is so important.
Namechk’s tool allows you to look up your desired name and then search through hundreds of social media sites that tell you which ones are available and which ones are not, using the name that you searched for.
KnowEm does the same thing as Namechk, but it also looks for domain names (website names that are available using your desired name) and checks the United States Patent and Trademark Office database to see if the trademark is available as well.
If you insist on setting up your own social media websites and not using KnowEm, make sure to include the following sites on your list to claim your name:
About.me
AngelList
Facebook (personal account)
Google Plus
Medium
Product Hunt
SlideShare
Telegram
WordPress
YouTube
PURCHASE A DOMAIN NAME
You should have a website for your brand, and that website needs a name. You can use websites such as whois.net, Check-Domains.com, GoDaddy, or Instant Domain Search to find out whether the domain name you want is available or, if it is not available, who owns it so that you can attempt to buy it.
Ideally you want to buy a domain that is your real full name, like cynthiajohnson.com, but if you have a common name like I do, that domain may be either taken or very expensive to purchase. The other thing you want to remember is that .com domains are really the only domains you want to purchase for your personal brand website. Don’t pick .org, .net, or anything that seems cute or clever, like .social. Always use .com.
If your name is not available, then choose a variation of your name. Make this as simple as possible. Remember that you want to keep at least part of your name in the domain name, otherwise it defeats the purpose of personal branding.
Once you have decided on your domain name, you want to buy that name in .net, .co, and .org so that other people can’t use those domains, and you’ll have the option to use them later if you choose. If these domain names are not available, don’t worry; this is more of an additional and optional step.
If you do end up buying those other domains, make sure to redirect them to your .com address. Redirecting works by sending users to the .com address when they type in the .net address.
How I Ended Up with Cynthialive.com
My first internship in digital marketing was with a company called Live Citizen. Their website was a social media community for citizen journalism and polling focused on politics. My Twitter name became @cynthialive because at the time I was representing Live Citizen. My job as an intern was to blog about what was happening on the website, manage their social media, and use the @cynthialive username to gain more users on Live Citizen. Twitter is an obvious choice for a political website to work from because it is used a lot in political media coverage.
When the website shut down, I took my @cynthialive name and made it my personal Twitter name, because @cynthiaj and @cynthiajohnson were not available. Then when I went to purchase a domain name for my personal website, I found that no one was using cynthiajohnson.com, but someone owned it. I contacted the owner of the domain, who asked for twenty thousand dollars to sell me the domain (and this was back in 2010). I did not have—nor would I ever spend—twenty thousand dollars for a website name.
I decided to use cynthialive.com to match my Twitter profile. Since it was available and used my name, I went with it. When you get ready to create your domain name, don’t fret if you aren’t able to get it. Be creative, and you will find something else that can work just as well.
BUILDING A WEBSITE
Once you have your domain purchased, you will need to build a website. You can choose one of several ways to do this. If you are not experienced in website building, you can always turn to companies such as Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace and use one of their premade templates. This option is not ideal because it’s not as distinctive as designing something original, but it works.
Another option is a WordPress template, using wordpress.org not wordpress.com. You would go to www.wordpress.org and download WordPress. You would then install WordPress with your website host. For a step-by-step guide on how to build your own website, go to cynthialive.com/platform.
What you can do is contact a web developer (try Upwork to find one) and have them build a custom WordPress theme for you. This is a more expensive route but definitely the best way to go for an optimal website.
WHAT TO INCLUDE ON YOUR WEBSITE
If you are not trying to make money by selling items on your site, there is no reason for you to have a long, blog-driven website. You maybe need to post once every few weeks (if the content seems relevant). Check out a sample schedule for personal brand blogging at cynthialive.com/platform
You will also need an About section for your biography, companies you are associated with, awards, and personal interests—the basis of your online résumé. You will need a section for press mentions or media as well: anything that involves you in the news, including blogs you were interviewed in, websites you have guest written for, podcasts you’ve done, and so forth. (This coverage does not have to be only from large mainstream outlets.)
The next part is especially important. Depending on whether you want to be paid to speak or your business directly benefits from your speaking and you don’t mind doing some for free, you will need to include “Invite me to speak” or “Hire me to speak” on your website. This separation is extremely helpful for sorting through and vetting new opportunities. At first this may not seem like a huge priority, but as you become more known, your time will become more and more difficult to manage. When someone contacts you about media or speaking, there are two ways to handle it when you are not represented by a speaking agent. You can answer all of the emails yourself and negotiate your own terms, or you can create a second email address such as media@yourwebsite.com. Use this address to negotiate your rates as your assistant would do for you. This makes it easier to quote and negotiate your preferred rates.
You want to make sure that you have a Contact Me page. If people cannot contact you, then there is less benefit in having a website. Create a contact email for your website that is yourname@yourwebsite.com; for example, I am cynthia@cynthialive.com. This is much more professional and easier to remember than a Gmail or other email provider–based address.
Types of Opportunities, What to Expect, and How to Prepare for Them
Personal branding opportunities come in many forms. Some are easy to recognize as opportunities and others are not. This is when focusing on and separating the four elements of your brand becomes important. At different stages of your brand evolution, you will need more opportunities in one area than another.
In addition to a website, you should create a media kit, get a headshot, and have a short (150-word) bio as well as a full bio ready. That way when new opportunities present themselves, you can easily send over the required materials. It is also helpful to have three presentations in bullet outline form that can also be readily sent out. Knowing exactly whom you can speak to and whom you want to speak to, along with having a prepackaged press kit to send out, will make a world of difference in your outreach efforts.
As your brand changes and you change, it may become increasingly important that you gain more education and knowledge in a specific area. This would be your personal proof. Types of personal proof include taking classes, networking at niche-topic events, having conversations with people who are doing what you want to be doing, and even relocating to another part of the world. Doing something that is self-directed can provide personal proof. When interning, for example, take on a project as an assistant so you can learn how to do something new, or set and accomplish goals in an area before you start taking on work in that area. These are opportunities to learn and build confidence while testing your interest in the new direction you seek.
Courses that are helpful to people who are building a brand include speech-writing and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) for speech and negotiation. I learned the most useful tools for brand management in acting improvisation classes, which taught me to be well informed and quick on my feet.
Look for mentors, free workshops, and opportunities to test your abilities in ways that will have minimal negative effects on you. Create your own panel sessions to see if you are able to be on a successful panel. Practice speaking in front of people and the camera by offering your time to clubs and organizations that hold events for their members.
PLACES TO FIND OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERSONAL PROOF
Education
Coursera
Coursera has a lot of classes on a range of different topics. Their classes are usually inexpensive and sometimes even free. You can also use Coursera to build and sell your own online education platform.
Curious
Curious enables you to learn something new every day. The site offers daily brain workouts for sixty-nine dollars per year.
Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning)
Lynda.com was acquired by LinkedIn before LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft. The classes are professionally edited and constructed, and the teachers are picked by Lynda. You can access all of their classes for twenty-five dollars per month.
Sitepoint
Sitepoint opens all of their classes for as little as five dollars per month, depending on when you sign up. The classes focus on digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), WordPress, Design, and JavaScript.
Skillshare
The prices to go Pro on this website or buy for an entire team are very inexpensive, ranging from free to fifteen dollars per month. You can take classes on everything from design, web development, and business to culinary arts and entertainment.
Udemy
Udemy is growing at a rapid pace. They add hundreds of new classes every month. But their classes can be more expensive, ranging from ten to five hundred dollars per class.
Networking
≫ Meetup
≫ Eventbrite
≫ Eventful
≫ Google (search for “networking events in my area”)
SOCIAL PROOF—WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT
Social proof is what stands between you and what you want. Social proof opportunities come randomly, and you often have to recognize and claim them before you feel fully prepared to do so.
Once, when I could not fly to speak at an educational council in the Philippines, I had to cancel my appearance at the last minute. I was the guest of honor and the only international attendee, so my inability to attend was a big deal for the event organizers. Instead of Skyping into the event or leaving the organizers to figure out a replacement, I called a couple of people who I knew wanted to break into international speaking. One of them accepted; the others said they didn’t feel quite ready. When I asked the person who accepted why he was so willing to fill in at the last minute (for an unpaid engagement), he said that if he spoke at the event, he would then be able to say that he was an international speaker. So it was well worth it for him to change his schedule to attend.
That was the most honest and intuitive answer he could have given. The events and opportunities that have yielded the most return for me are those in which I filled in for someone unexpectedly, felt unprepared, or had to move quickly without much thought. Social proof can be hard to gain, because it requires that you do the very thing you do not want to do in order to do the thing you want to do. That’s why you have to see beyond the event or the moment when you feel unprepared and out of your element, and then push through to gain that experience.
Association is the easiest type of opportunity to miss. It requires showing up even when you are exhausted. It means offering help and even giving up on a preference that is actually less valuable. The opportunity to be part of something that would help catapult your career and life to the next level is almost always worth taking.
ORGANIZATIONS TO BUILD ASSOCIATION
It can be helpful to join clubs and organizations if you are willing to give the time or money they require. Here are a few organizations you can join. (Not all of these will apply to everyone, but they are good examples of what to look for.)
American Marketing Association (AMA)
You can pay to join several of the American Marketing Association’s local chapters to attend events, write industry papers, and add to your résumé.
Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) is a global network that works to enhance the ability of entrepreneurs to be successful by learning and growing from the knowledge and experience of other members.
Forbes Councils
Want to write for Forbes? You may qualify for one of their many councils, such as the finance council, agency council, business development council, and human resources council. You can apply and pay them a fee of twelve hundred to fourteen hundred dollars per year to gain access to everyone in the councils and their Forbes Council Facebook group, and to write for Forbes regularly. The councils evolve—and sometimes move locations—over time, but members are kept intact.
Ivy
Ivy is a social organization that charges one thousand dollars per year to attend events, host webinars, and reach their large global network of successful people in several industries.
The Millennium Alliance
The Millennium Alliance is a leading technology, business, and education advisory firm. It focuses in areas such as business transformation, executive education, growth, policy, and need analysis for C-level executives from Fortune 1000 companies. (I sit on their board of advisors.)
Vistage
Vistage is for CEOs and companies that want to improve and grow their businesses through idea exchange. They have more than eighteen thousand members and host more than sixteen thousand events each year.
Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
The Young Entrepreneur Council is another membership-based organization that you can join if you want to write for Forbes, Huffington Post, Business.com, and several other publications, or get media mentions, network with other entrepreneurs, attend events, and more. The fee is eight hundred to twelve hundred dollars per year. To qualify, you have to be founder or partner at an organization with more than $1 million in annual revenue or that sold for more than $1 million.
There are many more organizations and nonprofits like these that you could join to grow your network and increase your opportunities through association. It sounds expensive to join some of them, but depending on your unique and specific goals, it can be well worth it.
Opportunities for Recognition
The biggest mistake people make when it comes to missed opportunities for recognition is thinking that the opportunity is too small. No opportunities are too small to be recognized. Podcast interviews, blog mentions, awards from small local community organizations and events—these are all accomplishments. It doesn’t take much time to accept an award or to do an interview. Plus, the smaller opportunities are the best way to practice and prepare for the larger ones. Build the online foundation for your brand by creating opportunities and converting those experiences into reportable qualifications.
WHERE TO FIND OPPORTUNITIES FOR RECOGNITION
Check out the websites below to find opportunities to speak, be interviewed for podcasts, and apply for awards.
This service matches you and your business with awards and submits your name for consideration.
With this podcast search engine, you can find dozens of podcasts by topic or prior guests, along with the websites where you can contact the hosts and submit yourself as a potential interviewee.
You can use this service to either create a speaker profile and submit yourself as a potential speaker or find a speaker for your next event.
This service creates your profile and provides a nice dashboard to manage your submissions to be a speaker. Their fees range from as low as ten dollars per month to about eight hundred dollars per year.
Bring Your Offline Experiences Online to Benefit Your Digital Brand
I know many people who host events, attend events, and travel all over the world for work, yet no one in their network ever hears about it. If you win an award and no one knows about it, did it really happen? Whenever you go to an event or take a class, it doesn’t require much effort to snap a picture with someone else there and post it immediately to social media.
Another thing I like to do is check in to events on social media as I am leaving. This attaches me to the event and lets my audience know I was there. When you check in as you are leaving, you avoid telling the world where you are (which is much safer than checking in as you arrive at a location). Plus, when you have checked in to an event as you are leaving, you will presumably have images that you can add to the post, so you can avoid having to post twice.
I like to check in on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and to send a snap mid-event or on my way out. When I am flying somewhere, I check in from the airport with the destination included as I am boarding the flight. If I am speaking at a conference or hosting an event, I will check in earlier and tag my friends.
These are simple ways that busy people can utilize their offline work online. If you are not a fan of checking in on social media, then post after the event and tag other attendees, the host, and any sponsors or speakers. After an event, I will post to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and, occasionally, Instagram (depending on the quality of the images I took).
WHAT COUNTS AS AN EFFECTIVE BRAND IMAGE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Personal brand images are most effective when they present you doing something interesting, show you somewhere interesting, show you being the best at something (such as speaking or being interviewed), show you with someone interesting, or demonstrate your day-to-day while sending a strong positive message.
Images with other people you can tag or at events that you can tag are the best option. Grab a picture with someone at an event. Don’t be shy about asking. They are there to please the crowd. And if you are the speaker, let people take pictures with you. They will always want to, and that is part of the fun of seeing someone speak at a conference.
The other way to make sure that your offline work connects online is to connect with people from the events you attend. The main point of events, meet ups, and conferences is to network. Afterward, it is fine to send a request to connect on LinkedIn with the message: “We didn’t have a chance to connect at [Event Name]. We should connect here and make time to speak when it works for our schedules.”
People like to be noticed, especially the people who attend these types of events. By using the conference or meet up as your way to connect, you are finding common ground, which makes your outreach that much easier.