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Digital Brand Building
Stories, Tips, and Insight

Rachel Michaelov, the Tax Expert

Rachel Michaelov is the founder of Empire Tax Professionals. Over the past years I’ve seen her use Facebook to consistently share stories of how she’s providing solutions to her clients. There are no sales (well, maybe a little bit), but she’s using Facebook to share tips with us that she’s giving to her clients to help them save money, get their finances in order, and so much more.

Doing this won’t generate immediate sales for Rachel, but it is building her personal brand. It is planting seeds into the minds of the business professionals who will become fans of Rachel. In fact, I’m a fan of Rachel. I’ve mentioned her to you in this book! Rachel is building a fan base by posting regular content that’s actionable, interesting, and useful. As I said before, all of these fans won’t be customers, but over time, all she needs is for some of them to convert and become clients or to spread the word about her business.

Rachel’s competitors, others providing accounting and bookkeeping services, might post something like this on Facebook: “Hi! Remember, stop by our office for a year-end accounting audit.” Not bad. Or they might post “Before the year ends make sure you ask your accountant how you can maximize deductions for the year.” However, when Rachel posts it’s exciting and informative. She’ll post something like “I just saved a customer $7,000 in taxes. Here’s how we did it.” Or she’ll post something like this: “It’s almost the end of the year. What are the things you’re doing to minimize your taxes? Well, here’s a few things I’ve been suggesting to my clients.” See how something boring like taxes and finances can be made exciting and informative and catchy? You can do this for your business as well.

Adrian Miller, the Sales Trainer and Business Strategist

Adrian Miller is an expert in sales training and writing copy that creates sales. Because of her experience, she helps clients improve their social media engagement. Adrian is a good friend who, in addition to her consulting, founded a thriving networking group, Adrian’s Network.26

Adrian shared these quick tips for social media success with me:

  1. Stay visible with relevant content that spotlights you as a subject-matter expert and thought leader in your field.
  2. Keep it “real” and relevant. Smart people can spot BS from a mile away.
  3. Don’t be afraid to include some personal storytelling. A post that I did about “What I Learned in Business from My Mom” garnered me more eyeballs and direct messages than many of my more “professional” posts.
  4. Send out links to content you’ve written, and don’t be shy about posting the links several times.
  5. Experiment with posting a link or copying and pasting a (short) blog. Sometimes people dislike leaving the platform they are on to peruse what you have written. See what works the best for you.
  6. Use pictures and videos as much as possible.
  7. Ask people to share your content. Offer to share their content as well.
  8. Social media is social. Don’t sell lest you be thought of as “one of them.”
  9. Create and then reinforce your personal brand.
  10. HAVE FUN.

You can see how anyone from any industry can leverage digital content to build a personal brand, to be engaging, to be informative, and to educate his or her fan base. Sure, it takes some effort to plan a strategy, but it’s not rocket science. It’s about having a mind-set to focus on how to best serve your existing customers, potential customers, and fan base! The tools you use are important, but more importantly, I hope you’re understanding the process and the strategy of how to use the tools.

Personal Branding’s Small Giants

I didn’t want to leave this section without giving you a few more examples of how business owners, local consultants, and entrepreneurs are rocking their celebrity CEO status!

Diane DiResta is a presentation coach who helps speakers speak better. Since the summer of 2018, she’s put out the third edition of her book Knockout Presentations. She also posts videos to LinkedIn. I’ve observed how Diane has gone from having a little digital presence to a LOT of digital presence. Gary Vaynerchuk posts lots of content every day. Most of us can’t do this, as we don’t have a team to help us get that done. However, people like Diane, with limited time and resources, can do one useful video a week.

Know what your audience wants, and be very specific in the information you provide to them. Diane’s information is all about being a better speaker; your information is going to be about what’s important to your audience. Success in using digital media is all about frequency—

posting to Twitter several times a day and to LinkedIn at least once every few days. Of course, it’s got to be quality. This sounds simple, but she’s building her brand and becoming the go-to source for speakers and communicators by continually updating her social platforms. I vividly remember one of her videos about how to smile for photographs. Instead of saying “cheese!” which creates a fake smile, Diane suggested saying “money!” giving you a more natural smile.

Jimmy Newson is another amazing professional. His specialty is inbound marketing, generating leads for a product or service. Jimmy speaks on a regular basis at the New York Public Library; each audience attracts around thirty to fifty attendees. Is Jimmy going to be globally famous doing this? No, but by consistently giving insight (for free) to an audience of business owners, Jimmy continues to enforce his celebrity CEO status. Not only is his name blasted to thousands of inboxes in library emails, he’s also reaching a very defined and niche audience of experts who need his insight and his services.

Let’s look at Joe Apfelbaum, the most connected guy in New York City! Joe’s known for taking selfies—lots of selfies. I have selfies with Joe from various events over the years. He’s also known for connecting with people through LinkedIn and promoting others overall. Many people think personal branding is all about self-promotion, but Joe’s style maybe works even better. He promotes other people, and over time they’re going to be promoting him, in one way or another. Hey, I’m promoting him now!

My friend Daniel Johnson has an upstart company, Get Up Inc. Daniel motivates people to better health and a better life. He’s using Instagram in a powerful way to show people, un-edited and in near “real time,” how they’re working out and how he’s motivating them. Furthermore, Daniel has live events where he brings people together. There’s something about live events that will always be endearing. We can do AR, VR, and every other R, but the best R is in REAL life.

Elaine Pofeldt recently launched a book, The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, chronicling the journey of people who are one-person businesses but making over $1 million a year. Elaine’s not a social media butterfly; however, she’s used the power of live events quite successfully to generate interest in her book and build her own personal brand.

While social media is an easy and important way to build your brand, there are many other things you can do to build a fan base, to build your brand, and get recognized!

Jen Slaw is a speaker, entertainer, juggler, and mom to an adorable toddler—who’s learning how to juggle. While you might think that anyone with these talents and skill set has it easy, Jen has to work hard to build her personal brand, just like everyone else. What she’s done is not just to juggle and speak but to do “huggles.” When Jen performs, she gives a gentle hug to someone and juggles while hugging.

Building your personal brand is about telegraphing what can make you special, what can make you different, to the audience. It’s about how you stand out.