Personal brand: Week 07, 2021

You'll start seeing ✅ ❌ emojis in the personal brand reports.

They are my simple todo system.

What has to be done and already was on the personal front side.

Monday

When writing longer posts, I noticed that the visual transitions between chapters are not clear.

So I decided to change the style a bit:

It's a tiny detail, but I think it nicely improves the content readability.

Everyone wants to write well and be able to create high-quality content. But it takes time to polish the craft.

Twitter

You have people on Twitter that invest the time into publishing on Twitter.

Then you have the spammers that are all over the place.

One main thing that I need to solve for Twitter is finding high-quality people to follow. People who Tweet high-quality tweets and not just what they think of in that exact second.

Curated feeds provide value and allow one to use Twitter in a focused way to improve the craft.

❌ Table of people that I follow and why. What they Tweet about? How engaging is their audience?

❌ Regularly check what people that invest in Twitter-like comment on. A lot of those replies alone are worth it.

✅ Updated the Twitter profiles again:

It's a tiny little change 🔬 & 👨🏻‍💻, but it clearly distinguishes the personas.

❌ Develop the 1h Twitter daily process. Replies, drafts, posts...

❌ Log how well did specific interactions on Twitter do?

Now that I'm a bit more active on Twitter I've noticed that people care how they can be heard and make money/sell. Sure it's about providing value, blah, blah.

But selling and freedom is the main point for most.

Skills useful in personal brand building:

• copywriting
• sketching

Tuesday

❌ Share Personal brand building on Indie Hackers. Create a Life experiment progress page.

Joined a meet up on personal CRM (Customer relationship management). We discussed how to log all social interactions meticulously. I have to admit that I had this in the back of my head but seeing it in action was well wired 😂 Not sure it's worth the effort.

Wednesday

Discussion on the Character of Knowledge entrepreneurs.

People buy people, especially in the knowledge world.

When we don't know a lot about a topic, we see how much we like the person and not whether they are an expert. We lack the knowledge to determine if the person is an expert. Sure there are testimonials from other customers, but they are usually biased.

It's the person's character that keeps us engaged in the community and not the brand.

Many fairly famous creators have their own team, an entire personal media agency behind their personal brand.

Now people want to be close to you as a person. We all crave the human connection. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't abuse it.

Provide the value through your character; don't build a character fine-tuned to sell.

Kardashians are one example of that.

I decided to share my true character for building a personal brand. Why? It's who I am. There's no need to come up with things. I simply am who I am if you like it good if you don't great.

But that doesn't mean that I share everything from what I eat, ... At least not everywhere, at least not as the central part of my content. Suppose it fits the narrative, sure if it doesn't throw it out.

So I share who I am but through a focusing lens. Yes, I deliberately choose what I write about in each channel.

Once you're super famous (millions of audience), you can afford to be all over the place.

When you start building, you don't know what to focus on, yet you don't have an audience to test things out. It's a bit of the chicken-egg type of problem.

So go broad and yes you will shout into the void. But all that shouting will help you find the initial niche. Then double down on that and fuse into it who you are. Then, later on, you can branch into other directions.

Explore mode: broad.Build mode: a tiny niche.Why?

• If you write to reach multiple people and provide value for them. Focus.
• If you write for yourself, then you don't need a niche.

Niche will get you noticed in the crowded world. It helps you push through the noise.

When you set out to create new things, people will judge. They will judge a lot. If you're not careful, it can consume you.

Thursday

I might be improving my craft, but before I get to the pros' level, I'll need to invest in the craft lot more time.

It's pretty frustrating because I see that I'm making progress. I'm clearing up many open questions, figuring out what to do, yet results: audience size, clicks, views, purchases are not going anywhere.

They will. Eventually. At the moment, the payoffs are small. Like one like there, a comment, reply, observation from a reader, ...

It sound's like nothing, but it's a lot because a year ago none of that existed.

A new type of content that I could try out:

And one more on the personal brand and why they are so appelaing:

BTW I'm a big fan of Basecamp founders DHH and Jason Fried.

Friday

I bought an agency marketing guide. Hope it wasn't a waste of $$.

The agency model: a business, firm, or organization that provides a specific service. Web design, marketing, for example.

The guide will help me start thinking more like a salesperson/business person. Because I'm not one, but to be at least a bit successful I'll need to become one.

If the course, guide writing/selling doesn't work out, I can always try to find clients and sell my skillset as a service to get the cash. Not ideal but I'm not saying no to this.

Saturday

I figured that I should share and emphasize that I'm sharing my learning journey. Everyone is looking for an edge, and sharing my personal brand journey can drive a lot of attention to my main thing.

Use the tips of marketing and personal brand as a lever for the rest of the products work.

If my past failures made me who I am today, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Every investment in terms of money, time paid off.

Sunday

Worked on Twitter strategy.

Replying on Twitter is also becoming easier and easier.

I have too many options and ideas. It's so frustrating. I know I need to double down on one and mindlessly pursue it. I'm afraid that I'll pick the wrong one. I understand that the focus will help and that I can always bounce back.

Not sure which product idea to pursue first ...