Who remembers when we all had Facebook and connected with genuine friends and family? In the early years of Facebook, I loved it, I lived for it even! I have family scattered all over the world and with young kids I could ensure that my brother and uncles and their families could watch my kids grow up and likewise I could watch their kids and grandkids too. I had a closer connection to my two uncles (my mum and dad's brothers) who lived in the US and Canada than I ever would have done without the internet. We were all truly connected. We would share photos and jokes and memes and it was a great place to “hang out”.
Now though, the family photos are long gone and it is like stepping into a noisy pub with a bunch of strangers all trying to shove their wares in your face and get you to buy from them or shove their particular flavour of politics down your throat (yes … I am guilty as charged on both of those on occasion). With so much white noise out there and with it being increasingly difficult to get to page one on Google even for an obscure search term, how the heck do you get noticed? The simple answer is - with difficulty!
People are always shocked to hear that I'm actually quite introverted, don't get me wrong I can talk for England but I have always had a thing about white noise. You know all that background noise that just goes on and on and on and it makes it really difficult to hear what people are saying? That noise makes me want to be a tortoise and stick my head back in my protective shell.
Yet I look around and there are some people that are just there all the time - doing lives, posting constantly, putting up videos, and memes and doing ALL THE STUFF. I always think these are the people who are successful but the truth is that if they were ALL THAT then they wouldn't have the time to be creating and adding heaps and heaps to all this white noise.
Beyond any shadow of a doubt if people don't know who you are then they can't buy into your brilliance. That is a fact.
I'm a people watcher, I love nothing more than observing people's behaviours and the one thing I've noticed with the people who really are successful (rather than those just making a lot of noise) is that they are the go-to expert in their chosen field. But there's thousands of experts so what makes these people stand out? I hate to do it but I'm going to throw a buzzword in here - Personal Brand. When you think of personal brand you (or I) automatically think of the Beckham's or Kardashians who have built incredible personal brands and personal wealth. But let's face facts, I'm no Victoria Beckham that's for sure.
So what is a personal brand I hear you ask! Well I was doing a training this week and my coach described it purely as:
Your personal brand is the thing that you want to be known for.
That's it! It really is as simple as that. What do you want to be known for and then you make sure all your messaging is that.
This is my list of what I want to be known for:-
Wix website designer. No strike that, I want to be known as THE Wix Website Designer!
My Designed in a Day website design service - because it is such a fantastic and efficient way of working and I love nothing more than helping others showcase their brilliance.
The go-to person for advice on designing a high-converting, lead-generating website
But also I want to be known for the person who genuinely cares about new businesses and emerging businesses as well as helping people level-up - wherever they may be now!
Now that I know what I want to be known for, that simplifies my messaging and to simplify it even more, I pick just two platforms and I concentrate on them. The first platform is Facebook but not just wildly posting white noise. I am in a number of business groups and I try and nurture relationships within those groups. I am happy to do group take-overs and spend a day posting value-based posts full of hints and tips on up-levelling a website (whatever the platform), this in turn leads to podcasts which I'm always happy to be a guest on and occasionally speaking engagements. I now have a newsfeed eradicator on my computer so I can't see anything in my newsfeed and I have to physically go into groups to make the effort to connect. This ensures that I'm not sucked into that vortex of noise and I can spend my time constructively.
The other platform I usually concentrate on is Pinterest (although due to having some personal stuff go on this year I've not been as prolific as I normally am), I love this platform as it is a visual search engine and rather than it be a one hit wonder with a post on other platforms and then it disappears forever, Pinterest pins gain traction over time!
My advice therefore is to funnel everything down into what do you want to be known for and then think about just two or three places where you feel you can break through some of that white noise.
Your logo and colours just make you memorable and help you stand out from the crowd but they aren't the key to your personal brand, just remembering what you want to be known for and giving that is the first step to breaking through all the noise out there.
Finally, a big huge thank you to everyone that responded to the sorts of website templates you'd like me to include. I've had a big response and I'm hoping to get the first templates live shortly. If you didn't respond last time just let me know what industry you are in and I'll add it to my list to try and get a template designed for that.
All the templates will be interchangeable - with really clear guidance on how to swap it all around (pictures, colours and fonts) to suit your own business.
All of them are full of hints and tips on how to fill them out - heck I even more or less show you what to write in each section and each comes with it's own workbooks, how-to mini-trainings (none are more than 7 minutes long) to help overcome overwhelm.
Designed by You templates will be the next best thing to having a bespoke website designed by me!
