Productivity hack: How to build your Personal Brand & create Content when you're busy
If there is one thing we know for sure than it’s this:
The future of work doesn’t slow down. No one wants to wait longer or getting less done.
At the same time, the expectations are also higher
With more access to information thanks to technology and the www, we have more choice than ever before and with that, also more competition.
Now that we’re working remotely and virtually it also means that it’s never been more important to show up, speak up and share your journey aka: build your Personal Brand and manage a strong reputation, online and offline.
It isn’t just a nice to have anymore. It is a necessity and one of the key skills everyone needs to get better at.
Good news is that more and more people realise this.
If you’ve been googling ‘how to build a personal and ‘how to be more productive during covid’ turns out you’re not alone: they’re one of the most common Google searches right now.
Well – this is why the topic of October was high performance and productivity in the Future of Work Campus to share tips, tricks, tools and hacks how to be and do our personal best sustainably, without burning out.
If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, epi 12, I’d highly recommend you to do it because 2 of our industry insiders, Mark Turner and Sam Holston shed light on the art & science of high performance and practical steps to take right now; no matter where you are at.
Knowing and mastering the art of high performance is key to be and do your best in your current personal and professional life.
But what really excites me about making this a priority is that it creates space to fit in activities that go beyond the working in your career or business so you can work on it and grow even further.
And what I mean by it is building your Personal Brand because a Brand can pivot as it’s multi-faceted. It’s more agile and flexible compared to building a career or business that’s based on a certain skill, experience or specialisation.
Your Brand is your reputation and given we all change jobs more frequently, knowing how we can use our point of difference and commercialise it is basically your insurance.
A lot of people start realising this but when I start working with my clients who are already convinced and understand the importance of building their personal brand to get ahead in their career or business, the biggest struggle or challenge why they either haven’t started prior to us working together or their concerns investing in building their reputation further is their fear of overwhelm, the lack of time to pursue personal branding activities every day.
They rarely get to all the priority one items on their do-list, so personal branding activities usually go right down the list (if they even make it).
Sound familiar?
Well, then don’t worry!
Because here’s the one powerful yet most simple technique that will allow you to show rather than tell your value, build a strong brand without adding items to your already overflowing calendar or causing you anxiety:
And this 1 technique is:
Live Your Personal Brand (our loud)
The only way you can stay consistent and committed to building your Personal Brand is to integrate it into your everyday life and simply share it, take people on the ride with you.
As also Gary V always says: document rather than create and what easier way to do it than by simply taking people on the journey:
· What do you do today?
· How do you do it?
· What are common mistakes you see people making?
· Which tools are your go-to’s?
· Why do you do what you do?
· How do you live out your values?
· What are you experiencing and what did you learn from it?
· What do you want to learn more about?
See – all of these angles are already worth at least 2 posts each already, without having to formally ‘create’ anything
What it comes down to actually getting some traction with your actions and your content that you share are 3 things:
- Be very clear what’s important to you, how you live by those values and bring them to life and of course, how you want to come across.
What is it that you want other people say about you?
What would be a good word to describe you?
This is the foundation of you deciding what type of content you want to share and commit to it ongoingly.
So for example: if one of your values is learning and ongoing development and you want to work for a company and team who shares the same values and makes training and development a priority, then is is what you want to talk about is:
- what books you read and your learnings from them;
- the courses you attend and how you implement your new skills;
- the associations and memberships you belong to and give shout outs to speakers and facilitators you’ve met along the way.
Once we know how a person wants to be perceived based on their values in life and what and who they want to attract to their little bubble, we know the type of content that’s required. In this case, it would be a focus on educational content over inspirational (but again, it comes down to the personality type and how much of a blend would be best).
From there, we always work out 5-7 content pillars which are broad topics that align with the positioning and that the person can talk about.
So let’s take the earlier example of someone who’s value is learning and development and let’s say they’re a digital marketer. The categories we can talk about are:
- Trends (industry and/or profession)
- Tools
- Stories
- Specific platform or social media channel if that’s the specialisation
- Data & analytics for digital marketing
- On the go (which would be the examples we discussed earlier, from sharing what types of book they read to the conferences they attend etc). It can also nicely align with the trends and tools content pillar.
See – this is what it means you show rather than tell.
You literally show people behind the scenes and how you live by your values. So much more powerful than telling it and also saves you a lot of time because you’re literally just taking a snippet or a screenshot of what you already do.
- Second: it comes down to having methods and habits: for me, the only way to stay consistent and also never run out of ideas (which for me is a sign of high performance because you’re in flow state, you enjoy the activity but it’s also a bit of a challenge) is to establish a routine and set up systems that makes it easy for me to incorporate those activities and be more mindful with it.
So for example, I use a dual filing system because not finding stuff drives me crazy and then I get mad when I realise how much time I’ve wasted searching for things. So when I realised that, I created a bit of a system around that:
For short take outs from podcasts I listen to, webinars I attend, conversations I have, ideas that come up for a post etc during the week, I simply take notes on my iPhone.
There is a section called podcast take outs and it’s not a specific order- it’s literally last in, first up but I often go through those notes all the way to the end and always get inspiration from it.
My 2nd filing system is for long-form content and it’s two-fold because it’s platform-specific:
For email newsletters like Google alerts that I set up to receive as daily emails for keywords I’m interested in, I save it in email folders
For attachments, like industry reports, research paper, e-course material that I go through I use my G-drive and have the folders named the same way that I named my email folders.
I categorise them with topics rather than types, so for example it’s called Personal Branding rather than newsletter or white paper.
But it’s a personal preference and whatever it is that makes it easier and quicker for you to use, go for it.
And then on Sunday, which is my content creation day because it’s quiet, emails are turned off, phones don’t ring it’s when I go back to those notes and ideas and can turn them into tangible assets.
I love Sundays for doing this as I can come up with something creative much quicker because of the lack of distractions but also because it also feels more relaxed. Getting things done quicker also keeps me interested in continuing to do it.
- Lastly- the 3rd element to staying consistent is to plan & schedule ahead.
So when I sit down for a couple of hours on a Sunday, I firstly look at the calendar and map outs what’s ahead and I already know.
So it could be a special holiday, a certain event that I want to promote, an upcoming collaboration, launch, my monthly 1h express personal branding photoshoots or anything else that is important to highlight.
This is the first type of content that I create and space out over some time.
Depending on the event, it could be anything from 1 week out up to 2 months.
So for example- it’s the 18th Oct 2020 that I’m writing this episode and I know it will be released on the 10thNovember.
One of my biggest events this year is the big relaunch of the LinkedIn Academy which is a 4-modules step by step program that teaches everything that you need to know to make the platform work for you.
I chose the timing because I know especially over Xmas and New Years (and now also with Covid), we spend a lot more time online and networking the right way is key to getting your next career or business opportunity.
With also a bit more downtime for many over the break, this is the perfect time for people to invest in themselves so I start creating content around this topic (including today’s episode which is a small chunk of the course on content creation) already at the time I’m writing it, so mid of October to give people enough lead way and not surprise them last minute.
Same goes for your own goals – it may not be a launch of some sort because you’re an employee but your goal might be to get on a board, to step into a more senior role, to get more speaking engagements etc… whatever it is, key is to build a roof before it’s raining aka – give yourself some time to make this goal a reality without the overwhelm and without the disappointment of not getting any traction.
Now back to the content creation:
Once we know the key dates, the important events and the correlating topics for this, I create one piece of long-form piece of content.
Initially it was a blog, now it’s a podcast, but I basically write it, record it and then repurpose it into a website blog post, at least 5 social media posts, 1 download document, an audiogram, Instagram stories and all of the goodness
From there, I have already at least 5 different pieces that I can use to promote the episode or the blog or the download and can pepper it in over a few weeks even. Some of the pieces are kind of everygreen as they refer to a statistic, a quote or a tip that was created for this particular topic but at the same time, also works for my other content pillars.
A tool that I use to schedule content ahead is Buffer.
What I do is I select the release date of the podcast which is always a short audio preview.
That goes out on a Tuesday.
Then on a Thursday I usually have another snippet which could be a ‘how to’ or a tip etc from that episode. Then I’ll do another one on Sunday.
One thing that is important for me though is that it doesn’t come across as automated to the T which is why I leave out some white spots in days that I use to talk about something in real time, like events that happened or conferences that I spoke at or simply any interesting experienced that I had on the day.
So for example, I know that I host a monthly expert panel discussion and I also know that I want to talk about it 2 weeks prior to the date to get people aware of it, tell them who the speakers are, what the discussion will be about, final chance to register etc.
So whilst the lead up to it is scheduled because it’s something I know in advance, the Thursday after the discussion which is always a Wednesday is kept empty because I will write up a summary with key take outs and any observations that I had either the same night (however, schedule it for the morning after as more people are online in the morning) or I literally write it in the morning of the publishing.
But what you can see – even just on this one event, I have already at least 7 different posts to use across 2 weeks.
From the announcement to the intro of the speakers to any facts related to the topic to last chance to register to my personal experience with the topic to a follow up with learnings.
This way people also see what you’re up to in real time whilst not getting surprised with any announcements.
So you see – this is in the end what building your Personal Brand comes down to.
1) Being clear of your ideal reputation and the positioning that helps you to be associated with this
2) Becoming more aware of your day to day experiences and interactions which also forces you in a good way to be more alert how you respond, what you learnt, why those things happened, reflecting on the day that was, looking out for beautiful snapshots whilst experiencing it rather than just living through the day.
3) Finally, being more prepared and planned out ahead to give you more flexibility in your day to day as you don’t have to force anything; you don’t have to try to come up with someone witty or insightful on the spot and you don’t have to be annoyed with you to not follow through your intentions.
So, there you have it!
The one thing that will help you to build your Personal Brand also when you don’t have time so you can get ahead in your career or business without the overwhelm: and that is:
Live your Personal Brand out loud.
And that means:
- Document rather than create
- Create systems and habits around the activities
- Plan ahead
