Summary
- Building a personal brand is key to scaling a business; it starts with sharing what makes you unique and maintaining a strong reputation.
- Platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and podcasts offer easy ways to go viral and share your story.
- A strong personal brand, like Ryan Reynolds', can help sell products and launch businesses effortlessly; Authority Builders made $94,000 in its first month thanks to a solid brand foundation.
- Personal brands increase job opportunities and networking; people recognize and trust a good brand, which can also lead to smart equity opportunities—offering your knowledge instead of just money.
- Video content, especially on YouTube, is the most effective way to build a personal brand due to its reach and engagement; even if you're an introvert or prefer writing, you can script your videos for a better outcome.
- Podcasts are great for reach and engagement, especially if you enjoy casual and authentic conversations; starting your podcast or appearing on others can boost your brand.
- Social media and blogging are less engaging and have lower reach; however, they are scalable and necessary components of a content strategy.
- Your personal brand and content should reflect your authentic voice and beliefs, such as integrity and positivity.
- Regularly post content that helps others and addresses community issues, pulling ideas from your audience to give them what they want.
- Monitor progress through engagement metrics like video view time, podcast downloads, and website traffic, not vanity metrics like likes and followers.
- Employ lead magnets on your website to grow an email list, which can help boost your content reach further.
- Growing a personal brand takes time and consistent effort; the first year is especially about finding your voice and understanding your audience.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting by finding what makes you unique. This is the core of your personal brand and is what will make others remember you. Think about what you love and what you're best at, like how Ryan Reynolds uses his humor and honesty.
A good way to get started is by using free or low-cost platforms like YouTube or starting a podcast. Video content is powerful because it lets people see and hear from you directly. If being on camera feels tricky, write scripts for your videos, just like me. For podcasts, you only need a microphone. It's a great choice if you enjoy chatting informally.
Next, make sure you have a personal website. It doesn't have to be fancy. This is where you can send people who are interested to learn more about you or sign up for email updates. Use lead magnets, like free guides, to grow your email list.
Engage with your audience regularly by posting content that helps them. It's important to respond to what they like and want. This builds trust and community. Try posting YouTube videos weekly and make sure to keep sharing across different social media platforms.
It's crucial to monitor your progress by looking at how people engage with your content. Check how long people watch your videos, how many download your podcasts, and how your website traffic is doing. Don’t worry about likes and followers much—focus on meaningful interactions instead.
Growing a personal brand takes consistent effort, but by focusing on sharing valuable, authentic content, you’ll set the right foundation for success.
Quotes by Author
#### "Building a trusted personal brand was key to my success"
#### "Platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Apple Podcast want you to go viral"
#### "Your story, how you're different, and your reputation make up your personal brand"
#### "If you have a personal brand centered on Integrity, people know that you'll get the job done"
#### "Personal brands allow you to launch new businesses on easy mode"
Full Transcript
in this video I'm going to show you how to create a personal brand that's going to allow you to scale business like you've never seen before in case we haven't met before my name is Matt digy I'm the founder of dignity marketing lead spring the search initiative the affiliate lab digity links Authority Builders and the Chang myio conference and I can tell you one thing for sure none of this would have been possible without building a trusted personal brand I fell into it by accident back in the day all the cool SEO kids used to hang out in a forum called Source wve it was there where I met a dude named Jason who later became my business partner for an agency he would handle the Fulfillment I would handle the marketing huh wait a second how was I supposed to do that I didn't have any experience with marketing well I figured step one was to create a website to attract eyeballs to the service and thus digity marketing.com was born in this ridiculously embarrassing State and then I started publishing blog posts sharing interesting stuff I was learning by cracking Google's algorithm eventually it started taking off and I was featured on sites like Forbes the New York Times and inc.com but the thing is today building a personal brand is 10 n 100 times easier there's platforms like Twitter Youtube and apple podcast that want you to go viral the better you do the better they do for example I got over 100k subscribers here on YouTube and I only really started a couple years ago there's a process to this whole thing and in this video I'm going to share all the secrets with you and trust me in this coming age of AI personal branding is going to become the most powerful form of marketing as people increasingly crave Humanity in their interactions but real quick if you appreciate content like this let me know by dumping some love on the like button whenever I take a break from being an SEO YouTube monkey my videos get less views so a simple like button smashing lets me know to to produce more on topics like this now in case there's any confusion let's define what actually is a personal brand it's your story how you're different than everyone else but most importantly your reputation what people say about you when you're not in the room and all this adds up to an indication of the value that you bring with your products and services if you have a personal brand centered on Integrity people know that you'll get the job done if you're a flaky bum then people won't want to do business with you now the thing is you already have a personal brand are you on the internet do you at least have a Facebook profile then you have a person brand it may not be where you want it to be but this video will get you there now what are the benefits of a personal brand the first is for marketing whatever you're selling will sell easier people connect to people way more than they do companies this gin business was sold for $610 million how did it get so popular because of this guy Ryan Reynolds AKA Deadpool used his personal brand to grow it his brand brought trust likability and credibility to the product personal brands also allow you to launch new businesses on easy mode businesses you launch start on year three instead of year W when I first launched Authority Builders we did $94,000 in the first month and let's say you're not the entrepreneurial type you prefer to work for others the amount of job opportunities you'll have skyrockets Kevin andig has a great personal brand in the SEO space just look at his LinkedIn resume Riverside Angel Investments feed Le Forbes Shopify G2 atlassian it's nuts speaking of Angel Investments with a personal brand you leverage what's known as smart Equity instead of taking 100% of the financial resource with cash you offer your knowledge and resources instead I personally had some great smart equity opportunities with both Surfer and Bloom other opportunities include networking and access to people that you wouldn't have had access to before then there's free there's tons of software tools that I don't have to pay for but the most important benefit going forward is differentiation in the world of AI I'm placing a big bet on personal branding to become 10x as important in years to come now I want to give you fair warning not all peaches in sunshine when starting a personal brand ever dealt with haters these comments are super typical you'll eventually develop some thick skin but some are going to sting also it's harder to sell a business if it's growth has been attached to a personal brand which makes sense because you're not going along with the sale you're likely going to have to accept a discount on the sale price but that said your valuation is likely to be a lot higher because you use your personal brand to boost the profit then lastly we'll talk about ego if you're not conscious and careful the likes the followers and the praise can get to your head my advice be grateful for the help that you get to give to others not the praise you get from it all right now that you've been briefed and you're ready to start this journey let's get into the steps to create a personal brand here's the high level overview Define your goals Niche down choose your medium know your voice and then create helpful content while constantly improving over time let's start with defining your goals what actually are you trying to do are you trying to get more eyeballs to your product or service or are you trying to attract leads for your acquisition business like Alex rosi whatever it is write it down make it your desktop wallpaper I don't care this isn't a hippie visualization technique the reason is because analytic screens like this give you a huge dopamine hit and it's easy to lose track of your real business goals in lie of vanity metrics like subscriber count next you want to choose your Niche within your Niche remember a personal brand is all about differentiating yourself Gary V's Niche is Business and Entrepreneurship that's crystal clear but within that realm he's all about the hustle and being extremely direct Conor McGregor MMA fighter but his brand is about Showmanship Swagger and making a lot of damn money for myself my Niche SEO is wildly less exciting than MMA but I differentiate myself with my data-backed approach to solving the Google algorithm next you want to choose your Communications medium how will you communicate with your growing audience now there's a few things to take into consideration here first what's your communication style are you great on video or do you prefer writing next your medium needs to fit your audience if your audience isn't on Tik Tok then what are you doing there this pyramid represents the different ways you can communicate the higher we are towards the top the higher the barrier to entry but typically your audience will be more engaged towards the bottom is the opposite easier to enter less engagement that said it doesn't mean that speaking at conferences is the best thing you can do with your time to build a personal brand I'll wrate each of these in a tier list soon but no matter how you plan to communicate you need to start with building a personal website otherwise where are you going to send your leads or at the very least elevate your audience to another level of Engagement like an email list by the way here's a quick word from the sponsor of this video search intelligence this campaign got us big links in websites such as life haacker Welles Online daily record and about 20 other news websites let me show you how we've done it we knew that people will be flying a lot this summer and we knew that journalists will be writing about this topic a lot so on behalf of our client we put together a nice guide about how to fall asleep on the plane then we use mrack to find journalists who write about travel then we put our advice in a nice email and send the tips to the journalists within just a few days the links started Landing securing our client natural placements in really big websites just like this this and this this is a great example about how you can leverage seasonal Trends to earn links to a website anticipate what journalists want to write about at all times and give them the stories that they need they will reward you with some great juicy links I hope this is helpful now back to the video let's start with conferences which I'm sorry to say goes at the bottom at detier conferences have a huge barrier to entry and they're good at generating businesses if and only if the attendees are customers but most of the time you'll be speaking to a room of your peers in my case people don't need SEO Services if they're providing SEO Services themselves the worst part about conferences is the reach you can spend a month preparing a nerve w speech for 300 people or you can spend a day producing a video that's going to reach 10,000 which brings me to the S tier medium video YouTube Tik Tok Instagram this is hands down the most effective medium today for building a personal brand it has the best reach you can repurpose video into social media posts or blog articles your Brand's Moe is protected by videoos intimidating barrier to entry but best of all the connection you make with your audience through video is unmatched check this out every few months I'll release a case study from my agency of the search initiative on my blog it'll give get 5,000 views and generate leads at a 1 to 2% conversion rate if I take the same case study and make a YouTube video of it we're talking 30,000 views at a 2 to 3% conversion rate that's 10 times the leads with the same amount of effort now you might be thinking what if I'm not good on video I'm an introvert I'm a better writer than a talker well then great you're exactly like me script your videos like I do your words will be more intentional and you'll get a better result now how do you get started with video first things first just start you need to get in your reps before you get better next don't worry about equipment and production value hardly anyone's going to watch your first videos anyways after that get on a regular posting schedule and we'll get more into this later I started publishing one video per week in January 2021 at the beginning it was very very slow going but since then I've had single videos reach over 700,000 people you need to put in the Reps now I can talk about YouTube all day but it's beyond the scope of this video make sure to subscribe as I have more content coming out on how to build a YouTube channel coming up soon the next medium we're going to look at is audio at the beach here and what we're talking about here is podcasting you can either be on them as a guest or host them yourself the podcast medium has great reach and also great engagement with the audience many people say that they feel more connected to podcasters even over video because of how casual and how authentic the conversation feels if you love to talk free flow then this is likely your medium to start your own podcast you need a microphone and then once again you just need a freaking start the great thing about hosting a podcast is that you can get people with larger personal brands on your show for interviews which you'll piggy back on to boost your own brand on the the other side of the coin if you're invited to a podcast then you're instantly exposed to Their audience the thing is you need to start somewhere you're not going to get on Joe Rogan without building some cred first but be proactive Outreach to existing podcasts telling them who you are and why what you're doing is interesting and where you've done podcasts before it's ridiculously easy to get on podcast once you get off your ass and try next we're going to get into the medium of writing and this has broken down into both social media as well as blogging we'll look at each individually social media marketing is a c-tier medium the reach is good and the engagement and trust you create is okay but it makes up for that with how easy and scalable social media is if you write an engaging tweet you also just wrote content for LinkedIn Facebook as well as the often slept on YouTube Community you can and should also repurpose your video content and the questions you get on podcasts into social media posts to start on social media you want to genuinely help people on the platforms you're trying to grow on whether that's assisting people in Facebook groups or replying to Twitter threads like this with helpful comments the idea is the Same by the way here a reply to that tweet the last line is pretty spot on to what we've been talking about isn't it the point is to build trust with people on these platforms so they eventually start paying attention to the posts on your personal feed next we have blogging which I hate to say is also a deter medium it's not useless it's just that no one reads anymore when was the last time you read an article from top to bottom no skipping the engagement is low and the reach isn't how it was in the good old days Here's the final rankings of the various mediums to communicate on notice how there's no AER that's simply because video is so far out ahead of the others now before we get into what you're actually going to be communicating about let's talk about your voice your Vibe how do you like to communicate are you funny great get funnier are you a knowledge bomb dropping wisdom machine great drop more bombs what I can say for sure is to be authentic being something you're not is exhausting and the fakeness is going to hold you back from connecting with your audience also think about your branding what are you all about what do you believe in for me I believe in 100% Integrity always doing what you say you're going to do I also have zero tolerance for people being unpleasant to others which is how you get a quick boot from my community I also refuse to participate in any negativity on the internet even when that negativity is at my expense what's the result people associate my brand with positive experience okay okay so what the hell are you supposed to be sharing it's time to start producing content ultimately the goal is to help others share your knowledge share case studies where people can learn from your successes and address problem areas that the community has you can pull your community for these ideas and give them exactly what they want but overall the ideas to give genuine value how much should you post it depends on the medium ideally you want AAP as much as possible but here's some minimums YouTube long form content at least once per week short form video three times per week podcasting try to have a weekly podcast or and to be on one podcast per week in social media at the bare minimum post three times per week the more you engage the more you'll grow but more importantly the faster you'll get better at it the first year is solely about finding your voice it took Alex horos 5 years to hit Top 10 in entrepreneurial podcasts and just look at him now next how do you know if you're doing a good job you need to monitor your progress but you need to know what exactly to monitor let me start with what not to monitor subscribers followers likes and shares these are all vanity metrics they're the dopamine hits that distract you from your overall goal instead you want to look at engagement with video how long are people sticking around and watching your content YouTube Studio gives you tons of metrics like this with podcast how many downloads are you getting with social media how many people are viewing your posts also how many people are enjoying your content are you getting feedback on how your content is helping others are you getting more direct video and social traffic back to your personal or business website but most importantly are you getting closer to your real business goals are you doing more business are you generating more leads are you making more sales now how do you speed up this process what can you do to go into hyperdrive put lead magnets on your website that will collect email addresses once you get somebody on your list you'll periodically share your new content with them which feeds those YouTube Twitter and podcast algorithms allowing you to reach even more people as you've clearly learned by now I truly believe that YouTube is the most effective platform but of course mastering YouTube is well beyond the scope of this video make sure to subscribe because I have more content coming out on it in the near future
