Having been trapped in my head for several years, my most recent book Turnover Is Vanity, Profit Is Sanity was freed from my mind by Georgia Kirke and her team at Write Business Results (WBR).
Georgia, a recent winner of the Ultimate Entrepreneur 2021 Award, established her business in 2015. She works with busy, growth-focused entrepreneurs who want to become published authors and build a strong, credible personal brand.
Entrepreneurs don’t always fully understand the connection between sharing content and personal branding; the misconceptions are irritating. The first thing I wanted to know from Georgia is how she describes personal branding, and why entrepreneurs need to be paying attention to it.
Why personal branding matters
Georgia: “Your personal brand is your reputation. Content is any information that you produce and put out into the world as it relates to you and your business. When you are building your personal brand using content, the broader aim is to create a sense of community in and around you and what your company does. You want to do that so that you start building collaborative relationships rather than transactional ones.
It’s really important to get this right so that consistency is one of the hallmarks underpinning your brand.
When you’re consistently sharing the right type of information with the right level of detail for your intended audience (and it’s genuinely value led), you’re empowering people to come to you first. This is a far more powerful way to begin a relationship than just pestering people.
Your personal brand is how you build strong client relationships, and optimize the lifetime value of your client relationships.”
Return on investment
My background is in direct response marketing which served me really well. I found it difficult to transition to this new world of personal branding. I disliked the whole idea of content marketing because it felt like a justification for people doing shit that did not produce results.
It’s hard to track the return on investment based on what people consume, but I know that pound for pound my podcast is my best marketing method. I use Georgia’s team at Write Business Results to manage and produce it.
The frequency with which new mastermind clients come to me and tell me they have binge-listened to my podcast shows that it’s added significant value to my business over time. I can’t break it down into a return on investment on one podcast but it clearly works.
The right positioning in the marketplace makes it easier to sell and attract new clientele.
Georgia: “One of our clients, Caroline Sanderson, has already received more than 1200 per cent ROI on her book, The Salon Jedi. It’s a real commercial asset when it’s done well. We work with entrepreneurs who we can see have a reasonable chance of making five if not six figures in the first 12 months after publishing.”
Cornerstones
I wanted Georgia to explain the cornerstones that entrepreneurs need to consider to bring together their personal brand in a way that is as profitable as this.
Georgia: “Some of our clients have built eight-figure businesses with no sales team. Personal branding is really powerful. There has to be a strategy to tie it all in together.
When you look at content and the way it moves around the internet you’ll notice three particular types that pack more of a punch than others. Those three are books, blogs and podcasts.
Books are permanent and come with incredible authority and credibility. You’ve got a lot of time with your intended audience so the book is reverse engineered to suit your goals and meet the needs of the reader.
When you’ve established the right tone of voice people will search for you on all the other online platforms. The book becomes the hallmark of your personal brand and you’ve got two years worth of social media posts right there.
You’ve got all the inspiration you need for your podcast and they can be turned into blogs. Your book communicates key principles and ideologies, your podcast is real-time conversation, and your blogs can bring in 400% more traffic to your website. The increase in traffic is exponential.
When I went from blogging now and again to writing one blog per week visitors to our website increased from 20 to more than 15,000 over the space of four months.
I’m a big fan of intelligent repurposing of content as long as it’s done with your audience in mind.”
Time pressures
I know that the content that WBR creates for me is prolific. I’m really happy with the team, but I’m sure that the most common complaint from entrepreneurs is that they’re too busy to do this. I wanted to know how we can encourage them to reconsider.
Georgia: “Sharing regular content is no longer optional. If you’re not visible and building an online platform or community you will find it increasingly difficult to compete.
Most entrepreneurs don’t realise how much we can do for them. Working with a ghostwriter can be challenging if the author’s tone of voice gets lost. It is better to be working with a team who can centrally manage all of it for you.
Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach® talks about unique ability; nobody knows your content better than you but you probably don’t have the structure so having somebody to help you strategically plan and lead you through the process of speaking your content means they can then go on to write, edit, proofread and design.
You don’t want to be out there like a rugged solopreneur looking for individuals to do that; it’s a timesuck. You need a team who can do that for you so your personal brand and reputation expand.”
Considerations
I think if you haven’t experienced the power of personal branding you don’t fully appreciate the long-term benefits.
There are three things you need to consider:
- The upside
- The downside
- Minimise
The upside
In the past month I’ve had someone read a book I had published in 2016 Breeding Gazelles: Fast Growth Strategies For Your Business, fall in love with it and become a customer. The ROI is greater than you realise.
The downside
There isn’t a choice around building a personal brand any more. If you aren’t doing it you’re being left behind, and if you aren’t consistent you’ll quickly lose traction.
Minimise
Don’t make building your personal brand more difficult than it needs to be. Nobody needs another plain vanilla book that’s mediocre. You need to stand out from the noise. I wanted to know how Georgia and her team helped entrepreneurs like you develop a unique and catchy voice.
Georgia: “It’s one of the most important ingredients to a piece of content performing commercially. The content has to be reverse engineered to meet certain criteria. You need to have clarity.
We ask our clients how they want to be perceived. Most of the time they say they want to sound like themselves. We ask them what draws people to them? Sometimes they don’t know. What we recommend then is that you go out and ask 10 different people (friends, family, colleagues) that you know and trust and ask for five words or qualities that they appreciate about you.
They’ll give you objective answers that will help us develop the tone of voice, then we get really clear on the intended audience, the topics to write about, and the results the entrepreneurs want to achieve.”
Georgia will be presenting on how to build your brand and accelerate business growth whilst enhancing your reputation and building a strong community on September 21 and 22. Drop us an email for more information on how to get involved.
You can download the WBR personal branding scorecard to identify your brand strengths and weaknesses, or email Georgia and her team at Write Business Results to find out how they can support your business to stand out.
You can hear my full conversation with Georgia Kirke on the Dan Bradbury podcast.
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