To successfully grow on social media, you will have to fulfill three important tasks for your audience:

• Offer value on every single post
• Nail your branding — both strategically and visually
• Your hook needs to be on point

Within these three areas, the results will vary for solopreneurs and organizations.

The value provided by a medical institute looks different than the value given by a travel guide. A corporation will have a less personal way of addressing its community than a solopreneur. An artist’s Reel-Hook can be flirtier than the hook from a law firm on LinkedIn.

In the end, none of them will succeed on social media, if they don’t get the three tasks above right.

Focus on your value, branding and hook — and you will grow.

Want to know about the differences between PR for solopreneurs and corporations? I’ve written an in-depth article you can find here.

Should Solopreneurs Do Social Media like Corporations? was originally published in The Shortform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Do your ideal clients know what you stand for?

Most people don’t know.

They share their content online every day for months and actually don’t know if the right message sticks with their audience.

They track link clicks and sales — which are both great indicators of traffic — but no good indications of reputation and branding.

In this article, I share with you a quick 3-step-practice I use for my clients to see if they succeed in positioning themselves online as the experts they are.

And I share the elements you can improve if the audit reveals you have to get back to working on your positioning.

Let’s dive right into it.

The First Step In Your Brand Audit

In order to understand if your audience really gets you and knows what you stand for, you have to know what to look for online.

Therefore, the first step is to define one to two keywords you want to stand for and one or two benefits you deliver to your audience.

In my case, these keywords are

• Public Relations
• communication expert
• visibility
• leads through valuable communication

Define these four keywords or key sentences for you. Do it right now on a piece of paper.

Now you’ve defined how and in which situations people should think of you. Let’s find out if they do.

Getting To The Audit Part: What Now?

When I perform a brand audit for one of my clients, I look for these keywords in different areas of their online appearance.

Here’s what I do:

Step 1

First, I hop onto the Internet and open the following sources:

• Google
• their social media platforms
• their website

These are the primary first touchpoints their potential clients have with their brand. They are therefore also those that need to be on point.

Step 2

Next, I work through their content, their pictures, and everything I find online. I look at each piece with the eyes of a reader — their ideal client— and try to identify what the person stands for.

I do the same with the Google search results that come up when I type in the name or business brand of that person.

The first page on Google often indicates how trustworthy the person is. How many articles, blog posts, mentions or interviews do I find in quality media from that person? The more I find, the more trustworthy the reputation of that person.

This is what my Google page looks like. It’s a mix of valuable posts on LinkedIn and interviews in Austrian media such as Horizont and Brutkasten.

While going through the platforms and channels, I write down four keywords that I think and feel this person stands for — again with the eyes of the reader.

Afterward, I look at my four keywords to match the keywords my client wrote down.

Step 3

Now it’s time to interpret the findings.

If 3 out of 4 keywords match the originally defined phrases more or less, that’s a very good sign.

However, if there is no match at all, clients need to get back to work at their positioning.

We would then go through each of the branding pillars:

• visual elements,
• comments and posts, and
• the first page on Google,

and see how we can improve them so they better show your desired positioning.

Let’s look at each of the pillars in more detail.

Visual Elements on Social Media

We, humans, are visual creatures.

50% of our brain is directly or indirectly processing visual information and 65% of us are visual learners. No wonder pictures, videos, and infographics quickly grab our attention. The same is true when we explore new profiles.

What does that mean for you?

Make sure your keywords and what you want to stand for are clearly visible in the visual elements on your social media profiles, such as

• the header on all social media platforms
• the featured section on LinkedIn
• the header section on your website or a landing page.

This is what it could look like:

This is what it shouldn’t look like:

The title image doesn’t tell me anything about the person or what benefits I get when following him or her.

Posts and Comments

In marketing we say, people need to hear a message at least 7 times before they remember it. The same is true for your positioning.

Even more, they need to hear it over and over and over again for years to not forget it. At the same time, you cannot be overly repetitive, otherwise, your work gets boring.

Ideally, you spread your keywords and positioning throughout your posts whenever it makes sense and fits the content.

It doesn’t have to be in everything you create, but don’t fear plugging it into your content every month or every other week. The same applies to the comments you make under other people’s posts.

If you can provide value to the creator AND position your business at the same time, why not do it? As long as your primary goal stays to add value and help people, you can easily include your keywords in your responses and DMs too.

This is what it could look like:

Google First Page

We’re leaving social media for now and turning to the field of Public Relations, meaning cultivating a positive reputation of your brand on other people’s or organization’s channels.

This can be blogs, podcasts, magazines, interviews, TV shows, and much more. If you happen to secure yourself an interview with another creator or media outlet — congratulations.

Make sure it also appears online so it can rank for Google search results and improve your first page.

Remember: The more quality interviews that show up when prospects type in your name, the more trustworthy you appear.

Now, don’t let this opportunity go by without positioning yourself as the expert you are in your field in that interview or guest article.

Try to use the keywords you defined at least once in the interview in relation to your person or your business.

Don’t overdo it. And don’t try to implement the Marketing rule of 7 (mentioned above) in one interview, podcast, or blog article alone. Too much talking about yourself comes across salesy and the contribution will lose its editorial touch.

But add them at least once. You can also refer to a free resource you have or your newsletter to generate more leads.

If you want to go even one step further and find out if your audience already sees you as the expert you are, you can look for one of the following indicators.

Check Other Indicators

Shared expert summaries

It has become more and more popular to share your personal set of experts you trust and admire on social media.

If you made it on the list of somebody, that’s a good indicator you’re bringing across your expertise plus are visible.

Like in this example:

WOM in comments

The example below shows a woman, talking about her struggles with pitching her story to the media.

One of my previous workshop attendees told her to reach out to me as a PR expert because I might be able to help her.

That’s it!

This is one way to find out if your audience understands what you want to say with your content and also recognizes you as the expert you are.

You should do this audit at least once every quarter if not every month to see how your optimizations and changes impact your positioning.

If you do it regularly, you will see improvements.

No clue how to get more visibility and more leads from your marketing? There are 5 common branding myths that prevent many entrepreneurs from scaling their brands. Get the FREE list here.

Enjoy reading on Medium? Buy a membership for full access.

Are You Nailing Your Positioning? This 3 Step Method Will Tell was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“PR is only for big cooperations. I don’t have the time and budget”

I hear this sentence a lot from solopreneurs and it makes me sad. Sad because this misbelief prevents them from using a very powerful tool to build their brand and attract leads.

Truth is, PR is for everybody, not only for big cooperations. Both big and small businesses can benefit from increased visibility and trust.

In the past, I’ve done PR campaigns for many international companies. Now, I’m both working with enterprises and solopreneurs to position themselves in the media.

And from my experience, what differentiates press work in both segments is not the benefits and results, but the tools and story angles used to build their reputation.

In this article, I’m going to walk you through the biggest distinctions in how media clippings are generated by corporations and solopreneurs.

Developing Stories

In Public Relations, everything starts with a good story.

The story is the lowest common denominator.

It’s also the reason why PR is more effective than advertising. With Public Relations and stories, we aim to provide value to the reader, thereby building a positive image that indirectly increases sales because people prefer our brand over another.

Advertising, on the other hand, directly influences people to buy something at that moment.

The story is at the heart of each great press activity you do. But not everybody can tell the same stories. Interestingly, the stories corporates and solopreneurs tell are not too different.

Corporates often share news about or position their

• new products, features, and services,
• their CEO, and
• industry insights.

The same is true for solopreneurs, however, the angle is a bit different.

If you’re a solopreneur, your business is much more concentrated around you as an individual. You alone present your company and everything you do can be tied back to you as a person.

As a result, your stories will root in

• your founder's story,
• your expertise,
• the problem you solve for people,
• your product (if you have a tangible one).

For solopreneurs and individuals, it is often harder to get their media relations going because they still have to prove their credibility to the journalist.

Companies on the other hand, because of their nature, have a bit of a head start. They are perceived as established and trustworthy, simply because of their legal structure.

However, this shouldn’t keep you from starting your press work. If you have the right strategy and process, you’ll soon experience the benefits.

The PR Tools To Use

Like any other industry, PR has changed a lot in the last twenty years and it will continue to evolve.

When I started working in PR ten years ago, it was as simple as writing a press release and sending it to twenty journalists to get five press clippings from it. This is not the case anymore.

Due to job cuttings, which leave more work for one press contact, journalists are overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that many companies and solopreneurs do (poor) PR work.

Nowadays, it’s more important than ever that you nail your story and use the right approach in contacting the journalist. Luckily, there are resources that teach you how the strategy behind great PR work and how and when to use each tool.

Let’s look at the differences between enterprises and individuals.

Corporates

How did the myth emerge that PR is only for big corporates?

I believe this misbelief partly emerged because people see the following activities when they think about PR:

• Press events
• Press excursions
• Influencer Cooperations
• Press boxes
• Media Cooperations

Yes, these activities require more time and money to implement than writing a text for a blog. Two things solopreneurs usually don’t have.

As a soloBRANDeur, you already know that isn’t necessarily an excuse for not trying, because if you have the right strategy and process, everything is possible.

However, enterprises also use

• Press releases
• Interviews

to position themselves.

Solopreneurs

Especially when you start working on your PR strategy, you will first have to build your reputation. As a result, not all PR tools will be suitable.

Instead, you can focus on the following:

• Guest articles in newspapers and magazines
• Guest articles in blogs
• Interviews in all kinds of media
• Press boxes
• Creator collaborations

As the industry becomes more and more digital, you will have even more methods at your disposal.

Public Relations is a creative discipline. You’re welcome to experiment with new story-method-platform mixes all the time. Don’t do what everybody else is doing.

Plus, enterprises are doing that too. They are testing new ideas to see what works for them and how they can stand out. Solopreneurs should do that too.

The Time Invested

Time is one of the biggest issues for self-employed people.

I get it. You don’t have a big team behind you that helps you with selling your services or products, customer service, marketing, design, and administration.

So, you might wonder how on earth you can find the time to do PR like the big corporates, right? Fun fact: You don’t have to.

I’m not going to lie to you. Yes, the way companies do PR does take up a lot of time. That’s why they have full-time employees.

You won’t get a press event with journalists scheduled in five hours. But you can get yourself into one or two media outlets in less than five hours.

And when you do that, you’ll build your reputation over time and become a recognized expert in the field, which leads to

• journalists proactively reaching out to you,
• more leads and customers over time,
• more money coming in in the long run.

Note that I stressed the time factor here too.

PR is not something you do for one or two months. It is not something that brings immediate results, that’s what performance marketing is for.

PR is a long-term strategy to create an image for your brand in public so you acquire clients automatically over the years because they choose you over your competitors.

The factor of time plays out in two ways:

1. You can achieve a lot long-term with limited time investment
2. The more time you invest, the more you achieve short-term

In short: If you have limited time available, go for press activities that don’t require you to set away twenty hours a week, such as sending out interview offers for local newspapers, podcasts, or blogs.

Summing It Up

PR is an important tool to grow a business for both big, established companies and solopreneurs.

The benefits are the same, it’s just the work and methods that change from institution to individual.

Don’t let big campaigns from companies like Red Bull, Nestlè, or Coca-Cola scare you — as a solopreneur, you don’t need them.

You can reach your target audience and build trust in a much more efficient way.

Just starting out with building your brand or not getting any visibility? Here’s a FREE list of 5 common branding myths many entrepreneurs fall for at the beginning.

Enjoy reading on Medium? Buy a membership for full access.

Public Relations: Only For Big Corporates Or Also For You As A Solopreneur? was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We all love cookies.

Some of us like them half-baked, and some like them crunchy, some served cold and others still hot. Can you already smell the cinnamon and melting chocolate?

If you fancy a cookie right now (sorry not sorry), what would you do? You can either bake them yourself or go to a bakery or the supermarket to buy one.

But what if the best cookies in the world are not offered in the bakery or supermarket but in a laundry room? You wouldn’t be able to buy them right now, because you wouldn’t look there.

You could only taste them by luck if you happen to think about washing your clothes too.

This very scenario also illustrates your audience’s experience with your content, if you happen to create on the wrong platform.

It’s like offering freshly baked cookies in an unfrequented corner in the outbacks of Australia or Argentina. Most probably, you won’t reach many cookie lovers.

And this happens to many solopreneurs in the beginning because they don’t strategically choose their social media platforms.

They simply rename their previously private profiles into their company names and start creating there, blind to the results this will have on their organic brand growth.

Instead of fumbling with a broken oven in the dark, you can nail your platform choice in 5 simple steps. And choosing the right platform for your organic growth strategy is the first step to crushing it on social media.

In the hope you just got yourself a cookie, let’s get started:

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟭: 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 Y𝗼𝘂𝗿 T𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 A𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲

As you’re creating content with your audience at the heart, it shouldn’t go unnoticed. You must know who they are, what they think, what they are interested in, what they read, and where they read it.

Knowing your customers well is the only way to make a grounded decision on where you should build visibility for your brand.

Research demographics (age, country, marital status,…) as well as hobbies, interests, and activities they undertake. Once you know your audience, look at the stats of each platform: is your target audience represented there?

Let’s have a look at an example:

You’re a German bookshop specializing in educational books for young adults and want to reach parents between the age of 35 and 50, who are interested in science as well as education. Strong family ties are important to them, hence they are looking for a modern yet meaningful way to connect with their children.

If that’s your main target group, TikTok will likely not be the right platform for you. Why?

Only 7% of TikTok users in Germany are between 41 and 55 years old. The platform is primarily used for entertainment purposes, which means you would have to invest more energy in making your educational content cut through.

Moreover, most parents aren’t easily swayed into buying products by entertaining clips of 10 seconds or shorter, which is what is currently trending.

You might have a more realistic chance to reach that audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Spotify.

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟮: 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 W𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 C𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 Y𝗼𝘂𝗿 A𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 C𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝘀

There is absolutely no way you will build a strong connection with your audience on social media if you keep serving with the wrong content format.

From the audience analysis you did before, you will know what kind of content they are interested in and where they consume it. Now it’s time to take a deeper look at the kind of format you should use.

This, of course, depends on the product or service you offer, your goal, and the type of industry you’re in. But how do you know?

Here are a few areas you can study to find the right format for you:

• Look at the content and format of the competition. Is everybody using video or audio? Is it a good idea to zig here?
• Understand your industry's requirements. Serious or funny? Long-form or short-form? What are clients or partners used to?
• Define which emotions you want to evoke in your audience and which format best helps you create them.
• Ask people from your target audience what kind of content they use on a daily and weekly basis. And when!

Let’s briefly think through two scenarios:

If you’re a manager who wants to start building their reputation as an industry expert to be eligible for higher salaries in the future, you’ll likely be able to demonstrate that better in long-form videos, written articles, or a podcast compared to short video clips.

You might also want to go for a more serious tone of voice.

A voice trainer, on the other hand, will probably choose video and audio over written text, because she can better demonstrate her exercises visually and vocally.

Plus, her target audience already gets a glimpse of the outcome, if they hear how clear and compelling her voice is.

Note: You don’t have to restrict yourself to one format only. It’s always a good idea to experiment and see if you can optimize your results.

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟯: 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗳𝘆 P𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 R𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀

How much time can you invest in your social media presence? Do you have the knowledge and tools to serve on the platform you have identified as the best fit for your brand?

Oftentimes, business people get so excited about building a brand on their selected channel, they forget to ask themselves if they have the skills and equipment needed.

Before settling on a platform, set up a list with all the tools you might need to produce the content, plus how much buying them would cost you.

Ask other people what they had to learn at the beginning of their creator journey and which skills they consider crucial for succeeding.

Lastly, with everything laid out before you, ask yourself if you’re okay with putting in the money to buy the required equipment such as a microphone or camera as well as time to learn and create there.

If you don’t, maybe there’s another platform that better fits your skills and budget.

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟰: 𝗦𝗲𝘁 Your Time B𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁

Organic social media growth itself already needs consistency and dedication.

However, some content and platforms will require more of your time. Video content naturally takes more time and resources — thus money — to complete, than an article.

A YouTube video will also take longer to produce than a 10 seconds clip for TikTok. Not only because of the length of the clips but also due to the quality demands.

Before settling on a platform, I want you to go through your calendar and consider the time you have available for creating content. Write down the hours you have per week and month and try to see if it match the requirements of the platform.

Here’s a very basic outline for a few popular platforms to get you started.

• TikTok: Post 1–2 times a day.
• Instagram: Post once per day (preferably ⅔ Reels).
• Youtube: Post at least once a week to grow in a reasonable amount of time.
• Twitter: Tweet at least daily.
• LinkedIn: Post 3–5 times a week at minimum.

I personally and most of my clients are active on LinkedIn, so I’ll give you this platform as an example.

To produce 8–9 pieces of in-depth, quality content for my clients, I usually need between 5 and 7 hours of work, including

• doing research
• reading through articles and studies
• outlining the content
• writing the content
• editing
• designing pictures or infographics.

Community management and strategic networking are not included, but they are around 30–60 min a day.

Of course, creating video content for YouTube, TikTok or Instagram will be higher.

With that information, you’re able to see how much spare time you need in your calendar to make it on a platform.

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟱: R𝗲𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 S𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 & P𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺-S𝘆𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀

When embarking on your brand-building journey, start with one platform, and one platform only.

Learn the ins and out of this platform, and experiment until you know how to grow there effortlessly. Only then should you think of diversifying your deliverability.

You’ll likely repeat steps 1 to 4 to choose a second social media platform, plus consider your repurposing options. “Why should I do that?” — you might ask.

Because it

• saves you time,
• enables you to test topics, and headlines, giving you insight into different audiences, and
• helps you to maximize your brand reach.

Quite a few platforms share similar content formats, which makes it easy to reuse the amazing content you create for one platform on another.

Instagram Reels for example are very similar to TikToks. Instagram Stories can be automatically shared on Facebook too.

Articles you write for your newsletter can be shared on Medium or LinkedIn.

This way, you only have to think about the content once and can reach more audiences with it. Plus, if you share your video on Instagram and TikTok you can see how the audiences (different age groups) react to it and tie these findings back into your content creation process.

Experimentation and optimization are crucial to succeed in the long term, but first, focus to stand on one platform.

Coming Back To Our Cookies Analogy

To sell your amazing cookies successfully, you need to

• have an amazing recipe that is aligned with your capabilities and time budget.
• understand the tastes and habits of your audience.
• know how to work the machines.
• think about where else you can offer your cookies with minimal effort.

Just starting out with building your brand or not getting any visibility? Here’s a FREE list of 5 common branding myths many entrepreneurs fall for at the beginning.

Enjoy reading on Medium? Buy a membership for full access.

How To Select the Most Effective Social Media Platform For Your Business In 5 Steps was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Media relations are the fertilizer for your business.

Imagine your business as a plant. Maybe a sunflower or bonsai.

A proper social media profile and a website are the soil for your plant. Having strong relationships with the media is the water needed to grow it. Without water, plants die.

You might be thinking I’m exaggerating. But I’m actually convinced that having strong connections to journalists, creators and multiplicators is indeed a significant asset in growing your business — quickly.

Why The Heck Should You Care?

But, maybe you’re an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or business owner wondering why this should be on your busy agenda.

In that case, it might be a good idea for you to read up on the importance of doing active external communication for your business.

Before moving to the 4 easy ways you can start to grow your media relations tomorrow, I’ll give you a short overview of the positive and negative effects a media network can have:

1. If you don’t connect to journalists, you miss out on a big group of multiplicators.
2. Articles written by journalists about you build trust in your personality, expertise, products, and services.
3. The media increases your reach because the medium will likely have a larger audience than you.
4. They know what’s going on in their area and are a great source of inspiration on your topics.

The same is true with creators of course, which I see as extended media.

If you don’t connect with the media, you as an expert, and your business won’t be mentioned in the news, on podcasts, or on blogs and you’ll have a harder time attracting and converting customers.

Now that we’ve established the importance of media relations, let’s look at the best places to build them.

Actively Meet Them At Events

It will not come as a surprise to you that networking is important in business life. But there’s a common mistake many people do:

They go to an event unprepared and wait for interesting people to show up. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

If you do it this way and wait for interesting people to show up and speak to you, you're simply wasting your time. Instead, you must actively build connections.

If you decide to go to an event, do some research in advance. Look at the guest list and google people’s names to identify those that match your cause and interests.

If you already know a press contact you want to connect with, you can also try to find out to which event this person goes and show up there too. This is actually how I build part of my media network in Austria.

To help you get conversations started, prepare a few honest questions for each person. Once at the event, simply walk up to them and start a conversation.

On top: many media houses also organize events themselves. Like the female entrepreneurship day from Wienerin, which is an Austrian lifestyle magazine. Going there, I was able to meet not one but four journalists from that specific medium.

LinkedIn & Social Media

We’re used to connecting to creators, potential clients, friends, and family on social media, but we rarely use this opportunity to bond with journalists or extended media.

That’s a pity — because you’ll find most press contacts on social media as well and they happen to be willing to talk to you. Why won’t they — it’s social media!

There are only two things you should look out for:

The platform you must be active on depends on your country and the industry you’re in.

For example, LinkedIn and Instagram are the most common social media platforms used by journalists in the DACH region. LinkedIn is a general representation of their business profiles and Instagram is used for private cases or by lifestyle journalists.

Twitter, on the other hand, is predominantly used by political journalists in my home country. I’m pretty sure, this is different in the US or UK.

Secondly, you must connect with them the right way. Don’t use LinkedIn & Co as a second sales channel for your products or stories.

Instead, start to interact with their content. Leave meaningful comments, like their posts, send them a customized connection request, ask relevant questions in a DM, do some more engaging, and only THEN — after weeks or months of constant interaction — you can think of pitching yourself.

This way, they might even recall your name and face when you send them an email.

Join an Association or Club

One more way to connect with media partners is by joining an association or club.

This might require you to do a bit of research to find out where journalists or creators hang out and it’s likely you will have to pay a membership fee to be able to join the events and/or email list.

In Austria, we have a club specifically for women working in the media for example.

This is a brilliant opportunity to connect with over 50 female journalists on eye level and, because of the entry requirements (you have to work in the media plus pay a membership fee), the environment will be less crowded compared to meeting them at events.

Over A Coffee

Going out for a coffee comes naturally to us when we think about activities we do with friends or even business partners. Yet again, very few people ask journalists out for an espresso or cappuccino.

Which means when you do, you’ll stand out.

If you’ve created your key media list, you’ll already have the name and contact details. You can proceed and simply introduce yourself and ask them if they would like to talk about their magazine and writing area over a coffee.

This was a very popular method of getting to know journalists ten to twenty years ago. PR people used to take journalists out for lunch, dinner, or coffee all the time to bond.

Now, with more and more press positions cut, which leaves more work for one person, journalists are sometimes tight on time.

So don’t be sad if someone declines your invitation. They will still be more likely to remember your name the next time they see you interacting with their work on LinkedIn or your email in their inbox.

Media Relations Are Relationships

No matter which method you use or if you come up with your own practices, never forget you’re aiming for a long-lasting relationship.

Don’t be pushy or salesy right from the start. In fact, try to not talk about your business and your intentions with them at all when you meet them for coffee or write DMs.

You want to build a personal connection. Be sympathetic and helpful. You want to build trust and that takes time.

So, be prepared to invest time and maybe money upfront (pay for that coffee, join that club) without expecting anything in return right away. Keep loosely in touch with them over the course of months and don’t write them every week.

This way, they’ll remember your name and face and will be more likely to listen to you when your pitch time has come.

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4 Approaches For Building Your Media Support Network You Can Start To Use Tomorrow was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you ever felt forced to write about a topic on social media? And, on top, you didn’t even get any views?

Let’s be honest, we solopreneurs would do (nearly) everything to succeed in the online business game.

Maybe you’ve been told to post five times a day on three platforms and use the same structure over and over again. Because that just works. Yet when you get to the task of creating content, your mind goes blank and you’re unable to get out a single word.

You still write these content pieces, but without excitement, without an emotional connection, and without a personal touch.

The brand you’re shaping in public, just doesn’t feel like you. And it’s likely because you haven’t found your branding sweet spot yet.

It’s also the reason your audience doesn’t resonate with your content yet.

If you thought you have to replicate the practices of more advanced creators 1:1 and test every trend that exists to succeed — this article is for you.

To build and grow a brand that “feels like home”, you have to find your creative sweet spot and slowly work towards your goals by adding small sensations.

Here’s how.

Where Organic Brand Growth Happens

What do you do when you got lost in the middle of a foreign city?

You return to a place you already know and reorient yourself. The same practice also works in branding. The problem? Many entrepreneurs don’t have a home base for their brand, meaning a place they can return to when they got lost in content creation or marketing messages.

One way to find and establish your brand base is Allen Gannett’s concept called The Creative Curve.

The concept explains how people achieve commercial success in any creative field.

To build something that stands out (creatively), you don’t necessarily need talent (it might help though). You need to find the creative sweet spot, that both offers familiarity with your personality and growth potential.

This spot is located at the intersection of what’s novel and familiar.

If you look at the graph, you would get most familiarity in the middle of the curve. This is where we feel comfortable creating. However, we know from other areas in life that our comfort zone doesn’t necessarily hold most of the growth potential.

But how can we combine familiarity with growth? By adding a layer of novelty to our brand.

It means, we’re deviating from the status quo only enough, so we

Through the eyes of our audience, it means we’re offering a brand that is both sage and intriguing.

According to the mere exposure effect, the preference of our audience toward an object increases with the level of familiarity.

But there’s a problem: too familiar is boring. And too new is risky.

We have to establish enough familiarity so that our audience recognizes us and we can build rapport.

However, Solopreneurs Often Do The Following

On social media

They look at other creators and try to imitate them, either in terms of topics, frequency, templates, or methods.

And I understand why. Because we believe the more we act like our idols, the easier and quicker we’ll get to our goals. I did the same.

I studied top creators and tried to dissect their content pieces into topics, forms, and structures — developing templates so I could replicate their process.

The problem? It never felt like me.

The way I used to write posts didn’t sound like me and I believe my audience noticed it too, which is why I never really got traction.

The same is true for trying to push through a specific amount of posts or forcing yourself to talk about topics you don’t care about — just because they are trending.

Yes, some people post twice a day on LinkedIn and it works. But the same people are probably not running a communication agency in the background with ten clients they need to serve. But I do. Which is why I cannot replicate their frequency. And that’s okay.

You don’t have to do what other creators are doing. Instead, establish your own status quo.

Forget trending topics and templated posting schedules and get back to your roots as an expert to create familiarity.

Then, once settled, slowly experiment with methods, topics, or ideas to add sensations for your audience.

In Public Relations

Unfortunately, most solopreneurs don’t do PR for themselves, even though getting messages out on earned channels like podcasts, magazines, or other creators’ platforms is a great way to increase your visibility quickly and build trust among your audience.

Those few creators who understand the importance of adding PR to their marketing mix, often don’t have a strategy in place.

Every month, they come up with new topics that are often only remotely connected to their core business and pitch them to journalists. The problem?

They leave journalists (and if published also their audience) confused due to too many content threads. This confusion is often also visible in their brand character.

Familiarity, however, is created when you spin the same topic in different ways, so it sticks with your audience.

And what about growth?

I want you to dream big and aim for coverage in Forbes or Business Insider. But promise me one thing: you don’t try to fly high quickly, as Ikarus did. Start small and scale in a sensible way, so you’re chances of reaching the sun increase exponentially.

What do I mean by that?

If you’re just starting your PR, don’t reach out to the big magazines, TV stations, or creators straight away. Your pitch and your topic will likely not be perfect yet and you don’t want to miss your shot because of bad preparation.

Familiarize yourself with the process and the mechanics of cold pitching your story, writing guest articles, and being interviewed with smaller media outlets, such as local newspapers or blogs.

Amy Porterfield, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris, all have been mentioned in Forbes or Business Insider but it wasn’t the first interview pitch they did. It was more like the fiftieth.

Plus, by growing from small to big press, you’re also adding novelty for your audience and yourself.

How Do You Get to The Sweet Spot?

We’ve learned we have to establish the status quo and grow from there.

So firstly, answer the following questions for yourself:

• What values do I currently represent?
• How do I want to make business with clients?
• What‘s my core business and where does it match my interest?
• What does my target audience currently know about my industry?
• Are they familiar with my topic or do I need to educate them?
• What are the current industry practices?

These questions help you to understand what you want to stand for and where your business and personal interests overlap. They also show the knowledge level of your audience and how you should approach them to build rapport.

In short: they form your status quo and represent the preference axis.

What about the novelty aspect of the equation?

You know the end result you want to achieve with your brand. After establishing the status quo, you need to add innovations, ideas, new concepts, and unexpected methods one by one to create a sense of novelty among your audience.

By doing that you slowly shift the intersection down the familiarity axis toward the sweet spot, keeping a balance between the personal character of the brand and its growth.

Ideas You Can Implement

Here are a few ideas on how you can create familiarity with your audience on social media, in public relations, and in visual brand design:

• Pick a color and font and use it throughout your visual communication. This way people recognize your content more easily.
• Start and end your newsletter, general emails, or posts with the same introduction or words of goodbye. I for example always write “Alles Liebe” (German for with love) at the end of my email, instead of “sincerely” which all other people use.
• Use the same tone of voice, such as humorous, floral, or straight to the point. Don’t try to write in a way you wouldn’t talk in real life as well.
• Decide on a topic and write it down in twenty different ways, always changing only one element.
• Showcase your current projects and how you’re helping clients right now.

Once you’ve established a brand status quo that you feel comfortable with, you can start moving towards your goal in mini-steps.

Here are a few ideas:

• Start pitching yourself to other creators or small press outlets in your area. Scale by the size of the audience.
• Consider guest lecturing at a university on your topic.
• Write a book about your topic.
• Develop new business models, concepts, or ideas in your area that can become standard resources.
• Become a speaker at events.
• Engage in social, political, or environmental activities if they are of interest to you.
• Launch a course.

Your Take Away Points

The best way to grow a brand and keep its personal touch is to balance familiarity (both for you and your audience) with novel elements.

Before you head to the drawing board, I want you to remember two important principles:

Familiarity isn’t created by copying others. Familiarity is created by being you, developing your voice, and finding the people who see the world through your eyes.

Novelty is not created by jumping on every trend. It’s created by derivating just a little bit from the status quo, so the brand essence is kept intact while you move your audience from one milestone to the other.

Stay true to the roots and topics of your brand, and experiment slowly. This way you’ll scale your brand and it will tell feel like you.

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This Principle Explains Why Your Brand Doesn’t Feel And Look Like You was originally published in Better Marketing on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wistia, a tool that allows you to host, create, and market (live) videos, analyzed 42+ million videos and surveyed 600+ customers to get the latest data on video creation and consumption.

Here are the most stunning stats from their report:

#1 Engagement rate

You can expect an engagement rate of around 50% for a video that takes less than 1 minute to watch. 48% for up to 5 minutes and 15% for a 60-minute video.

#2 Where to place forms?

In 2021, email-capturing forms positioned at the end of the video were most effective. In 2020, “in the middle” converted better.

#3 Fewer video uploads

14.6 billion minutes were watched last year, compared to 12.2 billion in 2020. However, 2021 saw fewer uploads to the platform.

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3 Stats About Video Marketing You Should Know was originally published in The Shortform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“All this is relevant ”

Often said when creating content for the press or social media. Unfortunately, people don’t think everything you do is relevant. Look out for audience value when selecting topics.

“I’m already on social media”

A social media profile is great, but it can only take you so far. It‘s you talking about you on your channels. To build trust among your audience you need somebody else to talk about you on their channels.

“I define my brand”

You define what you want to stand for but you cannot take the recipient (the customer) of your message out of the equation. It’s more important how they see your brand because they talk about you to their peers.

Learn which 5 Common Branding Myths You Have To Kill before you can build successful brands here.

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3 Branding Statements of CEOs You Should Never Say Yourself was originally published in The Shortform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do people do when they are unsatisfied, and nobody listens?

They get loud.

This habit is not only used by children when they don’t get chocolate. It also happens in business life, and it has a name: Brandalism, short for brand vandalism. And for many companies, it comes at a cost.

While children usually don’t remember that one day they had to cry for chocolate, customers do remember bad experiences with companies.

And young children don’t tell everybody how rigid their parents are when it comes to eating sweets. They don’t write complaint letters and distribute them in kindergarten.

But customers do talk about unethical, bad-behaving brands to their peers. They sometimes even try to influence others to think the same. Recent actions show how far customers and institutions go to speak their minds.

Most entrepreneurs don’t want their business to be the subject of brand vandalism. Luckily, you can avoid getting into the battle — this article tells you how.

Moreover, you can use the recent examples of brand shaming as an inspiration for creativity, low-budget guerilla marketing techniques, and customer tendencies on the market.

The Accountability Economy Is On The Rise

Good news travels fast. Bad news travels faster. And on social media, news can quickly become unstoppable.

More and more often, we see people commenting claims, requests, or negative feedback under posts of brands or on business profiles. The movement to a more sustainable and social world has generally fired up this behavior — because many customers don’t feel heard.

Look at the post of H&M, for example, that tries to sell a scarf to its customers. Are people celebrating the fashion piece? Yes, some are. But nearly 50% of the comments have a negative connotation, demanding the fashion brand to change their use of materials.

Comments on social media are only one way for customers to vocalize their opinions.

Some passionate individuals take it one step further and establish entire social media profiles or websites, dedicated to uncovering misleading business practices of brands and bringing them to the attention of the general public.

Here’s an example:

However, commenting on social media or sharing posts is an easy step, used by a larger and larger portion of the public. But it’s only one channel where Brandalism happens.

Recently, an anonymous group hijacked over 500 corporate advertising spaces in a massive coordinated subvertising action across the UK, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and France, replacing adverts with satirical artworks denouncing the role of aviation industry advertising in the climate crisis.

For now, Brandalism affects some industries more than others — fashion, travel, and energy being among them. And it’s certainly concentrated on the big players. But the big question is, will it stay this way?

“Art vandalism is just one tactic,“ Peter Marcuse, founder of an activist group, says to The Drum. “To reach some of the bigger aims on pushing back on unsustainable consumerism and creating more public spaces for other priorities, we need other tactics that aren’t just guerilla takeovers. We need local resident groups to be fighting planning applications for new digital advertising, or for NGOs and think tanks to be producing reports and making recommendations to local councils.

Happy consumer, happy business life

People are tired of being served false information all the time. Customers are fed up with businesses being only profit-oriented without a hint of interest to serve their audience and leave the world a better place.

That is also true for smaller businesses, creators, and other industries.

Does that mean entrepreneurs must go all in on sustainability? No. It means entrepreneurs should rethink their external communication and make it more realistic and customer-centered.

That’s basically nothing new. Successful marketing has always been about the customer. Nevertheless, many (online) entrepreneurs still use Social Media and PR to glorify their achievements and beautify their companies to increase sales.

That might have worked until now. But since more and more personal and business brands started to overpromise and indirectly manipulate their customers, the audience has finally called for a halt.

Simon Sinek wrote in his book Start with Why:

“There are two ways you can lead people to action. You can inspire or manipulate them.”

According to the author, the more sustainable way is to inspire them, instead of luring customers in with the price, promotion, or fear.

If you want to build a loyal customer base, and if you want your audience to trust your brand and services, you need a different approach in your communication and business practices.

What Can You Do?

Be transparent

In a world where we expect brands, businesses, and people to withhold information, you can stand out by doing exactly the opposite: being transparent.

If it took you three years to become a speaker at an event, don’t say one.

If you had to call somebody ten times and negotiate a year to acquire a client, mention it in your success story.

If you lost a client because you made a mistake, share it.

People value honesty more than ever these days, precisely because they don’t get a lot of it.

Don’t over-promise

Marketing generally teaches us that we must be better, faster, or cheaper than our competition to succeed. As a result, many entrepreneurs tend to make them better than they actually are.

They make bold claims on their social media profiles, they exaggerate in their media pitches, and they overpromise in sales meetings.

I, for example, could say that I serve more than 500 people with my content and have various international clients. However, I only have around 170 people on my email list so far and one client that has subsidiaries abroad.

Would it make my company look bigger? Yes. But flexing the numbers could be fatal in various ways:

• For once, customers and partners usually get behind it, which leaves them disappointed. They lose trust.
• If I pitch my company to journalists and my misinformation comes to the surface, the journalist will likely never do business with me again in the future.
• Some people might even start to write negative reviews, which makes it harder to sell.

All in all, not a good idea.

The rule of thumb to follow is simple: Don’t overpromise and don’t position your business better than it is. But also not worse.

Listen and respond to what your audience says

When people don’t feel they’re listened to, they take on more radical actions.

You can easily prevent negative brand activism if you listen to your audience and give them the feeling that you care.

For example, you could

• schedule regular interviews with your clients
• create polls on social media
• show how you implemented clients feedback in your company
• respond to comments and actively ask questions

Caring for your audience also makes your brand more human, more trustworthy, and more likable.

Choose your partners wisely

The attention of the groups who organized the billboard campaigns didn’t stop at the airlines. They also took along their advertising agencies which usually execute the brand’s campaigns.

This clearly shows customers have a holistic view of the supply chain and call all companies involved in producing the products or services to account.

Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small business owners therefore should do a background check of other companies, influencers, creators, or any other institution they partner with.

You could

• look at how the companies interact and treat their employees and audience,
• design a partner agreement that takes into account environmental, social or audience-specific values,
• partner with companies that share the same values.

In short: choose your business partners as you would choose your life partner.

Consider the match

Giving to a charity or supporting an environmental activity has become a very popular CSR act for many companies.

But is planting trees in South America really the best thing companies can do? And more importantly, is it the right fit for every brand?

It gets even more questionable if you link the act of doing good to sales. Like, for each 10th book you sell, you plant one tree. That’s not how “doing good” works.

A selfless act should be detached from your general business activities otherwise, it creates the notion of greenwashing. Moreover, try to come up with something that is tied to your core business.

One of my friends is a sleep coach. Instead of planting trees, he cooperated with a school for children with special needs and hold free sleep training in class because many children don’t sleep well.

This is a far better fit for his business and it’s perceived as more credible.

Ask yourself one question

Many brands and entrepreneurs get caught up in their own content and ideas, and their growth strategies so they forget to regularly check the content-customer-fit.

It’s vital to keep in mind that, ultimately, your business serves your customers. Your products and services should make the lives of your audience easier or more enjoyable.

Whenever you want to take action, ask yourself: “Does this REALLY serve my audience?”

Oftentimes you will find that the post you’re about to create, the partnership you’re entering, and the product feature you’re launching, are actually about you and your ego, your success hunger, and not your customer.

Just starting out with building your brand or not getting results? There are 5 common branding myths you have to kill before you can build a successful brand. Get the FREE list + solutions here.
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Brandalism: How To Protect Your Business From Public Shaming was originally published in Entrepreneurship Handbook on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ever heard about the Ambiguity Effect?

It’s a cognitive bias that describes how we tend to avoid options that are missing information or ambiguous about the outcome.

This affects your business in various ways: it influences the read time of your content, the trust built in your brand, and also your conversion rate.

An example:

According to research from Buddy Media, Facebook engagement is 3X lower if a shortened URL (like bitly) is used instead of the entire domain (like solobrandeurclub.com).

Here’s how you can use the Ambiguity Effect in your favor:

• Create compare pages
• Always summarize
• Use numbers
• Share case studies
• Share testimonials
• Give guarantees

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Low Conversion Rate? Check Your Content For This Psychological Effect was originally published in The Shortform on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.