Thanks for joining us on the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom! Today, we’re with Jeremy Weber, founding member and Director of Strategist & Partner Relations at Brand Builders Group. Over his 15-year career, he has founded, sold, and helped to grow multiple companies but now focuses on building personal brands. His work has supported New York Times bestselling authors, celebrity influencers, a Shark Tank investor, and 7-figure entrepreneurs across many industries.
Jill and Jeremy discuss what a personal brand really is. It’s simple, Jeremy says, it’s ‘you.’ You are good at something–you solve a problem and bring value to those around you–it’s probably how and why you started your business in the first place. Personal branding is taking that offline reputation and bringing it online so you’re recognized broadly. It helps magnify the great work you do and drive growth for your small business.
Building your personal brand starts with differentiating yourself. You can still do conventional marketing, but it’s important to include that key element that you have that others do not. From there, it’s about intentionally elevating the awareness of what you do. Exploit your uniqueness in the service of other people. You can find that uniqueness through a Brand DNA Helix, used by Brand Builders Group, a six-question breakdown of what you do. And at the top of that list is discovering what problem you solve for the world. It helps get clear on who and how you’re serving.
The biggest mistake growing businesses make is not listening to consumer trends. National studies show that consumers want their professional services provider to have an established personal brand. They want to know that who they’re working with is good at what they do. They want to know the individuals. Beyond that, businesses don’t go deep enough. Connecting with an audience in an authentic way takes intentional breakdowns of what it is you provide.
On the website front, Jeremy’s advice is to really consider what it is your business does and is doing. In many cases, if the business is yours and you’re a key player in the operation and service that the business provides, it’s worth keeping a business website and making alterations to better highlight you and others that your clients may interface with. When you break up your website, you’re diverting traffic, so if you’re going to do so, make sure it makes sense for the kind of brand you’re trying to build.
Driving awareness, bringing value, and sharing information is at the heart of a content strategy. Therefore, blogging serves as an incredibly valuable tool. As a personal brand, you need to give your audience a way to sample you to build trust and recognition, eventually funneling them to do business with you. Don’t build your business on rented real estate. Algorithms change, platforms shift, and other variables come into play in many respects. Playing on those platforms is important, but so is building the foundation of your brand by pulling them from social media to your content. A blog acts as a hub of your content on your website, a place where you control the user experience. Video is worth baking into your strategy using your blog as the content or vice versa–video to a blog post.
Helpful Links
Show Notes
