Top 5 Secrets to Building Your Brand and Becoming a Top Influencer

The constant evolution of online marketing is becoming challenging, especially for those not in the industry. I gave a presentation a while back on building your professional brand and becoming a top influencer. Most interesting about this presentation was that everybody in the room was more conscious of their personal brand than ever before.

I shared some “ninja” secrets on the top 5 ways to build your online brand (executive/personal branding) to grow your influence and relevance online. Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Be ‘The Hunted’ Online
2. Get Down with O.P.P.
3. Be Review-markable
4. Be like Tom Sawyer
5. Start a Trust

Here are some of the top takeaways from the presentation:

• Personal and professional networks should no longer be considered as separate events.
• Your influence online is a combination of all your social networks and things you have published: blogs, press releases, videos, etc.
• You dedicate time online by either “spending your time” as a social event or investing your time to build your brand equity.
• It makes sense to focus your social media efforts on the top social networks:
  • Google My Business
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • …are there others that should be listed here? (see below)
• Most importantly, it would be best if you defined what your overall goals are (e.g., generating inbound opportunities)

Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2020

This leads to ninja secret #1 about being ‘the hunted’ online. Although this may sound like a bad thing, you know from your own experiences that you don’t go online to find the 5th, 6th, 10th, or 20th best person/business suited for your needs. You are looking for the expert, the best in class, and that’s who you want to reach out to and become.

Looking for a quick way to get to the top… I think O.P.P (ninja tip #2). I am not referring to the song by Naughty by Nature, O.P.P., but Other Peoples Profiles. Find influencers in the markets that you want to become a top influencer in and develop a strategy to get access to their profiles with a blend of your marketing message that best suits the influencer’s interests. One of the easiest ways is to do a Google Hangout and turn the video into a collaborative multimedia marketing event. Think of this as an ongoing campaign by developing articles, images, status updates, video, and think of creative ways to get this campaign on other people’s profiles to help get the message out. We call this content marketing methodology the content wheel.

To become review-markable (ninja tip #3), you need to be remarkable and think about giving instead of receiving. About half of the top influencers write 2-5 reviews weekly. Build some karma credit by writing reviews and going out of your way to help other people and their brands, and this will come back tenfold to you.

Regarding being like Tom Sawyer (ninja tip #4), this is the art of segmenting your brand into the three buckets of you:

• Your personal side – @ Play
• Your professional side – @ Work
• You socially conscious side – @ Community

If you think of the story of Tom Sawyer, he was such a master negotiator that he got other people to paint his fence for him (willingly), and they also gave him something of monetary value just for the privilege of doing the work for him. By looking at his personal and community interests, you get a better understanding of how this was accomplished.

There are three dynamics to building and marketing your executive brand. Start by going to your LinkedIn profile and organizing it in the three buckets (professionally, personal attributes, and community outreach).

Here is a tip for reaching out to influencers…just because you have a professional commonality doesn’t make you interesting. When reaching out to influencers, focus on the personal aspects and community ties, and then show your human side to reach the influencer professionally. This common ground is a far more interesting and effective outreach strategy.

The last tip (ninja tip #5) is to build a trust, a digital asset trust. This is the way you organize all of your online marketing channels and how to best leverage them to grow your influence and relevance online. Take inventory of all the social media profiles you have as an individual and the brand you represent and put them into a Google Doc or spreadsheet. Tools like Contacts+ and Nimble connect all of the social networks in one place to see how you and your contacts are connected online.

If you are interested in getting access to MINT Social’s upcoming launch of The Digital Asset MINT for building your brand online, click here and reference Digital Asset MINT.

If you are interested in learning more about building your executive and business brand online, please reach out below.