Personal Branding: The Ultimate Guide (2024)

by Abhik Shome | Aug 31, 2018 | Personal Branding

Personal Branding: The Ultimate Guide (2024)

It’s no secret that personal branding is the key to success in today’s world of heavy competition. It has the power to shift you from a red ocean full of competition to a blue ocean full of endless opportunities.

In 2024, people will be making their buying and hiring decisions based on the brand of the person behind a product or service. They want to see if the person backing the product has a reliable personal brand which has authority in the industry.

Bottom line – It doesn’t matter if you are an entrepreneur, executive or a freelancer. You need to have a great personal brand if you plan to get ahead in life.

And in this guide, I will show you everything you need to build an awesome personal brand.

Let’s dive right in.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

What Is Personal Branding?

CHAPTER 2

Why Is Personal Branding Important?

CHAPTER 3

Personal Branding Strategies and Tips

CHAPTER 4

Personal Branding Tools

CHAPTER 5

Personal Branding Examples

CHAPTER 6

Personal Branding Infographics

CHAPTER 7

The Next Step

CHAPTER 1

What Is Personal Branding?

Personal Branding is a marketing strategy to make your skills stand out from other professionals in your industry. It is a system which differentiates you from the crowd and positions your work skills as superior to others.

The keyword here is standing out. When you stand out in your industry, people take note of you. They see you as a thought leader. You create a position where you can get more work and charge higher prices. Also, your network starts becoming richer. So how do you stand out in your industry? You do so by having a deep understanding of your target audience’s needs and then solving those needs exceptionally well and in a medium they understand best. When you highlight their pain points in their own language and then deliver them an exceptional solution, you stand out. You become insanely more favorable than someone who is not establishing this empathy. Your target market feels — “Hey! This guy really gets me”. From there on, they look at you as a solution to their problems. Of course, there are many strategies and tools (which we will cover later in this guide) which greatly amplify your personal brand. But at its core, it’s all about understanding your audience and addressing their needs in a way no one else can.

CHAPTER 2

Why Is Personal Branding Important?

Personal branding has always been important. But in the age of short attention span coupled with the biggest opportunity since the dot-com boom, it is one of the most important disciplines to master for any entrepreneur or executive.

8 Benefits of Personal Branding

Here are some of the biggest benefits of building your personal brand in 2022:

1. Money

When you build your personal brand, your voice becomes synonymous with the voice of your industry. You are perceived as the symbol of trust, authority, authenticity, and quality in your industry.

This can lead to high paying work opportunities and higher prices for your product.

2. Recognition

It gives you an instant recognition tool which opens a lot of closed doors and opportunities. This, in turn, gives you an instant head start over the competition.

3. Networking opportunities

You get to network with A-list influencers and CEOs of top companies. This allows you to make a quantum jump in your career.

You are in a position to form relationships with these influential people and exponentially grow your business in a very short time.

4. Position

You achieve a position of power as a thought leader in your industry. Your words carry more weight.

This aspect is more vanity based but great towards reaching your self-actualization goals.

After all, who doesn’t want to be famous and get respect from their peers?

5. A career full of perks

You get to speak and get invited to conferences and summits in your industry. This comes with perks like higher pay, less strenuous work, more visibility and traveling to amazing places.

6. Higher productivity

You become more productive and responsible. When you see the results of your hard work with people starting to notice you, you feel a sense of pride and power. These results make you more attracted to your work.

7. Confidence

You become more confident and it adds a positive touch to your personality. When your words and actions matter, you shed doubts about yourself very fast. You tend to become more confident and vocal.

Overall you move towards becoming a wholesome personality.

8. Dream job

Getting your dream job becomes much easier with you being a known name in the game.

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CHAPTER 3

Applying Personal Branding Strategies to Rapidly Grow Your Personal Brand

This section on Personal Branding Strategy will give you a step by step process on how to grow your personal brand and make it remarkable both Online and Offline.

Use these 38 actionable strategies, tips, and growth hacks to build rapid influence in your industry in 2024.

The section is divided into 3 parts:

Online Personal Branding Strategy
Offline Personal Branding Strategy
Personal Branding Growth Hacks and Tips

31 Online Personal Branding Strategies

We are living in the golden age of internet.

Building a personal brand has never been as easy as it is now. Yet so few people are taking advantage of this brilliant opportunity which marketers of the past would have killed to get a shot at.

Let’s not let this opportunity slip away.

Here are 31 step by step online personal branding strategies which leverage the internet to make you stand out from the crowd.

1. Define your target audience

First and foremost, have a clear idea about who your target audience is.

What do they want in life? What are their biggest aspirations? What are their biggest fears? What are their main problems and roadblocks in overcoming those fears? Where do they hang out the most?

Conduct a thorough research on all these questions and then base your message on how best you can meet their needs and expectations.

2. Identify and narrow down your niche

a) Identify your niche

It’s nice if you are a Jack of all trades, but when branding, the key is to focus on one special superpower of yours. Think of what you are most passionate about and what comes naturally to you. Once you identify that superpower, make it your niche. For example, If you have a lot of passions but overall you are most passionate about improving lifestyle, select lifestyle design as your niche.

b) Narrow down your niche

Next, you should narrow down your niche to address a specific demography.

For example, after you select lifestyle design as your initial niche, you can narrow it down to address a specific community and make your brand message custom tailored for them.

So instead of lifestyle design, it can now become lifestyle design for entrepreneurs or lifestyle design for single dads.

This way your message comes across as tailor-made for a particular set of demography and hence more appealing to them.

Pro tip — If you have more special qualities, you can connect them under the umbrella of your main superpower.

For example, if apart from lifestyle design, you are also good in personal finance, then after creating a string of lifestyle design related content, you can connect your insights and tips on personal finance as an actionable strategy to achieve a perfect lifestyle.

3. Stand for something

The key to building a brand is to stand for something.

Create a movement by representing something which is unique to your personality and instantly identifiable to you.

Remember to always be original even if at times your opinion does not have the popular vote. Have a set of values and own them by structuring your personal brand around it.

Pro tip — Help people self-identify with your movement by giving them a title by which they can identify themselves and other members of the community with.

A great example of this is Russell Brunson and his Funnel Hacker Movement. Russell Brunson is the Founder of ClickFunnels, a sales funnel software company. He created a movement around his brand by addressing his community members as Funnel Hackers. This gave the members something to identify with and added a sense of purpose to what they were doing. It made them loyal to the brand as they felt part of a community of entrepreneurs with similar values, ethos, and goals.

4. Create a Mini-Manifesto around your brand

Establish a culture around your brand by creating a mini-manifesto.

This manifesto will list down all the values, mission and vision of your community in a mini-document.

It will act as a rallying cry for the community and reinforce the values whenever the community is in doubt.

It will show your industry what you stand for and against.

This will help fellow members of the industry self-identify with your values and be magnetically pulled towards your brand.

Here’s an example of Russell Brunson’s Funnel Hacker Manifesto.

Pro tip — An awesome way to add more meaning to your manifesto is by asking your community to print this out or have it as a mobile wallpaper.

5. Create a personal branding statement

A personal branding statement is your main value proposition presented in the form of a unique catchphrase. It tells your target audience (your prospective customer) what they can hope to get from your professional skills in the form of results and ultimate benefits. It should look something like this.

For example:

“I help B2B companies (target market) double their leads (result) with LinkedIn ads (skill).”

You can use your personal branding statement as part of your social media bio and as an introductory line while networking in meetups and conferences.

6. Create a strategic bio

How awful will it be if you win the leads with an amazing piece of content only to put them off with a shabbily done bio? Your audience impressed by your content will look into your bio to know more about you. Take advantage of it by crafting your strategic bio beforehand which highlights the single biggest benefit your audiences can get from you. Then connect this benefit with your superpower or special skill. The bio should be not more than 50-60 words. Additionally, mention all your media features and showcase your noteworthy achievements. Leverage it to the hilt by making it a common bio for your own blog and all your media columns/features. Remember that the bio should reflect your values and what you stand for.

7. Use your headshot as your profile pic

Improve the way people perceive your image, literally! Use a headshot (where your face covers 60% of the image) as your profile pic for all your profiles and business resume.

8. Have a brand logo

Personal branding is a process which involves both textual and visual content. Have a brand logo which imbibes the ethos and values you stand for. Create something which stands out and communicates your message visually in the best possible manner. Treat the logo as more than a piece of design and more as your brand identity. Your customers will treat this image as synonymous with you. So make something which represents your core message.

9. Focus on having a uniform design language

Apart from having a logo, focus on creating design assets with a uniform color code, appearance, and typefaces. Create templates for social media graphics and videos with a common color scheme and appearance. This will make your brand language consistent making you stand out and get identified in front of your target audiences.

10. Start creating content

Now it’s time to start creating your content. Start a blog or a vlog based on your product and niche. Select the best keywords in your industry and start creating consistent content around it.

What are the main pain points of the target audience? What are the strategies that work well in your industry? What are the latest trends in the industry? What are the popular tools to grow a business in your field?

Write and make videos about all this. Put the articles in a blog and videos on YouTube and other social media channels (more on that later).

Above all, focus on being an evangelist of your niche to the outside world.

Think what kind of information an outsider would need to get into your industry and create content around that. The more consistent you are with your content, the faster your brand will grow.

The goal is to make yourself synonymous with your industry.

11. Give high-value assets for free

See the demand in your industry and create assets to address those demands. It can be a piece of software or a free report solving some specific need or query in your industry.

After creating it, give it away for free on your blog in exchange for the prospect’s email. This way you will be seen as an expert who does not hold back on giving value first. Doing this pulls all the critical levers in building an epic personal brand.

12. Focus on SEO

SEO is a great way to get qualified organic traffic to your blog. This traffic will consist of people actively looking to get information in your industry and thus qualify as high-value leads.

If you can be the person who addresses their needs, they will start seeking you or your content for further advice. This will build your personal brand effectively for that niche.

To execute this perfectly, you need to rank on the first page of Google (or any other search engine) and typically for the top 3-5 keywords in your niche.

Doing this is a bit hard and can take a bit of time. Having said that there are a few growth hacks to rank faster for your content.

SEO Growth Hack 1

Firstly, create epic content. By this I mean 10x the no.1 ranked article in your niche by adding more points, insights, creating relevant infographics and more. Aim for a minimum of 1900 words.

SEO Growth Hack 2

Secondly, do not go for heavily competitive keywords in your niche. Instead, use long tail keywords.

For example, if the main keyword in your industry is ”Internet Marketing”, then focus on a long tail keyword like “Internet Marketing for Freelancers” or “Internet Marketing for Home Based Entrepreneurs”.

The goal is to find keywords with high traffic volume but low competition.

Pro Tip — Use a tool like Ahrefs to find low competition keywords with high traffic volume.

13. Build a list

Build an email list. Give consistent value to your email list members. Nothing is more personal than being inside someone’s inbox. Take advantage of it and make them into your brand evangelists.

Also with major social media channels effectively killing organic reach for good, it will be a smart move to move your audiences to a platform you control completely — your email list.

First, drive traffic to your site. Then once the traffic is on your site, ask them to submit their email IDs in exchange for some awesome content (lead magnet or content upgrade). Once they sign up, win their hearts by delivering exclusive top quality content not available anywhere else.

Consistently giving value at a place where you are seen almost every day is a great way to engineer an awesome personal brand.

14. Grow your social media audience (organic)

Start putting dedicated efforts every day to grow your social media audience. Focus on channels where your target audience hangs out the most and start putting high-quality content which helps them. Here are the exact steps to follow.

STEP 1

Start by joining Facebook and LinkedIn groups related to your industry.

STEP 2

Post exceptional quality content which helps the members of the group. Be consistent in your posting. Do not pitch anything. Once the members of the group notice your content, they will visit your profile.

STEP 3

Put a link to your own group and other social media profiles on your bio or cover image.

STEP 4

Take connections to the next level by connecting with other members through your personal FB/LinkedIn profile. I understand the narrative about not taking your work home. Over time you will build up an audience that will start associating you with your niche, thus forming stepping stones towards a robust personal brand.

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15. Be omnipresent online

Be visible everywhere, be it your blog, relevant social media channels and other major platforms in your industry – both online and offline. The more omnipresent you are, the more sticky your message will become. Also, this is a good way to take advantage of the mere exposure effect which is a psychological phenomenon where people prefer things familiar to them. The more frequent and omnipresent you are with valuable content, the more preferable you become. You will start building up a niche follower base of qualified people eager about your industry. You will become their go-to source for all things related to your field.

16. Get into new social media channels fast

Get into new and unexplored social media channels fast. You will have an exponentially higher chance of becoming an influencer there as there will be very less competition.

17. Repurpose your content like a pro

Repurpose your existing content across different content channels like Medium and LinkedIn. Take your existing article and record a video of you speaking about it, upload the video to Youtube and audio as a podcast.

Also, ONE hot way of standing out with your content in 2024 is by making infographics. Make an infographic out of your article using a simple design tool like Visme.co.

Search Engines love Infographics coz they simplify big complicated ideas into visually compelling and easy to understand images. It increases a visitor’s time on your site and also increases the chances of your content being shared in the community.

All this adds great karma points to your brand reputation.

So take your present content and add more modes of delivery to it.

18. Get a vanity URL

Get vanity URLs for all social media channels. The URL should either be your name/ your name + your niche / reflective of your niche.

Do not play around much with it. Don’t go artsy with fancy names that have nothing to do with your industry. Stick to basics and connect the name to an industry keyword.

This will be great for making the audience see a connection between you and your industry. Also, this will be great for Social Media organic search optimization.

19. Build a Facebook Group to propel your personal branding

Apart from building a list, FB groups are another way to build a constant relationship with your target audience.

Simply start an FB group in your niche, and provide consistent value to your group members through high-quality content. Solve their problems, talk about the latest trends, share the latest hacks and tools, do everything to win their confidence.

The more value you provide, the more your target audience will see you as a leader in your industry.

Building your personal brand on Facebook goes a long way as this is where people spend most of their time. The key is to focus on groups, not on business pages.

20. Ask questions

Humans are social animals. We love to share and tell stories. Hence everyone loves a good listener.

A primary way to build a relationship with your email list and FB group is by asking questions. This will help you get critical insights and also build a rapport with strangers.

21. Have a professional email signature

Email signatures will be the visiting cards of 2024. So have an email signature which stands out from the crowd.

Put your headshot in the signature along with all your social profiles. This way your email will stand out on a pitch.

Use a free tool like HubSpot Email Signature Template Generator or a paid tool like Wisestamp to get this done right.

Your personal branding image will skyrocket after this.

22. Do what the pros do

See what the top players in your industry are doing for their personal branding. Reverse engineer and emulate their online strategies. Find a mentor who is currently where you want to be. Study their career history and map out the path they took. List out all the strategies and base your plan of action around it.

23. Network with influencers

Start expanding your network by connecting with other members of the industry on Social Media. Type your industry keywords on Facebook and LinkedIn and join all the top groups which come up as results.

Once there, start giving real value without an intention to sell. This way you will be seen as a valuable member of the community and not an annoying salesperson.

Your ultimate aim should be to give so much value that your name becomes synonymous with everything good about your industry.

The value-first mindset to connect with influencers

Start connecting with Influencers online. Reach out to them with a “value-first” mindset. Provide them value upfront by giving your core service for free. Now I know the word “free” can make some of us frown. But when you do it to build relationships with people who are the stalwarts of your industry, then this free work will pay itself off in no time and skyrocket your growth. Just imagine a great video testimonial about your work from the biggest influencer in your industry OR an influencer blasting a mail to his 100k strong list recommending your work. You see the value now?

Networking tools and hacks

Connect with influencers using networking tools like Alfred or Duxsoup. These tools will help you send automatic connection requests to industry filtered members on LinkedIn. For finding email IDs of influencers, you can use a tool like FindThatLead.

Another way to connect with influencers is by joining their courses/paid mastermind groups. Once a part of the group, provide upfront value to all the members to get on the radar of the influencer.

24. Get on major media platforms

List the top magazines, podcasts, TV shows, YouTube channels in your niche and approach them to feature you. You can pitch them to have you as a guest panelist, contributor, columnist or them doing a story on you.

To do this right, you need to first build relationships with these platforms. Use the same value-first mindset and offer your help or something of high value for free.

Once you get their attention, pitch them to feature you on their platform. Show them the value you can offer to their audiences with proven results of your work.

To do this right, you can use a tool like Mediakito. It will create a beautiful looking media kit for you where you can list and leverage your past achievements and features.

Once accepted, give actionable value and do not hold back. The goal is to win the hearts of the platform’s audiences. In the end, offer the audience a free cheatsheet or strategy call in exchange for them signing up for your newsletter.

Leverage media logos to build authority

Add brand logos of all your media features on your website and social media profiles. Put pictures of your speaking gigs and TV appearances. This will build a lot of authority for your personal brand.

25. Be helpful and have a knowledge-based mindset

Be helpful and provide value to people. The days of information ownership and competing for knowledge are over. Share your expertise for free without holding back anything. We live in a value-centric, knowledge-based economy. If you are not sharing, you are losing out to someone who is giving it all for free and building an unbreakable bond with your audience. Start by answering questions on Quora and other channels. Join all the industry forums and be the gateway people need to get into your industry. It will pay off in the long run.

26. Document and showcase results

Results. They are by far the no.1 buying emotion, and hence the no.1 brand builder. Whenever you work for yourself or your clients, focus on documenting results. For example, if you are in the field of SEO, make it a point to screenshot your rankings for the targeted keyword. This will come as handy proof that you deliver on what you do. Likewise, if you work for your clients, make it a point in your contract that you are allowed to showcase the results you bring for them. Also, a very effective hack is getting video testimonials. When a number of your clients come on camera and share their success stories from working with you, your Personal Branding will skyrocket immediately. One of the world’s leading consultants, Sam Ovens has 1000s of video testimonials on his site – consulting.com Pro tip – Run paid ads on your video testimonials targeting potential clients.

27. Do webinars and live streaming

There is something about webinars and live streaming which connects more than perhaps any other form of content. Maybe it is the LIVE nature of things or the interactive value feature which adds to the excitement.

Also, it has never been easier to do webinars and live streaming than now, with free platforms like FB Live, Youtube Live, and Periscope.

Apart from that, you can take advantage of various paid but cheap webinar software like Demio which allow you to collect leads.

Do webinars with pure value and no sales intent. Add your personal touch to it by being yourself, sharing personal stories and epiphanies along the way. It will make you charismatic and relatable to your audience.

28. Create chatbots

Chatbots are a great way to personalize your branding and be interactive at the same time. With Facebook killing reach of FB pages, FB messenger bots should be one of the priorities to focus on. Again, like any other personal branding strategy, make the chat conversation sequence authentic and true to your voice. The audience should feel like they are having a conversation with you over a cup of coffee. Pro tip – Use a tool like manychat or chatfuel for setting this up.

29. Invest in paid ads

For all the amazing long-term benefits of organic traffic, we cannot deny that paid ads are the fastest way to reach your target audience. Use smart targeting hacks. Target people with an interest list of brand names only hardcore fans in the industry know about. The ad should offer something of value to your target audience and show your knowledge on the subject. Retarget the visitors of your site with a lucrative offer.

30. Get on YouTube

YouTube is the go-to channel for people looking to actively find solutions to their problems. So creating YouTube based content which effectively solves their problem will instantly build trust, rapport and authority for your brand. Also, since its an audiovisual medium, the impact is higher and more intimate to the senses than the written word. All this adds great brownie points for your personal branding. Now simply creating videos and putting it on YouTube may not work for your brand. Instead, you need to optimize your videos for YouTube’s algorithm. Here are some quick tips on how to get traffic for your YouTube Video: 1. Keyword optimization – Do thorough keyword research. Use this 6 step process to optimize for your keyword.

Search for your keyword on YouTube and see YouTube’s search suggest recommendations. These are keywords which people are actually searching for while looking for your topic.

Go to a famous channel in your niche and search for the most popular videos. Click on them and see the tags they are using. Use a tool like VidIQ chrome extension to do this.

Make a list of all the keywords and tags you collected and then go for the ones with low-level of competition.

Try to use your main keyword at the beginning of the title and also use them as tags.

Write a thorough video description, describing what your video is all about and the things the viewer is going to learn. Use the main keyword naturally wherever possible.

2. Content Optimization – Be energetic and expressive in your videos. Start with a hook where you state what will the viewer learn from watching this video. Hype it up by saying what all will you reveal by the end of the video.

Mention the main keyword early in the video and use it wherever it feels natural to do so. Deliver on the promise by giving real transformational value so they are hooked till the end.

Have multiple Calls-to-actions to subscribe and comment on the video. The Youtube search engines will pick it up and show your video to people looking for that topic.

3. Design Optimization – Have attractive thumbnails having your picture along with the title of the video.

4. YouTube Funnel Optimization – Create a funnel with your videos by offering a free checklist or report which acts as “The Next Step” for the viewer after they watch your video.

Offer the checklist by making it available through a landing page where they can get it in exchange for their email.

5. Video Promotion – After optimizing, post the video on your blog post, social media and other forums as a helpful resource for someone looking to get answers on your topic.

6. Consistency – Be consistent on your video posting schedule. Make it a habit for your viewers to expect a video from you on a specific day. For example, you can have a YouTube banner which says – New videos posted every Monday and Friday.

For more YouTube optimization resources, I highly recommend checking this detailed article by Brian Dean of Backlinko.

31. Start a Podcast

I cannot emphasize this more – jump on podcasts before it gets too saturated. This is a key platform where a lot of smart entrepreneurs are putting their content on and in the process becoming instant celebs in their niche. A lot of top CEOs prefer to listen to podcasts over videos. Standing out there can mean connecting directly with your industry leaders and evangelists. Distinguish your content by interviewing industry leaders, experts, and giving actionable content which your listeners can implement easily for quick wins. For further resources check out this awesome guide on podcasting by Pat Flynn.

4 Offline Personal Branding Strategies

Offline personal branding strategies follow the same basic principles of Online but in the physical world.

So principles like defining a clear target audience, niching down, standing for something, having a unique voice, giving value first, making it about your customers, etc., all remain the same.

Having said that, building your brand offline have the added dynamics of physical presence and personal touch to your brand.

This aspect can be very powerful while building your brand name and business relationships.

Let’s look at 4 step by step offline personal branding strategies to leverage your brand in the physical world.

1. Start doing public speaking gigs

Your omnipresence has to be both online and offline. The best way to have an impactful omnipresence offline is by doing public speaking. Here is a great hack to do this perfectly. Go to meetup.com and search for your niche/industry. Hit up all the meetups happening in your city related to your industry and say you want to give a 30-45 minute presentation on a hot topic in your industry. More often than not they will get back to you with your slot as a guest speaker.

Taking it to the next level

At the speaking gig, open up a funnel by asking the audience members to join your mailing list or your Facebook group where they can get more in-depth content from you. This way you convert total strangers into a list of warm leads.

2. Network at masterminds and conferences

Start expanding your network by connecting with other members of your industry. Join mastermind groups and participate in industry-related forums actively. Use meetup.com again to find like-minded industry groups.

Become seen to the extent that your name becomes synonymous with your industry. Reach out to influencers and have the value-first mindset by providing value upfront to impress them.

You can use networking tools like Dux Soup and Alfred to first connect with these influencers online and then meet them personally.

3. Write a book and give it away for free

A book is a great personal branding tool to immediately position you as an expert in your niche. It is best to launch a book when you have a thriving email list and an active blog. This is because it will come in handy for marketing the book. Having said that, it is not a necessary requirement as you can always run ads or collaborate with an influencer to leverage their list. Now let’s come to the content of the book where a lot of people get stuck. Follow these easy growth hacks to write a book fast.

Growth Hack 1

Hire a virtual assistant and ask him or her to transcribe your webinar and assemble it in order. Once you refine and edit it, you have the content ready for a book!

Growth Hack 2

Use a service like Rev to transcribe your video content and convert it into a book.

Growth Hack 3

Another method made famous by author – Investor James Altucher is collecting 20-30 blogs you have written and put them in order to form a book.

Making it available through dropshipping and digital download

After you arrange the information in a book, you can put it on Amazon Kindle as a digital download or use a site like disk.com to drop ship the book to its destination.

Now, here’s where it starts to get really interesting!

After writing and editing your book, give it away for free and only charge for shipping.

Yes. FREE.

Now before you start to frown, hear me out.

Books hold tremendous power in making your brand impactful. They create a great initial touchpoint between your target audience and your brand.

Also, they are a very personal item and tend to quickly become an intimate part of people’s lives.

This can lead to amazing word of mouth exposure and formation of a loyal tribe. Imagine the number of sales and long-term brand equity you can generate from the tribe. Why restrict it all with a price tag?

So use the free + shipping method to quickly gain massive exposure and brand loyalty.

A great example of this is Russell Brunson’s now iconic book – Dotcom Secrets.

4. Merchandise giveaway

A great way to make your brand visible offline is by giving away your brand merchandise for free.

Create t-shirts, cup and other stationery items with your brand logo or catchphrase on it and give it away for free to your superfans.

These superfans will flaunt your merch with pride which in turn will lead to great word-of-mouth advertising.

The key here is to create merchandise only when you have built a sizable following so you can leverage your superfans to promote it.

Pro Tip – Use a site like printful.com to drop ship your t-shirts.

Dropshipping resource – Dropshipping can be a critical tool to make your personal branding be active and present in the physical world. For further reading, here are two awesome resources on Dropshipping.

3 Personal Branding Growth Hacks and Tips

Here are 3 innovative personal branding growth hacks to maximize your influence online.

1. Get featured on mass media using the Ladder Method

Getting featured on top media platforms of your industry can make you an A-lister overnight. Now, usually, to do this successfully, you need to achieve something which is extraordinary like earning x million dollars in your industry, having a bestseller book, etc. Does that sound a bit difficult? Fret not. Use this smart personal branding growth to get into mass media fast.

1. The Ladder Method

STEP 1

Get yourself a feature on a few locally based magazines, blogs, and YT channels. These publications are hungry for content and will love to feature you.

STEP 2

Leverage these small features as social proof to get to mid-level media in print, online and television. Once there, give immense value. Stand out with your knowledge and insights.

STEP 3

Document all the media features and run ads on them targeting the mainstream mass media editors, columnists, reporters, etc. After they get repeatedly warmed up with your content (mere exposure effect), approach them with a subtle pitch to feature you.

2. The Influencer Interview Rub Off

This is another remarkable way to build your personal brand. All you need is a laptop and free software like Skype or Zoom to get it done. Just gather a list of experts in your niche who have a say in your industry.

Do not aim for A-list influencers right away as it will be difficult to convince them for an interview. But you can surely aim for people who have some notable expertise and influence.

Think in terms of:

YouTube creators with a substantial amount of subscribers
FB group owners with more than 5000 active members
Other experts who get featured on podcasts in your niche

Getting influencers to say ‘YES’ for an interview

One way to get influencers to say ‘YES’ is by leveraging your existing audience to them. But even if you do not have an audience, fret not. You can alternatively promise them a paid promotion of the interview to their target audience. When the audience consistently sees you with experts, they will start associating you as an expert too.

3. The Dennis Yu FB Dollar a Day Ad

I learned this amazing strategy to get press from FB ads expert and CTO of BlitzMetrics, Dennis Yu. Here are the steps.

STEP 1

Create 1-minute videos talking about your niche and giving value. Focus on giving tips, strategies or talk about a burning topic in your industry. Carve your content into an engaging story. Add attractive text inlays to grab instant attention.

STEP 2

Post them on your FB brand page and run FB ads of just $1 per day on them. Run ads targeting writers, editors, columnists of magazines and blogs in your niche.

STEP 3

Run ads of your previous articles, guest posts and other content towards this particular target group. Do this consistently to be seen as an expert in the eyes of these journalists. After doing this for some time, two things can happen.

Scenario 1

The major publications you targeted will approach you for a quote for their next article.

Scenario 2

You can yourself approach them with a pitch to feature you. Since you have already established authority and familiarity with your content, getting into these media channels will be comparatively easier.

CHAPTER 4

Leveraging Personal Branding Tools to Maximize Your Influence and Growth

Here are 28 personal branding tools which have the potential to 10x your brand and completely outclass any competition.

28 Personal Branding Tools

1. HARO

Help a reporter is a free tool which connects journalists with expert sources to get tips and quotes from them. Use this to connect with journalists and get quoted on major publications. An awesome personal branding tool.

2. Find That Lead

An email finder and prospector tool. Use this to connect with notable influencers and experts in your industry to cold email them. Also, you can use it to find emails of top sites in your niche and pitch for guest posting opportunities.

3. Alfred

Previously known as Leonard, this tool will automatically connect with LinkedIn profiles based on conditions you define. Use it to connect with experts, editors, writers, and audiences in your industry.

4. InShot

Have you seen those eye-catching viral videos with meme-like text on top and bottom of the video? They are great brand builders as they instantly catch your attention and build curiosity to watch the whole video. Use a simple tool like InShot to make these videos.

5. RelayThat

This is a super interesting personal branding tool. Just upload your logo, brand colors and assets, and RelayThat will generate 1000s of design variations for every purpose imaginable.

6. HubSpot Email Signature Template Generator

Add flair to your personal branding when you do cold email outreach by having an email signature that stands out. Use the free HubSpot tool to get the job done in a very classy way.

7. TubeBuddy

Use TubeBuddy for optimizing your YouTube SEO.

8. Nusii

If you are a freelancer, use a tool like Nusii to send proposals to a client. This tool will make you stand out with custom proposals which look beautiful, stylish and communicate your pitch in a very unique way.

9. Wise Stamp

Get a professional email signature that stands out from the crowd.

With a host of customization features, this email signature tool is sure to position you with a professional edge over the hordes of emails your prospect is getting as we speak.

10. Restream

This beast of a tool will let you live stream to 30+ platforms simultaneously.

Live streaming is the latest trend pushed by nearly all major social media channels. Strategic live streaming can lead to super-fast growth for your personal brand.

Use this unbelievably good tool that comes with a host of analytics and features to grow your personal brand fast.

11. Rebrandly

Use this tool to create short links and add your custom domain name on it. Make your personal brand stand out while sharing pretty links on social media.

12. ViralStat

Get critical video insights on your competitors and find out their secret sauce to reverse engineer it for your personal brand.

Though it doesn’t have a free forever plan, its free trial offer does not require any credit card and is packed with growth hacking features to reverse engineer successful YouTube channels.

13. Speaker Hub

One of the largest speaker aggregator sites out there.

A must-have tool for anyone building a personal brand in 2024.

14. PeakMetrics

A very handy social monitoring tool that gives you email and slack alerts about your brand mentioned online.

Use it to monitor your brand online or even your competitors.

15. Canva

Canva is one of my favorite design tools. Back when I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2015, it used to be my go-to free tool to design brand collaterals.

Though sufficient for newbie entrepreneurs even back then, now the tool is at a level apart with advanced graphic designing features that can make your personal brand look like a million bucks.

Use it to create amazing banners, social media graphics, cover photos, YouTube thumbnails, and more.

16. Spyfu

Enter your industry expert’s domain name and find their most profitable keywords/ads.

A handy tool to research profitable words and phrases and use them in your personal brand’s communication channels.

17. SimilarWeb

Enter your competitor’s domain name and see juicy data like their audience demography and sites they are getting traffic.

SimilarWeb is a comprehensive tool for finding your brand’s target audience and their hangout spots.

18. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

A great tool to stand out and grab attention with your blog or social media content.

Made by the superb team at CoSchedule, this unique tool will give you headline ideas that drive emotion, curiosity and inspire action.

Use it to stand out and generate higher clicks for your personal branding content.

19. Dubb

Finding it difficult to stand out in your prospect’s inbox?

Send them a personalized video and drive them to your sales funnel via this nifty tool.

Dubb is a great way to position your personal brand in a more professional and exclusive way among a sea of competitors.

20. Brandquiz

Use this tool to create quizzes, surveys, polls, and calculators related to your personal brand.

Interactive content like this has led to the meteoric rise of some great media outlets like BuzzFeed.

Use it for your personal branding and create magnetic engagement that generates leads.

21. Engage Now

Engage your live audience with interesting polls.

Great for making your personal brand stand out and become memorable while doing speaking gigs and engagements.

22. Rocketium

Create custom videos for your personal brand in minutes using the free Rocketium tool.

Video is one of the biggest attention grabbers on social media. But a lot of us do not focus on it as it takes a lot of work.

Rocketium makes it easy by fetching amazing video templates for your keywords and search terms.

Use the software to easily create a video story and share it in multiple video formats.

23. About.me

Use About.me to create a custom webpage for your personal brand.

It’s a perfect tool for freelancers and newbie entrepreneurs to stand out and create a professional web presence for free.

The tool gives you the space to tell who you are, and pitch what you do, with a call-to-action button taking site visitors to your offer.

24. vidIQ

A great free tool to move your YouTube game up by many notches.

The tool is loaded with insightful analytics that you can take action on and grow your personal brand on the immensely popular video-sharing social media platform.

My favorite feature is their keyword research tool that gives you juicy data on your chosen keywords.

Use it to get data like search volume for the keyword, how popular is the keyword on YouTube, and my personal favorite, how much competition exists for the given keyword.

Knowing all this tells me if I can rank for my chosen keyword and what are the related keyword opportunities that I did not know before.

Use it to never throw blind punches again on youtube and grow your personal brand on the channel.

25. Later

Plan and automate your Instagram posting without having to do it manually by using this Instagram growth hacking tool.

The tool allows you to visualize how your Instagram feed will look like before you post.

Also, use their feature called linkin.bio to link Instagram posts to your product pages.

26. Crello

A great free alternative to expensive design tools.

Crello is an all-rounder that lets you create high-definition videos, animations, and social media graphics.

27. Piktochart

A great free infographic tool that gives you access to engaging templates and over 4000 free icons and images. The tool gives a premium level service with its free plan.

28. 60-second Personal Branding Implementation Checklist

In a hurry? Cut to the chase with our 60-second rapid implementation checklist. It lists down everything you need to do to grow your brand both online and offline in 3 months or less.

CHAPTER 5

Studying the best Personal Branding Examples to Grow Your Brand

Personal Branding strategies are best understood with actual real-life examples of personal brands in action. We list 5 of the best personal branding examples present today.

5 Best Personal Branding Examples

1. Neil Patel

If you are learning digital marketing, then you cannot ignore Neil Patel. He is everywhere, ranking on top for almost every keyword related to online marketing and SEO. And if it’s not him ranking on top, it’s definitely one of his many SaaS companies taking the honors.

Being the Wikipedia of online marketing

He has been famous in the marketing world for a long time now. One of the pioneering voices in the niche, his extensive case studies are an evergreen hit with the industry. All this makes his brand a default choice for any information related to online marketing.

Purchasing tools and giving it away for free

Lately, he has taken his personal branding to a whole new level with his recent investment in top industry tools. He recently purchased UberSuggest, a keyword research SEO Tool and made it free for everyone through his own website.

This has made Neil gain a lot of traffic and brand recognition from his target customers. Also, buying such tools differentiates him from other bloggers in the industry, making him “top of mind” for all things SEO.

Giant steps on YouTube

Neil is also focusing on growing his Youtube Channel, making high-value videos on digital marketing and SEO. All this makes him cover the remaining ground towards winning audience loyalty. Key Takeaways:

1. Own your niche by giving exceptional value. Become the default choice for content related to your industry.

2. Invest in tools and systems in your industry. Then provide the solution for free to win the hearts of your target market and ultimately convert them as leads.

3. Dedicate time and money to grow your social media channels. See what are your customer’s biggest needs and deliver it to them through their preferred social media channel.

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2. Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins is the no.1 name which comes to mind when we think of self-help. The world’s top life coach has built an exceptional brand over the years with his workshops and rock show like seminars that have changed people’s lives.

Creating a unique look and feel

His workshops and seminars gain a lot of mainstream attention due to its high energy vibes and on the spot problem-solving tactics. His unique mannerisms, aggressive tactics, and his openness to share personal stories, all blend together to create an exceptional brand identity.

Investing big on social media

As social media came along, his content found its way across various social media channels. The high energy talks fueled with raw, unhinged emotions formed a personal connection with people. His content soon became viral.

Consistently creating content and building authority

Over the years, he has added more weight to his personal branding by writing 5 books, 4 of which went on to be bestsellers.

All of this had led him to become one of the most sought-after life coaches in the world. With celebs like Bill Clinton, Serena Williams and Hugh Jackman, Tony Robbins shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Key Takeaways:

1. Develop unique aspects about your product which stick and stand out from others in your industry.

2. Put your content on social media channels. Be your authentic self there. It helps in forming a deeper bond with people.

3. Also showcase your mastery in the niche by doing something authoritative, like writing a book about your industry.

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3. Tai Lopez

“Here in my garage.” Didn’t this phrase just come to you the minute you saw his name? That’s the extent of Tai’s brand recognition, which he created by continuously targeting YouTubers with ads about his fleet of cars, his big villa, etc.

Knowing what they want, giving what they need

Tai has a knack for appealing to his target audience – inexperienced millennials looking to live the good life. He appeals to them by showing them what they care about most – having a luxurious life. In the now-famous ads, he gained their attention and adulation by showing his cars, bungalows, sometimes even having models in the background to add to the “good life” picture.

He then elaborated on the importance of knowledge as a tool for having a good life, followed by a call-to-action to enroll in one of his online programs.

Getting niche with targeting

Take a step back and think. Will this same strategy appeal to CEOs, developers or Startup Founders?

It won’t. On the contrary, a lot of them might even look down on such marketing tactics. This is because they are experienced. They know the ins and outs of the industry and such marketing ploys.

But then again, they were not Tai’s audience at all!

Tai’s audiences were and are young adults. They are ambitious but without any experience or awareness.

The key to Tai’s personal branding success is his laser-focused targeting and appealing to this audience segment with things they care about most.

Key Takeaways:

1. Know your target audience and focus on creating content especially for them, even if it means alienating others.

2. Identify the emotions and lifestyle which appeals to your target audience and future pace them on that lifestyle by presenting your product as the medium to get there.

3. Use Social Media channels to target and retarget customers.

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4. Dan Lok

Dan Lok is one of the highest paid business consultants in the world, and he has made his personal branding express that in a seamless fashion.

He echoes the result he promises to his customers by living the life they aspire to have.

Similar to Tai’s strategy but appealing more to the business executive and young consultant demography, he wears his brand on his sleeve with expensive suits, watches, and other luxury accessories.

He is also quite open about his failures and his journey to success (from being $150k in debt to becoming a multimillionaire). This story curve gives audiences a hero figure to look up to – a masterstroke in personal branding.

His YouTube Show “Boss in the Bentley” further adds to the aspirational aspect which young adults have about their lives.

The special thing about Dan is that his aspirational appearance perfectly blends with actual actionable content where he breaks down all the tools and strategies he uses to grow his businesses.

He shares footage of his high priced seminars and masterminds for free on Youtube. He explains this strategy as a branding exercise where the audience will get so much value from his free content that when he finally offers his paid content, it will be a no-brainer to buy from him.

His transformational content + proven results are intended to make his audiences feel the transformation in their heads (aka future pacing), thus giving them the psychological confidence to take action in reality.

All of this makes his personal brand very addictive for his audiences.

Key Takeaways:

1. Live what you preach. If you are talking about high ticket sales, make your lifestyle look the part.

2. Be open about your journey and your struggle. This will make your success look more remarkable, and your audience will look up to you for inspiration.

3. Back your appearance with actual valuable content, so your audiences can truly believe in the possibilities you promise them.

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5. Brian Dean

Brian Dean’s name has become synonymous with SEO. He is regularly quoted by top industry experts like Neil Patel, Eric Siu, among others. He is also known in the industry for inventing the “Skyscraper” and “Guestographic” technique.

This is because Brian has managed to distinguish himself as one of the top SEO influencers through his site Backlinko.

The site is known for its exceptionally detailed guides on all things related to Search Engine Optimisation and conversion.

The strategy Brian follows is simple but highly powerful.

He does not publish content frequently, but when he does, he pulls no stops to make it look and feel exceptional, giving more value than any of his counterparts in the industry.

His content is detailed, insightful and filled with high-quality examples focused on giving transformational knowledge.

Creating these exceptional long-form pieces of content and optimizing them for SEO makes him stand out in his niche.

Also as earlier mentioned, he has invented some highly powerful strategies in SEO and given them unique names. So next time an SEO expert is writing about “guestographic strategy”, he is more than likely to attribute Brian on that, thus adding more weight to his personal brand.

Key Takeaways:

1. Create less content but when you do create it, pull no stops to make it exceptionally valuable to your industry.

2. Optimize the content for SEO so you can rank high and come on the first page of results whenever someone searches for the main keywords in your industry.

3. Share some strategies you use in your business and give unique names to them. Stick to those names and make them popular by making videos and blogs about them. Once the name catches on, you will be known as the inventor of the technique. This will bring a lot of traction and brownie points for your personal brand.

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CHAPTER 6

Using The Ultimate Personal Branding Infographic to Fix Your Brand Strategy

This has been one of the most detailed guides on Personal Branding.

It covers every concept and strategy that are relevant to growing your personal brand fast in 2024 and beyond.

But we wanted to give you something more to further add to your training. Something more than text or video. Hence we decided to create this epic Personal Branding infographic which visually depicts the best strategies pulled from this ultimate guide.

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CHAPTER 7

The Next Step

I hope you got tons of AHA moments and epiphanies about how to build a profitable personal brand.

You can save the entire guide to read, save or print whenever you have time.

Simply download here:

DOWNLOAD MY PDF

But studying is one thing and taking action is another. That’s why I have put together a collection of bonus content for you to take action right away.

BONUS 1 You get the 60-second Personal Branding implementation checklist which will make you stand out in your industry and get leads in automation. The implementation checklist is filled with many actionable steps written in crisp to the point execution sequences.

Learn how to never again be confused about what to say to your audiences and what stance to take while communicating your sales message on Social Media (Point 1 and 2)

Set your social profiles to speak your brand without any daily efforts from you (Point 3 and 4)

Discover the 1 method which will put you in front of millions of target customers and help you generate leads on autopilot! (Point 5 and 6)

The 1 smart tactic which can help you build relationships with influencers and even get promoted by them on their own platforms! (Point 13). ← This is my personal favorite (word of advice – Please be genuine and honest while using this).

There are 17 such high-value actionable points arranged in order of execution. Grab it while its available for free.

BONUS 2 Get the Exact 4 Personal Branding Character Types experts are using to create million dollar businesses.

The character type tools are perfect especially if you are a newbie and do not know what positioning you should have.

Get all of this by simply clicking the image below.

5 Free Organic Traffic Sources to Scale Your Business Rapidly

by Abhik Shome | Jan 5, 2018 | How To

5 Free Organic Traffic Sources to Scale Your Business Rapidly

Abhik Shome

Founder and Editor-in-chief
The Starting Idea

Having warm traffic coming to your site is what content marketing dreams are made up of. A lot of marketers evangelize paid ads as the fastest way to grow an online business.

This is true as paid ads done right are highly effective. But not every one of us has the budget to support a continuous ongoing campaign through Facebook Ads and Google AdWords to generate leads. Thankfully, the current state of online media offers a host of sources which can help generate a ton of traffic and scale our businesses rapidly.

Here are 5 free organic traffic sources you can use to grow your online business extremely fast and in the process become an influencer in each of these channels.

1. Quora

Simply go to Quora and search for the keywords related to your niche. For example, if your niche is online marketing, just type the term on Quora’s search function.

You will be presented with a multitude of questions related to your keyword. Go to each question and answer them. Try to provide the maximum value you can without holding back.

Remember the more value you provide upfront, more the reader will be incentivized to read further on what you have to say.

After doing this, add links to your blog which further expand or give a more detailed answer to the question.

Again, put only appropriate links which add further value to your answer.

If you do these two things correctly, you will get a ton of hot traffic on your site, keen to get the value you are providing.

Have a lead capture form in place to attract this audience and turn them into leads for your business.

2. LinkedIn

It’s no secret by now that LinkedIn pushes content out more heavily than Facebook.

The reason is simple – they are hungry, for great content. Mastering your LinkedIn game right now will result in a lot of traffic coming your way.

This is because whenever a person in your network will like the post, it will be displayed to his or her connections, thus creating a viral effect.

Entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of it are getting an average 5k to 10k views on their posts.

Make use of it before it gets saturated. Take a part of your blog post and publish it on LinkedIn.

Put a Call-To-Action in the end, saying “Click to continue reading” which will direct readers to your website. It can result in massive vetted traffic.

3. Subreddits

Reddit is the place to be for finding internet gold. It is divided into sections called Subreddits, with each Subreddit dedicated to a particular niche.

So, simply go to Reddit and search for your niche, then join the Subreddits dedicated to that niche.

Now if not being spammy holds true for all the sources here, it is 10 TIMES more applicable when it comes to Reddit.

Redditors are notoriously famous for having zero tolerance for spam and promotional posts.

To avoid getting shadow banned, give as much value as you can. Share other people’s content apart from your own, do not hold back when sharing yours and where necessary provide the links for further reading.

A perfect way to do this is by getting some karma points (around 50+) before posting anything remotely promotional.

Karma happens organically when you constantly give value to discussions in the Reddit community.

This way the community knows you are an active user who adds value and not a salesman who dumps content and leaves.

4. Medium

The easiest way to ensure that your content will be read is through Medium.

It has a well-established audience base. You can leverage your content there to get more views from relevant audiences by using its tag features which are great for SEO purposes.

Also, all major publications are active on medium, so you have a higher chance of connecting with them.

To further add the benefits, your followers on Medium are notified every time you publish a post. You can also connect your existing Twitter and Facebook account to boost your following from the first day itself.

A great way to get traffic to your site is by putting 2/3rd of your post on Medium and adding a Call-To-Action at the end of it to lure the warm traffic to your blog.

5. Facebook Groups

FB groups are a great organic way to get to your target audience and get known in your niche circles fast.

Like it or not, FB is the most used social media channel and that is where people hang out the most.

Use the FB group search function and type in the keywords related to your industry.

Vet the groups you want to join by seeing if they ask entry questions before they allow you to join. This is a great way to tell if the group is spam protected and has active members or not.

After being allowed to join, read the group rules carefully and start engaging with other people’s posts by commenting and adding value to the discussion.

The idea is to get seen as a group regular so that the community adopts you as one of their own.

After doing this for a week or two, start posting valuable content in the group BUT please DO NOT post links in the group.

Due to the FB algorithm changes, most self-respecting groups have a strict no link policy to avoid spam and affiliate links. Respect it and simply post valuable content.

How will this benefit you in getting website traffic you ask?

Well, if you keep posting valuable content, interested people will visit your profile to see who you are. Here is where the magic will happen.

Make sure you have your website link and a short description of it on your bio and if possible in your cover photo.

More often than not, the visitors will click through to your site and be led to the funnel where you can capture them through a sign-up form.

Yes, the funnel is a little longer compared to the other sources listed here, but it is a great opportunity to get leads in your industry from where they are most active at – Zuckerberg’s lair.

An all conclusive pro-tip

Here is a little secret technique which you can use to ensure you get a viral boost in all the sources I mentioned.

Simply establish a telegram group of fellow content marketers in your niche, and every time new content goes out from you on any of these channels, ask them to engage with it through likes, comments, etc.

Doing this will tell the platform algorithm that the content you posted is driving instant engagement and hence will be pushed more.

Abhik Shome

Abhik helps entrepreneurs shorten their path to online growth with conversion marketing. He is a leading conversion marketing expert and online marketing thought leader. As CEO of Brand Bridge Solutions, an online marketing agency, Abhik's content has been featured in mainstream media outlets like Inc Magazine, Business Insider, Inc ASEAN, YourStory, and Influencive among others. Abhik is the Founder of The Starting Idea, a business growth magazine focused on giving fast-paced actionable marketing strategies to the modern day entrepreneur. He is also the founder of Product Know, an exclusive library of business software and resources. He has recently authored the book “The Growth Toolbox” covering 210+ tools to grow every aspect of a modern day business. Get it for FREE here. His blogs and articles have been shared and appreciated by top industry experts including Larry Kim, Founder of Wordstream & Mobile Monkey.

How to Get Your Product Viral – Interview with Jack Paxton from Vyper

by Abhik Shome | Aug 24, 2017 | Interviews

How to Get Your Product Viral – Interview with Jack Paxton from Vyper

Abhik Shome

Founder and Editor-in-chief
The Starting Idea

Getting viral on the Internet is the most pertinent question these days for almost every company across any niche.

Your average consumer spends around 60% of his day on Social Media and getting their attention is what brands are competing for.

But did you know getting viral is not merely as simple as sharing content on the Internet?

There is a science and a strategy to it which needs to be followed along with specific tools which execute the strategy for you.

We sat down with Jack Paxton, Founder of Vyper, one of the leading SaaS tools for Viral Marketing, to discuss some interesting strategies to make web content go viral.

We go through concepts like using gamification, using contests, viral giveaways, etc.

Have a read.

Jack Paxton

Foundr of Vyper

Abhik: How to implement gamification to make a product go viral?

Jack: Using innovative tools are required to make your lead generation a little more interesting.

Things like gamified popups, contests and social posts are all ways to get people to engage more with your brand.

Incentives people to share, download or comment on something.

Always be asking your readers or website visitors a specific action, this action should benefit them not you.

Abhik: What are some of the best practices for doing a viral contest?

Jack: There a few things that will help you run a more successful giveaway.

Make sure the prize has the wow factor (worth a lot to the people you want to attract). This does not have to be a monetary value it can also be perceived value. Make sure the contest page is easy to understand and follow. State the prize and how to win it.

Use gifs, images, and heading variations to make the contest page more fun and engaging.

Include multiple winners to the contest. E.g. have a first place winner and a winner chosen at random. Promotion is key, find niche audiences that care about your product.

Abhik: How should we create a buzz around our product launch?

Jack: We actually published a free course on this to YouTube if you want to take a look.

Abhik: Give us some tips for a high quality lead generation?

Jack: Always offer value. Give something before you ask for something. The key is to engage and reward people.

For example, offer a free checklist download for an email, use gamified popups instead of normal popups, run contests instead of basic lead gen ads.

Build credibility by offering value!

Abhik: Give us some tips for doing a successful viral giveaway?

Jack: Start with the easy stuff like your email list, social channels, popup on your website, blog post etc.

The more onto some of the other strategies like partnering with another company, running paid ads, submitting contest to directories, publishing in Facebook groups, cold email outreach.

Abhik Shome

Rapid Interview on Startup Growth Hacking with World’s Leading Growth Hacker – Vin Clancy

by Abhik Shome | Aug 10, 2017 | Interviews

Rapid Interview on Startup Growth Hacking with World’s Leading Growth Hacker – Vin Clancy

Abhik Shome

Founder and Editor-in-chief
The Starting Idea

The streets of London were bustling with action as we caught up with the man of action himself, World’s leading growth hacker and author of Secret Sauce: The Ultimate Growth Hacking Guide, Vin Clancy.

Vin Clancy

Author of Secret Sauce: The Ultimate Growth Hacking Guide

Here are some golden insights he shared with our Founder, Abhik Shome, in this rapid interview about scaling startups fast. Enjoy!

Abhik: What are best tips on growing your startup fast?

Vin: Speed is everything.

This means, you have to get things out the door on time, maybe there is a spelling mistake, maybe links don’t work sometimes, but you have to get this thing out the door as soon as possible.

Also, you need to find the Secret Sauce to get a lot of traffic fast.

It might be Instagram influencers, it might be cold emailing, you can give big public talks, that will get a lot of people interested.

Whatever it is, you need to find one thing which other people aren’t doing that you can do a lot better.

If you do not get this Secret Sauce everything else you have done will not matter.

No matter how good your product is, what matters is how well you can get traffic to the startup.

Without traffic, it will not go anywhere fast.

Abhik: How to get initial press for your startup?

Vin: Do Something that is press-worthy.

If you email v@magnific.com, we can send you a list of 3300 editors and tech publications so you can use that to get in front of them.

You can email them about what you are doing but make sure you research them and see if they write about your niche or it won’t matter what happens.

Another important tip which a lot of founders miss out on is to have all of your assets easily available to the writers with a single click so they can get all your pictures and so on.

Abhik: What are the best tools and systems every startup should use?

Vin: I would say – Buffer, to post on all social media channels at once.

Also, I would recommend using Audiense to scrape Twitter and Instagram, it allows you to look up anyone at any time by what are they having in their bio and see how likely they are to respond to you, how many follows do they have and how many they are following, altogether a great tool for finding great influencers in your niche.

Abhik: What are the best networking tips to get big ticket clients?

Vin: Honestly, just do public speaking.

The rest of it does not really matter.

If you have no contacts it is going to be very hard to get off the ground.

If you don’t do public speaking, you will have to organize three to four meetings to validate what you are talking about.

If you do public speaking you get a lot of people who see you as an authority all at once at the same time, so I would use public speaking to get clients.

The Next Step

Have any questions regarding growth hacking? Please reach out to us. We will be most happy to answer them.

You can find Vin delivering gold in his FB Group on Growth Hacking – Traffic and Copy.

Last but not the least, SHARE this interview with a friend who is starting a business.

Abhik Shome

From Being an Outsider to Hosting Her Own Highly Successful Talk Show, Sylwia Gorajek Talks About Her Journey in Silicon Valley

by Abhik Shome | Jul 19, 2017 | Interviews

From Being an Outsider to Hosting Her Own Highly Successful Talk Show, Sylwia Gorajek Talks About Her Journey in Silicon Valley

Abhik Shome

Founder and Editor-in-chief
The Starting Idea

Sylwia Gorajek was as an outsider to Silicon Valley but within a few years, she has become the talk of the town (literally!) as she has established one of the most talked about shows focused entirely on Silicon Valley – Valley Talks.

Sylwia Gorajek

Talk Show Host of Valley Talks

Running this successfully along with her video production company, Denim Video, Sylwia knows the hacks to starting things and sustaining them whilst leading a work life balance to envy for.

In this interview with me, she talks about the inspiration behind her talk show, dealing with depression of failure, her networking hacks, getting press, how to make it in Silicon Valley and a whole lot more.

This is a must read for all Silicon Valley aspirants.

Abhik: Tell us about your show Valley Talks and inspiration behind it?

Sylwia: Sure, so Valley Talks is a talk show where I interview startup founders and experts from Silicon Valley.

When I came here 5 years ago, I had no clue about startups and came to expand my video production business which I was running with my husband in Poland for a few years prior to arriving here.

We are in the media and creative industry,

I didn’t know much about startups.

However, I had an idea for a hyperlocal messenger that came to me while we were exploring the United States.

After a year of being here, I kind of realised, people are doing this, they are doing startups, they are raising money, maybe I will go for it also because I have this super disruptive idea, right?

I ran this startup for a year and a half but it was hard. I realized some fundamental things were not in place.

This caused me to leave the project.

It was a super tough decision to make.

Not even a month after that, I started to work at Apple and Netflix on some awesome projects for them.

As I continued working there, I wanted to do my bit for startups, to have this connection and tell stories of startup founders here.

I felt like it was super important to show people what happens behind the scenes of upcoming startups.

So that’s how I started to interview other founders.

I felt like it is important to inspire and educate everyone else aside of Silicon Valley.

Abhik: What message are you trying to promote through Valley Talks?

Sylwia: Well, actually there are a couple of messages!

One is that growing a startup is not easy.

Some people think that it is awesome to build a great product which everyone will love because you think there is a huge need for it. That you will post it online and it will blow out following which everyone will start using it the next day.

This does not happen and it is very rarely the case.

It may happen but that’s not really how businesses are built. It is not normal to happen.

There are many components in just building a business and scaling a startup.

That’s one of the messages – that it is really hard.

It is not like we see in the media, that it is so awesome and glamorous, it rarely is.

But on the other hand, my second message is that although it is hard, once you dive into it, you will realize that you are not alone.

It is not just you going through all of this.

With Valley Talks, I want to show that other founders also, you know, with many successes under one’s belt, have been going through the same or are still going through this, with a specific focus on how are they dealing with this.

Abhik: You touched upon a psychological issue which goes on when you are a startup founder, how it was very hard of you to let go of the startup which didn’t work out the way you wanted it to.

So, can you talk about the psychological risk which entrepreneurs take when they jump into the startup ship?

What are your ways of tackling it?

Sylwia: Yes, sure, that’s an awesome question.

So, actually, when we dive into something, ideally we should love what we are doing. Because that devotion is needed to do it for 24 hours a day.

We have to love this, but once we love, it is hard to deal with some challenges or difficulties.

We get frustrated very easily. And it stresses us so much.

This stress and frustration is a very hard thing to deal with and sometimes when they are very long term, it may become chronic and can actually make changes in your brain.

It may cause your dopamine level to not be on the same level as it used to be, your brain cannot be happy anymore, altogether a very dark state of affairs.

That’s how depression starts actually.

It is very physical, very chemical, I would say, it has nothing to do with weaknesses.

This is something very important to be aware of in advance, I guess.

Now to really take care of your well being, make sure you relax when you see that things are getting out of control.

Just give yourself a little break and have some fun.

Because otherwise, your health will not let you run the business anymore.

Abhik: Coming to the interviews which you do, can you name some interesting startups that you have had on your show and what exactly you found appealing about them?

What was the WOW factor about them?

Sylwia: Yeah, I am so excited that my guests are sharing such awesome things in every single talk that we have.

But I guess that maybe some of the recent ones that I just released like the talk with Ranidu Lankage of Whale are altogether awesome.

I feel like in every single sentence we spoke during the interview he nailed it in this or that way.

So one of the things we spoke about was customers.

It is common knowledge that we should talk to customers, this is one of the basics of growing a business but he made an awesome point about talking to the right customers.

We definitely do not want to talk to the customers that are happy, because it will only make us feel awesome about what we do.

We need to talk to people who would like to use our product and ideally know about our product and are not using it.

That’s one of the insights that he shared and that’s really awesome tip.

Another awesome learning revolves around seeking help.

Many people mention this on my show that we should not be afraid to ask for help. This may seem trivial but that’s kind of true.

We are often shy or do not want to deal with refusal, but if even someone refuses it, just don’t take it personally, it is just because they would say the same to anyone else in the same position, just don’t worry about this.

And you would be surprised how many times people actually help you and that may change the whole direction or your business.

That’s what many founders shared on my show.

The third important learning is about the founding team.

It is very important to choose your co-founders wisely. It’s like a marriage. You do not plan to have this company for two years only.

You want it to be your lifetime partner in success. You can’t do this with unsuitable founders.

So, don’t jump into partnerships too fast, just explore and be patient, I guess.

Also, this is one of the things that is evaluated by investors, a lot of times even before your business.

Ryan Bird and his team from G Startup Worldwide are reviewing around 5k startup applications a year from around the world for their pitch competitions. Those applications are then forwarded to a huge network of investors.

He mentioned that the team is a super important criteria at this stage and sharing what they have already achieved is more important than promising wonders.

Abhik: Tell us about your journey from Poland to Silicon Valley?

Please share some of your experiences and insights which other Silicon Valley aspirants can learn from and add to their playbook.

Sylwia: I would say, start with exploring.

You don’t need to make the full jump, start with coming here for as long as you can, even something like 2 weeks will always be helpful.

What I did with Jakub, my husband is we came here for a month and before we came here we networked with people though the internet.

Finding them is something you can do in any place.

Try to use this time the best you can and plan this beforehand.

Start knowing people, maybe look for a partner, someone whom you can give value and who can give value to you.

That was our goal in the very beginning and that’s how we started.

This is something that doesn’t cost you much.

Just find someone here who you can match with. Someone who will guide you through the first weeks or months.

Also, visas are another huge aspect but at the very beginning tourist visa is good enough for your needs.

Start with that and then start thinking about options for a long-term visa, start to talk to immigration lawyers.

Actually, there is going to be a very interesting interview on Valley Talks very soon about choosing immigration attorneys and immigration visas for entrepreneurs and employees.

I would say that choosing the right immigration attorney is as difficult as obtaining the visa.

It is an equally important component to really do things right.

Abhik: Tell us your thoughts on the Startup scene back in Poland.

Sylwia: Actually, I moved here to SF right after my Master’s degree.

I didn’t have the chance to explore the scene in terms of my experience and my own business.

I was in Poland a month or two months ago and I know a lot about it from my friends or other investors who are either investing in Poland, often travel there, or just exploring the area.

First of all, we have a huge, fantastic group of engineers in Poland.

Polish people are very ambitious and educated. Very smart.

We want to be successful, we want to go global. We want to feel proud, want the world to know more about Poland than what it has heard about it so far.

So that’s why I guess the quality of our work is really awesome.

What the challenges there are the investments, I guess.

There are not as many investors, there is not a proper investor scene. But of course investors will say that there are not as many quality startups to invest.

So it is a challenge of matching those startups with right investors. This is something Poland still needs to learn about.

Abhik: What are the Startup niches which are thriving there in Poland?

Sylwia: Hardware is a big niche in Poland. I know several startups from this niche.

Also software when it comes to market places is another big niche.

Search Engines are doing big too.

Abhik: You have previously worked for Apple as a content editor for Apple Music. So how was the experience working for Apple, what is the culture there?

Sylwia: Apple is such a big company that there are two cultures – A unanimous general culture spread across the organization and exclusive sub cultures which exist in between the teams and varies from team to team.

In the team I was at, I would say it was a very confidential environment.

We were dealing with things which were about to go public on Apple Music. It was very secretive, I would say.

It wasn’t ideal to discuss things you were working on between each other.

I heard this to be a very common norm in Apple in general.

They want the information to be pretty internal even within the team because of the security reasons. I guess it is their main policy.

But otherwise it was really friendly, really great products to work on, I was really excited about my project.

Great environment, awesome people.

It does depend on the team you are in and like in any other big corporation, there are rules that you need to obey.

Abhik: How was the experience at Netflix where you worked as a quality control engineer? How was that like compared to Apple?

Sylwia: Yes, Netflix is a much smaller company when it comes to number of employees.

I guess there are 3k employees, at least this was the case one year ago when I was working there.

This is crazy! It has already been a year since I worked there.

Netflix has still much of the startup kind of vibe.

I loved working there, because even as a new person, they give you a voice.

Everyone there has a voice. Everyone can say what they think about the product, what their family and friends thinks about the product, thus give feedback accordingly.

Often times this information will be gathered and taken into consideration. I felt like I had a lot of say and the environment was very friendly.

Netflix culture prides in allowing you to bring your kids to work, your dog, your pets to work. Very flexible hours of work. Free lunch.

Yeah, as you can see, I fell in love with the Netflix culture when I was there. Really awesome culture and awesome company.

Although it is not a startup anymore for many years now but nonetheless a very friendly environment to work at.

Abhik: What kind of impact does a relaxed culture have in the productivity and final output of employees. As you know, there are arguments both in favor and against it, so can you share your own personal insights?

Sylwia: Sure, when you are running a business, your time is really up to you.

So that’s usually the case when you are being your own boss and it applies more so when you are in the creative or media industry.

Now, contrary to that, working at a company is different coz each company believes in their own school of thought and philosophies to which you need to abide to.

Actually I have a great comparison between Apple and Netfilx.

Because at Apple they would have strict lab hours, but in comparison, the Netflix hours were super flexible.

So within a week or two I transitioned from one into another and had a great comparison to experience and analyze.

I would say both approaches to work schedule have their pros and cons but judging by Netflix, the flexibility they have is enormous.

We didn’t even have to come to work. We could work from home or we could go out and make a round around the lake. There is a lake nearby. You could do whatever you wanted.

Of course you had to be updated with what was going on. This gave you so much happiness and joy that you actually fell in love with the company for giving you this much freedom, the result of which was that you really wanted to work more for them.

That’s what I felt. For me it was an amazing approach.

I can understand that some people can abuse this and that is the exact downside to this approach, so maybe it is not for everyone.

But my personal opinion is to choose people who would appreciate something like that.

Choose people who really feel the mission of the company and want to succeed with you but at the same time to whom you can give total freedom to, so they don’t need to have any constraints.

In the long run you will know if they are doing a good job or not, so it will become obvious.

But it is also important to not to waste those several months with someone who doesn’t appreciate something like this at all.

It needs to be a match and you need to analyze with task-result measurements.

Abhik: You have interviewed so many startups and you have learnt a lot from Valley Talks, so according to you what is the key to a successful startup?

Sylwia: Well, you know, it is something everyone would like to know.

I wish there was one thing, one sentence that would solve it all, but I guess from my own experience and what investors are looking at, it is the founding team.

It needs to be about the team, because nothing else matters if the team is not right.

Regardless how awesome an idea you have, the team is the key to actual execution.

If you have people who have complimenting skills, hardworking, people who understand where they want to go, even if not this idea, product or market, they can do something else altogether. I think this is the first thing to follow.

Apart from this, following some key rules like talking to your customers, making sure you know the strategies to grow in your niche are essential in building a formidable startup.

Abhik: What are some golden rules for networking according to you?

Sylwia: I think that whenever you meet people at a meet-up or an event, you need to remember to follow up with them, to send an invitation on Linkedin, to talk to them the very next day at the latest.

This is important so that they remember you and that connection actually means something.

That’s a must do for sure.

Another thing is to know how to introduce yourself in less than a minute.

You do not want to bore people whenever they ask you about what you do.

If you continue talking about it for ten minutes, it is plain horrible.They will never talk to you again.

So I would say those two ones are the core ones to remember while meeting new people.

Abhik: A lot of startups struggle to get initial press and word out, so how should a startup get some good initial press?

Sylwia: The one thing which everyone mentions always is to target the right journalists.

PLEASE do not just send out a bunch of emails to every magazine or whoever you find online.

First thoroughly do your research.

Actually it is similar to looking for investors or pretty much anyone who you want to approach.

You have to know a little bit about them.

Putting this extra time and effort will really pay-off, because people who you will be reaching out to will see the extra effort you have made to go personal in your outreach. So this is something important.

If you find people, journalists who write about similar space, similar topics or markets there are pretty high chances they will write about you because this is their job and they want to have some awesome content.

Research about their work, mention it in the email to add that touch of personalization and then pitch your story along with mentioning how it will benefit the readers of the said journalist.

Abhik: You and your husband are both working on startups, so any tips on work-life balance?

Sylwia: Business and personal life are mixed in our situation but it’s been like this almost forever.

Even when I was at Apple or Netflix I was recording Valley Talks.

So again, we were doing this together.

We like this kind of personal-professional mixed lifestyle. We don’t have to ask anyone for permission.

And also, we are both very adventurous I would say. So with our personalities, it just helps us fulfill our passion.

Abhik: How should startups reach out to you to get featured on Valley Talks?

Sylwia: They can always contact me through the contact form on the website.

I guess when they want to be featured, it always helps to fill out the form.

It lets me know a little bit more about themselves in the contact tab on valleytalks.com, where there is a link to this form.

You can always just shoot me an email but then I will most likely tell you to fill out the form and let me know more about your Startup.

Abhik: What do you think are the key tips for some startup to succeed in the media industry?

Sylwia: That’s tough, because there are so many of them, but one thing would be – make sure that your content is high quality. To do that, either have skills in terms of the format or partner with someone who knows how to do this. Secondly you need to look for feedback. You need to ask your viewers or potential viewers what they think. Those one are the two most important things to pay attention to from the very start.

That concluded our interview with Sylwia. As mentioned, you can always reach out to her to feature your startup at www.valleytalks.com.

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