The Truth About Creating Content to Build Your Personal Brand
If you are serious about building your personal brand by creating high-level, thought leadership quality content, you CAN’T do a year’s worth in an hour.
Forget what all the “gurus” and template sellers tell you.
The truth is, REALLY, building a personal brand requires a significant amount of time and financial investment, but we all have to start somewhere.
So, here’s a simple plan for creating content in less than 10 hours per week.
YOU, don’t personally need to be involved in every part of the process, but there are some places where you are the only one who can do the work required. The rest, feel free to delegate!
Step 1 to Building your Personal Brand in 10 Hours Per Week: Generating Ideas (1 hour/week)
Your Role: This is a crucial step that only you can do.
Spend time each week, maybe in one sitting or a few minutes each day, to brainstorm.
As you absorb new information, interact with clients, and ponder on your experiences, jot down any ideas that come to mind.
These could be content ideas, questions you’ve been asked, or trends you’ve noticed in the market.
The key here is to write without filtering your thoughts.
This list will become a never-ending source of content ideas as you begin to flex this muscle.
You will soon realize that everything is content when you are looking at it all through the right lens.
Step 2: Creating Long-Form Content For Your Personal Brand(2 hours/week)
Your Process:
- Choose 2-3 topics from your brainstorming list. Choose topics that are:
- RELEVANT to your audience right now
- Fully developed in your miind, so you have plenty to say
- Helpful and/or inspiring
- Use the Ahrefs Hook Generator to create engaging angles for your content.
- Use these angles as hooks in the first 3 seconds of your video, as the headline in your captions, or as the title of your podcast
- Generate 2-3 hooks per topic to test or use in a variety of contexts
- Outline your main points and a call-to-action (CTA) for each topic.
- If you are doing how-to informational content, make sure you have no more than 5 teaching points.
- If you are telling a story, make sure there is a lesson or main takeaway for the person consuming the content.
- List out points that keep things moving. Cut fluff and anything that is not totally relevant.
- CTA’s can be purely for engagement (subscribe, share, comment, like) or they can lead to an opt-in, workshop, or offer. Jot down ONE thing you want the viewer/listener/reader to make. Not 2, not 5, ONE per topic!
Your Action: Record a 10-20 minute video or audio based on your outline.
This forms the basis of your long-form content and can be turned into 2-3 pieces each week.
Step 3: Strategic Content Amplification: Repurposing and Distributing Your Brand Message Effectively (4 hours)
Teamwork Time: Here’s where a team, if you have one, becomes invaluable. Convert your long-form content into:
- Short-form video clips
- Written content for social media platforms
- Graphics and quote cards using tools like Canva
- SEO-optimized blog posts
- Podcast episodes
- YouTube content (if possible)
Pro Tip: Start with a manageable amount of repurposed content to gauge performance before expanding your efforts. You can always go back and pull more out!
Step 4: Optimizing Reach and Interaction: Distributing and Engaging with Your Content (3-Hour Focus)
Use tools like Metricool or native app schedulers to post your content.
Allocate about 30 minutes for this.
Daily Social Media Engagement Strategy for Personal Brands:
- Spend 30 minutes each weekday engaging on social media.
- Start with commenting on large accounts, and responding to one comment from a commenter on those same accounts (5 minutes)
- Then spend 10 minutes connecting with and engaging on the content of your target market (10 minutes)
- Send a welcome message to all new followers (5-7 minutes)
- Reply to all comments on your posts (3-5 minutes)
Keys to Success When Creating Content for Your Personal Brand
Think about times you are already:
- Teaching
- Coaching
- Doing something interesting
And get someone to record those moments for you. This will save you time and allow you to use the natural content you are already LIVING, be turned into social media content.
Remember that consistency is CRITICAL. Take some time right now to block out recording time for the next 90 days, and stick to your schedule.
You CAN do all of this yourself if you don’t have a team yet. There are some great apps that will help you speed up the process and the learning curve.
Pay attention to the performance of your content, and take cues for future content creation sessions. When something performs well, think of different angles to talk about that same topic. If a certain style of video or audio gets lots of positive feedback, do more content in that style. If something tanks, come at it from a different angle. Content creation is all about testing.
Want to learn more about how to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn? Grab a free copy of our guide: Building a Thought Leadership Personal Brand on LinkedIn by clicking HERE!