Creating Brand Awareness Outside of the Blog

Back when I started my business, blogging was the thing to do to build brand awareness. That and posting to social media. And while both are still valuable, neither gets the reach that they used to.

That’s why we need to think outside box and consider some strategies that can complement your blogging and social media presence.

What are those strategies? That’s exactly what I’m talking about on this episode–along with the most important element to all of the strategies I list. And my guess is that you’re forgetting this one element!

Listen in today!

Mentioned in This Episode

Transcription

Abby Herman 0:09

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 148 of The Content Experiment podcast, a podcast that supports the idea that content and marketing are ever moving targets in any business. And it’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re doing it all right all of the time. You have permission to experiment with little tweaks and changes in your content, to find what works for you, what increases value for your audience, and what grows, your business, and most importantly, what feels good for you.

Abby Herman 0:38

I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and coach for online business owners who are ready to make a bigger impact online. I firmly believe that success isn’t about what big marketing brands and so called gurus think is the right thing. It’s about you and your business, your lifestyle, and, frankly, your values and belief systems. You get to do business in a way that works for you.

Abby Herman 1:01

If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that I started my business in 2007 as a side hustle. And through that time period, and even through the early parts of being in business full time, which I started in 2013, Content Marketing in general, and to me, was all about the blog. That was the way to get your message out there in some social media posts, and I know that there were other things going on at the time and podcasts were a thing. But really, it was the blog that people focused on. And that’s what I focused on as well.

Abby Herman 1:36

And oh, how times have changed. And frankly, how my own mindset and knowledge base has changed, too. That’s what business is all about. Learning new things and growing so that we can support our businesses and our clients’ businesses that much more.

Abby Herman 1:53

Well, today on the podcast, I’m sharing how content goes so far beyond your standard social media posts, and blog posts. And I’m sharing some creative ways you can create content for your audience in the stage one of your client journey, specifically. So today, we’re talking all about brand awareness. Now I’m going to share a lot of ideas, many of which, actually, all of which, I believe you will find in my client journey ebook.

Abby Herman 2:25

Now, this ebook will walk you through the different types of content and the purpose of each type of content for you, and for your business. And it’s actually a workbook to help you brainstorm and process the information as well. Now you can get that ebook at thecontentexperiment.com/journey. And I actually talked through the whole workbook and my take on the client journey on episode 120. Be sure to check that out. I have a link to it in the show notes.

Abby Herman 2:58

Here again, in this episode, we are just going to talk about brand awareness. So I like to talk about pillar content. So again, these fall under the brand awareness in the client journey. And pillar content are the big pieces of content that you own, you quote unquote, air quotes, own them. Those are blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels. So it’s really important when you’re building brand awareness to own your content. This is content that does not belong to someone else’s’ social media platforms. Mark Zuckerberg, for example. It does not belong to another business owner. It is content that is on your website, and that you own the rights to.

Abby Herman 3:47

So for example, with your blog, you own your blog, you own your website, you pay to have your website on the interwebs. That content is yours, you have a host for your, your website, on your podcast you’re paying for hosting. So even though it shows up on someone else’s platform, you own that content because you have loaded that audio into a platform.

Abby Herman 4:15

And YouTube, well. YouTube is a search engine, as you hopefully know, and you don’t actually own your content that is on that search engine. However, you have recorded the content it bears your name, your face. It being, YouTube being a search engine, it’s really valuable for you to be there. So again, you build brand awareness with content that you own.

Abby Herman 4:42

And then you also share that content. So you’re probably taking your blogs, your podcast episodes and your YouTube videos and you’re probably sharing them on social media. You create social media posts to share your pillar content and your Probably sharing on social media in some other ways or for some other reasons. One would be to connect with your audience. And one would be to promote your quote unquote, stuff.

Abby Herman 5:12

So these social media posts can consist of live videos on the social media platform like Facebook and LinkedIn, it could be reels and tic tocs that you share on Instagram and Facebook. This type of social media content could be promotional graphics with captions and links. And it could also be images with long form or narrative captions, and so much more, there are so many different types of social media posts that you can create. If that is the end of your content, marketing and your brand awareness, you’re missing a lot.

Abby Herman 5:52

So I feel like a lot of us are doing a lot of these things already. And that’s really great to have that out there to have this content that bears your name, and it’s on your accounts, we want to engage our audience and stay in front of them. But two things I want you to remember, regarding these social media posts and this pillar content. We can’t just post to social media and walk away. That does not build engagement at all. And engagement is the key when you’re talking about brand awareness.

Abby Herman 6:26

The other thing I want you to remember is that using pillar content and social media exclusively, is not going to grow your business. These are mostly brand awareness activities. And though they can also be a bit of step two in the client journey to educate, inform, depending on how you approach and create your content. However, just posting to social media and pillar content is not going to get you in front of new people. Unless you have some killer SEO, which is kind of difficult to do with all of the changes that Google makes all the time, you need something more.

Abby Herman 7:08

And I also need to say this. So just because I’m saying that you need something more does not mean that I advocate creating content for the sake of creating content. This isn’t about jumping on the content creation, hamster wheel and doing all of the things. It’s about thinking through your content marketing strategy, and getting really strategic about where you spend your time.

Abby Herman 7:29

So let’s talk about what other content you can put out there to the world to help build your brand awareness. My guess is that you’re already creating a lot of this other content, you just might not be leveraging it. So listen to me talk through the list, and then listen to the thing that you might be missing. Because it’s really important when you’re trying to get noticed by new audience members, you’re working on brand awareness. This is something that pretty much every business owner needs to do on the regular.

Abby Herman 8:01

I’ve already talked about your pillar content and some of the more standard social media posts that you’re probably already creating. But what else can you do to build brand awareness of your brand? And my answer to you, because this is the common thread through all of the ideas I’m going to give you, don’t cringe, but the answer is speaking. This is huge.

Abby Herman 8:26

When you speak to other audiences, the owner of that audience or the person who invited you to speak is essentially giving their entire audience a testimonial for you. They value your knowledge and they want to share it with their audience. And this speaks volumes.

Abby Herman 8:42

So I know you might be sitting there thinking, no way, Abby, I’m not getting in front of a crowd. I’m not standing on a stage. And of course, this is a great direction to take getting on a big stage, but you don’t have to do that. And you probably shouldn’t early on, in my opinion, building some experience by speaking to smaller groups will help you get used to the process and build up some confidence. Some ways you can speak to other audiences in smaller ways are now listen up. There’s quite a few of them.

Abby Herman 9:15

One is guesting on someone else’s podcast. You might not get on that bucket list podcast right away, but any niche podcast would be a good fit. I personally have had success with all types of podcast formats as a guest. I have told my story, my journey in entrepreneurship. I have talked about content strategy. I’ve talked about a number of the offers that I have, and they all seem to work. I’ve even been in a couple of round up episodes where I just have like a five minute speaking piece. But guesting on someone else’s podcast gets you in front of their entire podcast audience.

Abby Herman 9:58

Another way to build brand awareness is teaching a collaborative workshop. So do you have a buddy with a complimentary business, I want you to find a way to create a free or paid workshop together doing this gets you in front of their audience, and vice versa. So it’s a win win. Plus you have someone else to lean on to help with the tech side and promotion. It’s just really great to be able to collaborate with someone if it makes good business sense for you.

Abby Herman 10:28

Next is Facebook group challenges. So as this episode is releasing, I’m actually hosting a live Facebook group challenge. While it’s true that people have to already be aware of me to even know about the challenge, and to have been able to sign up taking the time to teach something live really helps to help your audience and helps the people who are participating in the challenge to get to know you better.

Abby Herman 10:56

Next is clubhouse speaking, this is not something that I have done yet. But if you are on clubhouse, speaking up in groups or hosting or co hosting a group is a really good way to get in front of new people. And I’ve had clients and business friends see great success from this.

Abby Herman 11:16

Next is teaching in communities. This is similar to guesting on someone else’s podcast because if someone brings you into their community, whether it’s paid or free to teach something, they’re essentially saying that you’re awesome, and that you have something of value to share. So if you have the opportunity to speak in a community, take it.

Abby Herman 11:39

Next is speaking at summit. If you’ve paid attention to what’s going on in my world right now, you know that I have been a part of a number of summits recently, and I actually have a few more in the coming weeks. Speaking at summits can potentially get you in front of the audiences of every single speaker at the summit, provided that they promoted Of course, but everyone who signs up for the summit will have access to your talk and your promotional materials. And a lot of times, summit talks are recorded ahead of time. So it kind of takes the pressure off of you to show up live, you can record and re record until you’re satisfied with your summit talk.

Abby Herman 12:22

And finally, appearing on a panel. So I pitched to speak at the sheep podcast conference coming up in a few weeks. And while I wasn’t selected to be one of the main speakers, I was asked to appear on a panel with three other marketing professionals. This gives me access to an audience at the conference. And it also allows me to build relationships with the other panelists, which is a huge benefit of being on a panel. And another bonus, I don’t have to prepare a big talk or presentation. The other panelists and I will present for about eight minutes each. And we’ll be able to have conversations with one another during the panel, which takes a lot of the pressure off and I feel like this is a big win.

Abby Herman 13:05

So let me run through these just really quickly and then tell you what you’re probably missing if you’re doing some of these so guesting on someone else’s podcast, teaching a collaborative workshop, hosting a Facebook group challenge, speaking on clubhouse, teaching in someone else’s community, speaking at summit, and appearing on a panel. All of these are ways to build brand awareness. And they’re all great, but too many people forget what I think is probably the most important part of brand awareness. And that’s the call to action.

Abby Herman 13:42

Being on someone else’s podcast gets your voice in front of hundreds, potentially 1000s of other people. But if you don’t have somewhere to send them, you are wasting your time. Same with any of the other brand awareness ideas or strategies. Ideally, you want to capture their attention, then capture their email address. If you listen to Jessica Rasdall from the speak to scale podcast, which I will link to in the show notes. I’m specifically going to link to Episode 150, where she talks about signature speaking topics.

Abby Herman 14:18

So you need to have signature speaking topics. I call these signature topics, your zones of genius, and they’re essentially the big ideas you can talk about forever and ever again and again without ever running out of things to say about these topics. I talk about this more in Episode 138, which I’ll also link to in the show notes. When you know what those big ideas are, you can create a free or low cost offer for each of them to send people to when you’re a guest somewhere you can use a pretty link or shortlink to make it really easy for you to say it out loud as you’re speaking. So it’s super easy for people to go to.

Abby Herman 14:58

For example, on this podcast I’m talking about client journey. So I have a landing page for the E book. It’s thecontentexperiment.com/journey that I created to promote it. If I was on the speak to speak to scale podcast talking about client journey, I would adjust that link to be thecontentexperiment.com/speak, so that I would know exactly how many people who listened to the podcast grabbed my freebie and got on my email list.

Abby Herman 15:29

This allows me to measure the value of doing something like this again, or the value of a podcast like Jessica says. And by the way, I’ve been on Jessica’s podcast, and it was very valuable. A link to my episode is in the show notes as well. So I cannot possibly stress enough the importance of the call to action and getting people on your list. Do not do brand awareness without it because frankly, you’ll be wasting your time unless you are trying to sell people into a high ticket offer from the brand awareness activity, which, by the way, is really tough to do.

Abby Herman 16:09

And I want to remind you of something that I said early in the episode, and that’s the pillar content that you’re creating the blog posts, the podcast episodes, and the YouTube videos, alongside the social media that you are publishing is not going to be enough. There needs to be more that you are doing to get yourself out there. The pillar content serves a really great purpose of demonstrating your expertise and helping people to get to know you better, once they have discovered who you are. But these days, you cannot count on SEO or social media reach to get in the earbuds and the eyeballs of people who you want to sell to.

Abby Herman 16:54

So I want to know from you, what type of brand awareness content Are you ready to try out? As we get ready to start quarter four of 2021 I want to challenge you to create something a little bit different that you haven’t already created? Is there someone you can reach out to and collaborate with? Can you start building relationships with podcast hosts who align with your messaging so you can build that relationship and eventually be on their podcast? Do you know of summit hosts who have a summit coming up that you could speak on? Is there something you could teach in a Facebook group challenge? And I really want to know what that is?

Abby Herman 17:32

Let me know. Let me know by responding to my email that is coming out today or by just sending me a direct message on Instagram. If you found value in what you learned here today, be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. And be sure to tag me @TheContentExperiment so I can give you a shout out. The more you share, the more we can get this podcast into the hands of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone.

Abby Herman 18:07

Until next time, take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai