Supercharge Your Personal Brand With the SAE Framework

Are you trying to grow your personal brand, but do not know how? Maybe a lot of you may be new in a certain vertical or industry. What can you do? How can you supercharge your personal brand?

There are a lot of myths, though Myth is a myth, there are a lot of myths out there as to what it means to have a personal brand. 

And one of these myths is about the personal brand being based on having the fastest cars and being able to pose on it and taking that picture on Instagram or its about hanging out with celebrities or high authority people and just rubbing shoulders with them and documenting it on Facebook, or going out in the street and getting recognized and getting praise?

But really personal branding is none of these things.

 It’s really the opposite, though. It is personal. It’s about serving others. It’s about believing in a mission. Being so committed to something that you’re willing to digest all the years of something that you’ve learned and share it with the world that you want to help. That’s what personal branding is about. 

So if you want to get in the game of helping people, personal branding’s for you.

Personal branding is about serving others. Another way I like to think about Personal Brand is what Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say, “This personal branding is your reputation”. 

And I really love that metaphor because personal branding is a fancy, smashy marketing term. It’s over-hype these days but really it’s just your character– who you are. It’s what you stand for, it’s your mission, it’s what you believe in. 

So at the end of the day, if you are a good person, you’re known for something,  that’s what personal branding is all about. Being known for something and being reputable for something.

Personal branding is the sum total of what people are saying about you. So this can mean the good, the bad, and the ugly when all of it is added up. That’s your personal brand. That’s what people think about you. 

So this can be easily measured online. Like when someone tweets something like, “Oh, Dennis Yu is awesome. He’s the Facebook guy” or on Facebook, “Wow, that video was amazing, Dennis”. 

These things can be added up. But the tricky thing about reality is it’s the things that you don’t hear, behind closed doors on what people are saying–good things, bad things, ugly things. 

These are also important when it comes to personal branding that people don’t take into consideration– the unmeasurable.

So at the end of the day, it’s just believing in something so much, presenting yourself, and carrying yourself out in a manner you want to portray, and then it takes care of itself.

Remember: The positive mentions and then the negative mentions add up and that becomes your personal brand. 

So that is “the why” of why your Personal brand is about serving others and personal branding can get you more exposure–speak on stage, and get people to know you as an authority figure. 

For us here at BlitzMetrics, we have six stages of personal branding, and this is our Social Amplification Engine.

We like to do things in six. There’s a process and all of this is found in our Personal Branding Course.

Plumbing

 It starts with plumbing. You have to go through this sequentially for everything to make sense because if you skip a step, you’re going to be hurting your foundation.

And just like building anything, if you want to build the highest tallest skyscraper in the world, you have to first think about the foundation because even the tallest buildings have the deepest foundations and what this means for personal branding is plumbing. 

You have to have a strong plumbing foundation, and this can include setting up your website, setting up your social media assets, and everything in place.

So if you want to have authority on certain topics, you have to have somewhere to house your content. 

So if your content is in the form of writing, it’s a blog. And if it’s in the form of videos, like we love doing one-minute videos, it’s setting up a Facebook page and not just a profile, a public figure page where you can run paid ads to it. 

And just a quick tip, one thing when it comes to setting up your personal brand, your public figure page should have a picture of authority like an image of you speaking in front of a big crowd and showing it right away when people click on your page.

So what’s your plumbing? Your foundation. 

Need help with your Digital Plumbing? Here is a Do it For You Solution designed just for busy people like you!

Goals

You want to start with your why? Just like the building has a skyscraper at the bottom. It’s a mission. It’s a why? It’s a purpose. 

So once you set up your why, set up your public figure page too.

Need help with setting up your goal? Here is a blog post that can help.

Content

Once you know your why, you have your topic wheel and your topic wheel is made up of six different categories. Let’s begin with the types of content:

Three types of content:

1. Content Calendar. It’s basically, “Hey, it’s October this month, so there’s Halloween and at the end of the month, let’s have an October Halloween sale. Oh, it’s November next month. Let’s have a promotion for a Turkey, Turkey special where you get 20% off this product”. 

This is the type of content that’s based on the calendar. Based on something that you set up. 

2. Spontaneous content.

This can be from the news in the media such as the below:

Spontaneous content come and go. It doesn’t live forever because its just based on what’s current.

3. Topic wheel

Your topic wheel is the core subjects surrounded by what you want to sell, what you want to promote, and your services. So you can use all three types of content, but you have to prioritize your topic wheel, which is the foundation.

It is the cornerstone, the core of what you stand for. 

Here is an Example:

If you notice in the topic wheel, for each topic, there are branches for more circles, and what these circles represent are people’s whys. Why support your product?

And that’s the strongest kind of content and the strongest form of marketing.

 Having other people talk about you– and this can be your customers. 

Need help with your Content? Here is a Do it For You Package that will amplify your reach across multiple social media channels, while simultaneously working to improve your organic ranking on Google.

Targeting

Instead of you saying, “Buy my products”, you want other people to talk about your product, and laying it out structurally is how you’re able to grow your personal brand methodically.

You want to post content?

Post content about what people always ask you and you might be saying, “Oh, you already know that” and yes, maybe some people know it but others don’t. 

And these are your pillar contents, these are content that will live evergreen because it’s based on principles, things that will last forever. 

For Ashley Furniture for example, one of our clients in the design and furniture industry, yes a lot of the furniture may change but if you talk about how we can design a room or structure a room a certain way, that’s the stuff that will live forever. It’s timeless. 

Producing timeless materials should be your focus when you’re producing your content. Have all of those branched out and slowly you can branch out as a brand.

That is the core of our content creation especially now that people favor watching videos, especially on mobile devices. So you wanna make sure you’re producing that same type of content, the stuff that you know, that you want to be an authority in, that you can add value in.

Need help with targeting the right audience for your brand? Here is a Micro Course in Targeting for you.

Amplification

Make one-minute videos and boost them through our amplification process, and we call it Facebook for a dollar a day.

This is how we influence by using word of mouth. So what we like to say is whenever someone says something great about us, we say, “Can I quote you on that?”

 It’s a very non-threatening, friendly way to get lightweight permission to use what people have to say.

Here is an example of how that comes to play: 

What you can do is whenever you come across someone in your field that has authority, you want to come up with a question that you can ask them. 

Use other people’s authority to boost your own, because remember you are the average of the five people you surround yourself by.

So you want to become friends with different figures, and it doesn’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg. You can start off with other people just near your range. Maybe it’s someone’s having a talk at a conference. Maybe before you notice that they’re going to be speaking, just go up to them, ask and then see if you can record it and if not, it’s okay. You can still type it up. 

You can type it in a blog post and share what they’ve said to you. And that’s how you start amplifying your authority by bouncing off of other people.

And if you are just starting out, one way you can do this is to follow them. Follow their Twitter, follow their Facebook page and look at the content and provide value by leaving thoughtful comments such as, “Wow, this piece of content really affected me in X, Y, Z way”. And maybe a week later say, “This is how I applied it”. You start cultivating these relationships. 

Cultivate genuine relationships.

And maybe once you start to get to know these people that you want to be part of your topic wheel, you can ask them for a small favor such as, “Hey, I’m writing a blog about what you said about Facebook marketing. Can I get a quote from you on what you think of the new features of Facebook”. Something small.

And of course, if you add value over time and they’ve noticed you, you’ve shared your stuff, they’re going to say yes. And that’s a small way to slowly build up your network, which goes and ties into your personal brand. It’s called Network Power because yes, we are just one person but if we surround ourselves with the tribe, the community, and all these individuals that are saying good things about us, that will give us more of a presence that you are worth your weight and gold on what you have to say. 

And this also applies to the customer level. That’s why we have things like Yelp, Facebook reviews, and positive mentions to talk about who you are and you have to understand that a personal brand is really just imitating a real relationship because real relationships are based on frequent, lightweight touches.

Its like when you become friends with someone, you don’t just say, “Hey, be my best friend”. It starts off with a conversation, “Hey, you want to go get lunch? Hey, you wanna go play basketball” and over time you cultivate this relationship with frequent, lightweight touches, and that’s all you’re doing for networking.

Need help amplifying? Here is another micro course in Amplification.

Optimization

It applies to our funnel.

You give people little pieces of content at a time, get them to be familiar with you, and that’s how you grow your personal brand however these things don’t happen overnight. 

This is a process of years and years and you don’t have to think, “Hey, you know, I just started off and I’ll just do this later once I start speaking on stage.”

No, you really need to start with your personal brand first and by systematizing your personal brand, you will get these opportunities. It’s a slow and steady process, but ultimately you know what you have to do, and as long as you keep going in building up your brand, that is how you win.

Need help with pulling in your results? Here is a Micro Course in Optimization.

That is how you build a strong magnetic personal brand at the end day. Personal brand is about serving others. It’s not about the car, it’s not about posing in front of the house, but about what you can do for other people.

So all of this is covered in our personal branding course and it lays out step by step how you can set up your plumbing, help on establishing your why, forming your topic wheel, all of this, and more.

So definitely take your time today and remember why you do what you do. 

And don’t put this off because it’s the practice of doing a little bit every day, which is going to give you the opportunities to meet your goals, and that is how you supercharge your personal brand. 

Did you know that this is a summary of an Office Hour Episode and you can listen to this and other past recordings as well as join the discussion with Dennis + access all the courses we have in the Academy for just  $297/Month? Join Office Hours now!