Dennis Yu on Building Personal Brand for Local Business Success
With Dennis’ wealth of knowledge and experience in the digital marketing industry comes a massive following of loyal Dennis Yu fans. At Vendasta, we are certainly fans of Dennis, but his ability to brand himself has greatly contributed to his success in recent years.
This podcast will not only show you how to build your brand personally, but will examine the impact that personal branding has on business! To get a recap of Dennis’ personal branding insights, keep on reading. To listen to the whole podcast, click below:
How to Build and Leverage Personal Brand for Local Business Success
What is a Personal Brand and How to Build It
Your personal brand is the way that people see you online and relate to you. Personal branding is essentially marketing yourself as if you would a business or a product/service to sell. Ultimately, you are selling yourself—your knowledge, skills, or abilities. Building your own personal image and "brand" as an expert in your niche.
Personal brand is all about human connection, trust, and sharing knowledge.
Get over the “I’m trying to be famous” sort of thing. Your personal brand should not be about yourself and your pursuit for your own exposure; people naturally gravitate towards others who are authentic. When you share content and information online with others be sure to offer something that helps others, or educates.
When you build a personal brand, it’s not about you. It’s not about being famous or being on TV. It’s about you with such a mission that you want to share, you want to help, you want to educate.
...sharing AWESOME knowledge; that’s all personal branding is. It’s about sharing things that are of high value, where you’re adding value.
But first, let's look at why you'd want to build your personal brand, and how it can impact you or your clients' local business.
How Personal Brand Impacts Local Business
Having a strong personal brand is especially effective for small businesses such as the local real estate agent, or the local dentist. You may not think it carries any weight, but personal brand makes a huge impact on local businesses.
You don’t have to try to become the next Simon Sinek or Tony Robbins to care about your personal brand. Your personal brand MATTERS, and can greatly impact the way you do business or the success that your have in your career.
You have to stand out amongst the many local providers, and in this case, the local dentists. In order to stand out, you must establish relationships by building a personal brand and sharing knowledge with prospective clients. The dentists that are building client relationships online and promoting their personal brand digitally are the dentists who are winning more clients in today’s world of marketing.
People make decisions based on the heart. People make decisions based on who they trust. They have no way to tell whether that dentist is actually good at being a dentist or not. So people make decisions based on who they like.
When you have a frequency of lightweight touches, who are you going to choose? The one where you can see that they seem like a nice person. Versus, some other random Google search results you pull up. Who are you going to choose?
How to Connect Personal Brand to Conversions
Ultimately, you build your personal brand for a reason. There is always a motive behind building a personal brand and in many cases that is to drive sales or conversions. People buy from people, and by building your personal brand you increase the chance of establishing touchpoints and relationships with prospective customers.
In today’s digital marketing world, a major way to build your brand involves video marketing. Video marketing continues to make information more digestible and easier to understand. With all of the content in a person’s news feed, you should try to STAND OUT. Therefore, it’s time you start building your personal brand with video content.
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The Why
Why do you do what you do?
People want to know about you, your business, and your story. Telling stories does not have to be complicated, it can be as simple as sharing a childhood experience. The story presented in the why videos is made to humanize your business and set the foundations to build relationships with prospective customers.
People buy because of the why.
People have to know you before they can like you before they can trust you.
2. The How
How do you do what you do?
The how videos can differ depending on a person’s knowledge or industry but are all aimed at doing the same thing. A how video looks to share knowledge with other people, and help or educate them.
There are over 3.5 Billion searches on Google every single day, many of which are “how-to” questions directed at the search engine.
How videos to promote a personal brand should be simple tips and tricks that showcase your knowledge.
- If you’re a dentist, share a 1 minute video on how to brush your teeth!
- If you’re a personal trainer, take some time to shoot a 1 minute video on how to properly squat.
- If you’re a makeup artist, consider creating 1 minute tutorials on how to apply different types of makeup.
As mentioned above, lots of people are searching for how to do certain things online. Become a thought leader and knowledge expert by sharing simple how videos with people online.
3. The What
What do you do?
The what videos are your sales pitch. These get right down to what you do for people. You create why videos and how videos because you want to build your following, establish relationships, and become recognized for your knowledge. Now, it is time to sell your expertise—with a what video.
A what video should sell your business, your products, or your services.
Back to our examples from above, if you’re in various industries then your what videos will obviously differ in delivery.
- If you’re a dentist, your what video could be selling the benefits of the walk-in availability at your clinic for minor dental repairs
- If you’re a personal trainer, it is time to use the compelling story (why video) and knowledge videos (how videos) to sell the various packages of personal training that you offer.
- If you’re the makeup artist, then your what video could sell the one-hour makeover packages that you offer.
If you can't get enough Dennis Yu and like digital marketing jokes, check out Dennis' A-grade VendastaCon presentation here!
The Ease of Leveraging Video for Personal Branding
Videos don't have to be difficult. As most businesses would know, there is a lot of time and money that goes into the production of high-quality professional videos.
The beauty of personal branding is that people want you to be authentic and real. There is no more real way of opening up to your audience than putting your cell phone into “selfie mode” and shooting a quick video. People relate to this, and you become recognized for your honest approach as you showcase yourself naturally.
3 Easy Steps to Creating Awesome Personal Branding Video Content:
- Be yourself.
- Grab a camera.
- Shoot a quick video.
For more on the video strategy aspect of personal branding, check out Dennis Yu’s 3x3 video grid strategy.
Stay tuned for more information on how to promote your videos on Facebook with Ad targeting and the strategies behind finding the right targeted audience on Facebook.
For more on personal branding tune into the Conquer Local podcast to hear from Dennis Yu directly!
