226 - How to Build an Authentic Personal Brand, with Amelia Sordell
The show challenges the notion that personal branding is just for ego-driven schemes, asserting instead that credibility, honesty, and trust are core to building a strong personal brand.
Amelia Sardello, the founder of a personal branding agency called Clout, is today’s guest, sharing insights into why companies should invest in personal branding for their senior leadership.
Amelia emphasizes that personal branding isn't about ego; it's about forming genuine human connections and strategic marketing.
The Deep Dive into Personal Branding
Personal branding goes beyond superficial self-promotion; it's a strategic approach to earning trust and creating opportunities for business and career growth.
Companies can benefit from having an executive team with strong personal brands, leading to more engaged employees, better business opportunities, and a human-centric approach which garners trust.
Authentic personal branding repels some but strongly attracts others, fostering a community of individuals that resonate deeply with your message and authenticity.
Creating a Human Connection in Marketing
The conversation shifts toward the necessity of humanizing company and executive brands, underscoring that at the end of the day, it's people who make purchasing decisions.
Businesses should focus on marketing that resonates on a personal level to create communities, rather than just seeking followers, by leveraging different platforms to show distinct layers of their brand personality.
Emphasizing human values and experiences in marketing messages can heavily influence customer engagement and loyalty.
Both Murray and Sardello discuss the importance of being genuine, creating shareable content, and connecting through stories rather than relying solely on artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.
With everyone having access to vast information, it's the authentic experiences and personal touches that stand out and drive deeper connections.
Starting Your Personal Branding Journey
For those starting out, the focus should be on identifying clear goals, target audiences, and crafting content that aligns with one's expertise, experiences, and authentic voice.
Subtopics within one's niche can help to generate a wealth of relatable content that appeals to specific, likeminded segments of the audience.
The end objective is to build not just a following but a community that connects with the brand's human element and core values.
In conclusion, the podcast underscores the critical role of human connections in marketing and the power of personal branding as a strategic business imperative for authentic growth and engagement.
Action plan: Building your personal brand (Generated with Bash)
Building personal branding goes beyond ego-driven aims; it's an essential strategy for trust-building and gaining business opportunities. In the digital age, people desire connections with individuals, not just brands.
This approach can appeal to communities from within, is cost-effective, and forms deeper, more meaningful relations with potential clients and employees.
Goals
Establish credibility and trust within the target market
Attract opportunities for business and career advancement
Engage employees and enhance internal communication
Drive business outcomes like revenue growth and hiring efficiency
Tasks
Determine the ultimate goal for personal branding efforts
Identify the target audience and understand their needs and preferences
Create a content strategy based on the audience's interests and the individual's expertise
Regularly create and share content that resonates with and adds value to the audience
Use personal stories and experiences to foster authentic connections
Encourage executives and senior leadership to actively participate in personal branding
Analyze the data to track progress and adjust strategies accordingly
Timeline
A specified timeline based on the marketing strategy is necessary. However, the timeline should ideally include:
Daily engagement on preferred platforms
Weekly content publication,
Monthly analytics reviews
Quarterly strategy evaluations
Resources
Creative assets like graphics and videos tailored to each platform
Platforms such as LinkedIn, TikTok, and newsletters for distribution
Tools like chatbots or AI assistance for content inspiration
Personal branding strategy documents and training materials
Analytics tools for tracking engagement and conversions
Responsibilities
Marketing team to assist with content creation and analytics
Executives to create authentic content sharing their insights and experiences
Social media manager to manage postings and engage with the audience
Human Resources to align personal branding with internal engagement goals
Read the full discussion in the transcript below 👇
Transcript: 226 - How to Build an Authentic Personal Brand, with Amelia Sordell
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the No BS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murray, and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f**k up. There is a big misconception around personal branding that it's like this ego-driven activity, right? And that the only people that do quote-unquote personal branding are people who are selling like get rich quick schemes and like Ponzi investment schemes, like all that kind of stuff. Like, I feel like that's what people think personal branding is. That is exactly what it is not. Because in order to build a strong personal brand, you have to have credibility in the space. You have to know what like, well, you don't have to know what it is that you're talking about, but you have to be willing enough to be honest about what you know about a particular topic, which is what ultimately builds trust and gets people to buy into you. What's up? Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials. Today I have a repeat guest. He's awesome. She's Australian pretending to be British. You could ask her because we're going to talk about personal brand or what way she goes with her personal brand. Is she Australian? Is she British? Is she part? A little bit of both, but excited to talk to Amelia today. Amelia, what's up? Welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me again. And yeah, is she British? Is she Australian? Spoiler alert, she is both. She was born in Melbourne, raised in Sydney and in West London. Dad's British, mom's Australian. So yeah, there's a bit of pop quiz knowledge for you. I want everybody to get a background on who you are if they didn't listen to previous pod. So could people know who Amelia Sardell is? Yeah. So my name's Amelia Sardell. I run a personal branding agency called Clout and we basically work with executive, senior leadership, entrepreneurs and founders on building their personal brands. And that is everything from managing their LinkedIn, their social media through to getting them speaking gigs, giving them media training, like getting them out on stages for the sole purpose and the sole belief, if you like, that people buy from people, but more importantly, they buy from people they trust. And if you've got a senior leadership member or an executive leading an organization from the front outwardly facing as well as inwardly facing, typically you have a much higher engaged employer base or employee base and you also get significantly better opportunities for the business, but also for your career. So yeah, that's what we do. Let's talk about personal branding because I think, but I want to go down the path of why companies should start investing in that because I think we, I mean, I think me and you have been yelling this for a long time, but people haven't been listening still. So why in 2024 should people start investing in their executives, building personal brand, some senior leadership, employees? Why should they start? Let's just like brace the elephant in the room, right? There is a big misconception around personal branding that it's like this ego driven activity, right? And that the only people that do quote unquote personal branding are people who are selling get rich quick schemes and like Ponzi investment schemes, like all that kind of stuff. Like I feel like that's what people think personal branding is. That is exactly what it is not because in order to build a strong personal brand, you have to have credibility in the space. You have to know what, like, well, you don't have to know what it is that you're talking about, but you have to be willing enough to be honest about what you know about a particular topic, which is what ultimately builds trust and gets people to buy into you. And I'll dig into, you know, how you build your personal brand when you have no knowledge or no experience later, but I think it's really important that people understand that it's not an ego driven activity. It's a strategic marketing imperative. And the reason why it's a strategic marketing imperative is because people buy from people. We covered that before, but more importantly, people are so over brand messages. They're so over, you know, being sold to, they are so over fake user-generated content looking stuff from businesses and they're over being spoken at and not to. And I think the really powerful thing about personal branding is you can infiltrate communities that you're trying to appeal to or you're trying to attract both from an employee perspective or from a sales perspective or however you need to swing that cat, whatever it is that your goal is with your company or your brand or, you know, whatever exercise it is that you're undertaking. You can infiltrate these communities from within them and influence them from within. And that is so much more powerful than trying to, you know, shove a credit card in someone's face and or shove a product in someone's face and say, give me your credit card. Like nobody wants to be sold to, but everyone wants to buy. And the easiest way to get people to buy from you is to form an emotive and emotional human connection with them. And the only way that you can do that is by putting people at the heart of your business. It's kind of like human to human marketing if you want to put it in like more of a clinical sense. But I think the biggest reason why people don't like doing it or think that they shouldn't do it is because the word branding is involved. If we just said like, oh, the way to get ahead in your business is you just like, you know, post some content about stuff that you're really good at and like inject some of your personality. People would be a lot more cool with that because that feels a lot less scary. But when you say personal branding, people think it needs to be some big shiny object that's completely removed from who they are and, you know, is quote unquote an expert in the space. They have to be some kind of, you know, jovial, fake version of who they are. And actually the strongest personal brands, if we look at you, Daniel, and me, and a bunch of other examples I can give, the strongest personal brands that I know, and I'm not talking about followers, by the way, I'm talking about strength, credibility, and reputation, are the people who are the most authentic version of themselves. Like I don't try and pretend to be anyone other than who I am. And that, you know, repels some people, but it attracts a lot of other people, which means that I have a hundred percent inbound opportunity and business model. So yeah, that's why you should build a personal brand. Really personal brand is just reputation. You just could choose to build it behind closed doors, or you could choose to show people and build credibility online, which is more scalable way to do it. And it's really funny because a lot of executives would rather be on a stage in front of 5,000 people, but they can be on a social media talking to 60,000 people every single day. So it's really funny that they would rather be on a stage where they don't want to be putting themselves online, talking, building their reputation, not their personal brand, their reputation as an expert in their space, which is fun. The craziest thing about that is they will happily stand up in front of an organization. So it's like a couple of hundred people and it doesn't even need to be a stage, right? These can be their people and they will happily stand up in front of these people and say, like, you know, guys, we need to sort our shit out or how well we did or like give motivational speeches or whatever it might be. And you put them on a stage in front of their peers and a lot of these people, again, they'll get nervous. Like obviously public speaking is scary for even like myself, I do public speaking a lot and I still get nervous, but you put them on a LinkedIn page and say, just like, just give me a little story about something. And they just go, oh my God, I can't post. And it's like, you've just stood in front of a stage in front of 350 people telling them that they need to buck their fucking ideas up, but you can't hit posts on a LinkedIn post. And I do think there is such a fear of visibility for people because when you put something online, it's permanent, right? And I think people are so scared to alienate people and be kind of like pushed out of the tribe that they are therefore too scared to be themselves. And actually what they're completely misunderstanding is the value of you as a human being is in who you are. It's not in what you do. Like if it was what you did that mattered, then it wouldn't matter who owned businesses and who ran businesses and who, you know, whose manager was whose, because there are plenty of managers in the world who have the right skillset to be good managers, but they're shitty managers because they're shitty people. And if you're a good person, why wouldn't you want to leverage that to gain an advantage, whether that be accelerating internal employee engagement, which is what strong personal branding does for a lot of organizations. You know, we've worked with, you know, Fortune 500 companies where the sole reason they're bringing us in to build their executive team's brand is because they want to re-engage their internal team, right? Or it could mean that you win amazing opportunities. You could win incredible inbound business. You can actually get, you know, invites on stages and all these things. And to your point about the reputation piece, if you're going to spend all this time, money, effort, and to be honest, years of your life building up credibility as a reputable person in your space, then you have five minutes a day to build your personal brand on LinkedIn or on any platform for that maybe. And if you don't, because you're saying, oh, well, I'm worried, you know, it's not for me or, you know, I don't need to be visible, then that's great for you. But just know that there's someone else in your space who is okay with being visible and they're the ones that's going to take the spots that you deserve. Yeah. And if you're not okay with being visible, there's a couple of people in your company that will take that place and help you as well. Exactly. Yeah. And there's more on an agency like clout.com. Let's do a hypothetical. I'm an executive, I come to you and I say, I want to start building my personal brand. Amelia, where do I start? What are the first couple of things you tell them? I think for an executive, it's slightly different for like everyone else. So we work in multiple different channels. I work with executives on the agency side. I do a lot of consultancy stuff as well with bigger businesses on personal branding at the top table. But then we also have our get clout platform as well, which is kind of for everyone, right? It could be a student that's doing it, it could be an executive, it could be whatever. So I'll kind of give you two answers to this question. The first answer is with the executives or with founders, and if you're listening to this and you're in marketing, you're like, oh, personal branding is such an amazing opportunity. Like, I want to get my executives to do this, but they're so uninterested in what we're doing. So there's a couple of ways in which you can win them over. First, you need to go to them with the data as to why building a personal brand is so powerful. And I talk about this all the time. And if you want to get the actual stats, they're on my LinkedIn profile page, I believe. I didn't update it for a while, so I think it's still there. But I basically say that brand messages that are re-shared by the founder or the executive in the businesses get re-shared 25 times more than if they're shared the same message on the company page. Equally, they get eight times more engagement if you share the same message on an individual's versus a company page. Leads that come through an individual's brand convert seven times more frequently. People trust people, right? Like that is an unequivocal thing that no one can deny. And that's why so much business used to be done on the golf course, right? Because people want to do business with people. But if you want to build a brand and you've kind of won them over and they're kind of like, cool, Daniel, here's some budget, like go off and do it. There are a couple of things you need to consider. First and foremost, what is the goal? I think a lot of people go into personal branding with the view of someone's told them to build a personal brand. It's like, cool. I need to build a personal brand. But why do you need to build a personal brand? What is the thing that you're aiming for? Is it that you want newsletter signups and because you're going to monetize that newsletter? Is it because you want to get speaking gigs because in the future you want to be the authority in your space? And in order to do that, you need to have state. What is the goal? What are you trying to achieve? What is the metric that's going to be like, I fucking nailed this? That's really, really important. And it doesn't need to be like those KPIs that I just mentioned, because for me, those are KPIs because my bigger goal is to influence a million people to build their personal brand. So for you, it might be that I need to make a hundred thousand dollars in inbound revenue or it might be, I need to hire 50 new people off the back of our executive's brand without having to pay a recruiter. Like whatever it is that metric is, there needs to be a goal. Once you work out what that goal is, you can then go, okay, so who do I need to attract in order to make that goal happen? So if I've said, right, my goal is that I want to attract inbound employees to come and work with us so I don't have to pay a recruiter or I don't have to pay whatever to help me. Okay. So if you need to bring those people inbound, then what does that person look like? Like what are they going to have in common that's going to attract them into that executive's network? Once you can figure that out, it's then really easy to work out what you should be talking about. I'll take your brand, for example, Daniel, like you set out from the jump, the goal with your personal brand was to be seen as the authority in marketing, right? Because you had all these plans to like go on and do all these other things. And so everything that you posted came back to engaging marketers in marketing related content. And what I mean by that is you would share memes, you would share funny things that were happening, you would share tweets that were relevant, you would educate people. But everything that you posted and still post came back to relatable content to a marketing audience because that was the audience you needed to attract to achieve your goal. And I think a lot of people start with the, what should I be talking about? When actually they should start with the, why do you need to do this? Because it's really easy to uncover what you need to be talking about if you know who you're talking to. And it's hard to know who you're talking to if you don't know what goal you're trying to achieve. So that's the kind of lay it bare strategy that I guess anyone can use. And then I would take that one step further. Like if you're someone who, you know, you're a self-employed or you're an employee and you're not kind of doing this for someone else, like AKA you're not marketing, making an executive doing this, I would go one step further and say, okay, I want to be known as like the authority in marketing, like Daniel Murray, I want to be the authority in marketing, which is great. I want to be the Oracle of information, et cetera, et cetera. And you want people to come to you, but, oh, did you see Daniel's post the other day? I would take a one step further and be like, how can I make people like me and not just my content? TikTok in particular has like perpetuated this like really fast turnaround content that people love, but don't actually love the person creating it. And like a great example of that is, I'll be like, oh, did you see that TikTok the other day? And I will never remember who it was that posted it, but I'll remember the piece of content. And that's really good from a virality perspective, because you've got these high dopamine injections coming in, which means you get massive numbers really quickly, but it's not good for a personal branding perspective because from personal branding perspective, you want people to invest in you and love you so they can grow with you as your career evolves and they can advocate for you as your career evolves. So yes, you need to be an expert in said space for you, Daniel, as marketing, but like what else can you inject in there that's going to make people like Daniel and not just like Daniel's content and how you've done that so fucking effectively as you've done this podcast. So people get to hear your voice every single week and they connect with Daniel. They're like Daniel's style, they're like how he asks questions, they're like the guests he has on, like there'll be certain personal things that you bring in. You know, we were talking before we started recording about you being away and how your trip was and you know, they're getting to know who you are, which means they're going to follow Daniel. They're going to follow the marketing millennials and they're going to ride or die for you above any other authority in marketing because it's not just the content they're coming to you for, it's you sharing that content. The goal is the most important part and the goal not only sets up what you want to talk about, it also sets up what type of content you want to put out there, because I always say if you. if you have other channels to do it the the goal of like for example tik-tok could be I want to just get a lot of attention to push people somewhere else but your goal of tick-tock your own platform your goal could be hey I want to build depth with my audience so how do I build depth with my audience I have to be very vulnerable I have to do this I have to do that I have that this is my owning platform so it also helps you decide hey isn't my content gonna be attention I'm not gonna build depth on this platform and go build depth on a podcast a newsletter a LinkedIn profile where do you want to build depth I think that's also because you can't build depth on every platform it's really hard because everybody's attention is like different ways on different channels you know we just about tick-tock I know that tick-tock for me is a distribution channel exclusively right although in saying that I do win a lot of business from tick-tock and I have a lot of in band applications from tick-tock like we've won about hundred thousand pounds 150 thousand pounds in business of tick-tock but the reason I say it's a distribution channel is because I know based on what we just spoke about there that people's attention on tick-tock is so limited and that it's limited to the content itself rather than the content creator like it's very infrequent that you would go on to tick-tock and search for a specific creators content you would let it come up naturally in your for you page because that's just how that algorithm works whereas on something like Instagram or YouTube you might be more likely to look out for your favorite creators story that's come up or go and seek out the most recent post that that person's done on YouTube because you're invested in the creator so for tick-tock for me it's all about views it's all about numbers it's all about attention it's all about brand awareness and then for Instagram for me it's more about depth you know you said depth which I think is such a great way of explaining I'm like showing you that I have these new slippers and like aren't they fun and I'm also like oh my kids drive me fucking crazy today but then also like here's how to build your personal brand and it's like layering that up and then on LinkedIn also I would say the same thing it's very much like I'm the professional I'm the expert in personal branding but here is a little bit of like my fuck-ups my failures like who Amelia is you really buy into who I am and then YouTube is like vlog like raw unfiltered I have no makeup on I like a bag of dicks but this is who I am and idea is that each single channel has a different layer to Amelia so that hopefully if you follow me on one channel you're then gonna be curious about me on others and then you go and cross pollinate across all of those channels but all of that messaging is identical it's just that the way it's delivered is a little bit different it's a little bit more layered that's not to say you should know I like the thought of that's why I understand your goal can also say okay on each distribution channel this is a further thing so if everybody's starting I would always recommend focus on one or maybe two channels no more than that but if you think of it as distribution channels and you could think about okay right you Amelia's like tik-tok is mainly views and brand awareness and being top of mind and which you come on my for you all the time so I always see you and I see you more on like tik-tok than I see you on LinkedIn and which is funny so a brand awareness channel like that helps you just stay top of mind which that's what I'm saying like you have to it's good like if someone comes across your LinkedIn and this is something I'd literally sold to an executive recently he was like why would I be on tik-tok and I was like because you want to retarget your audience and assessing that they're not expecting you you look at the fastest growing member segments on tik-tok there between kind of 28 and 35 like as a decision-making group of people like that is the fastest growing member segment on tik-tok right now so you're telling me that you shouldn't be on tik-tok because it's for dancing teenagers and yet the very people you're trying to sell to or on tik-tok but they're in talk on tik-tok out of hours get on tik-tok because then you can use that to retarget people with a different type of content that they're not used to seeing from you on a platform say like LinkedIn and it's like retargeting but without having to pay for it which is great I think one of the words you just said there were like the sentence he said there is out of hours I think people forget in marketing that so many people are using channels like LinkedIn or like Facebook for ads or distribution but a lot of people are just using those channels from work hours so figuring out places where you could show up outside this is not only for personal branding this is marketing as well bringing up places where you could show up outside the normal 9 to 5 when someone is casually scrolling or and that's why knowing your goal and knowing the platform will say you know that tik-tok is a five to nine platform so I have to be doing something a little bit different there because people I have to show up differently because that's where what people are doing on that platform so context is very important on that platform to know okay someone's in this state of mind when I'm posting this piece of content yeah and people buy this thing in way whether they're on LinkedIn or whether they're on tik-tok right they the emotional they don't go oh I'm not at work anymore I'm not gonna listen to that thing like you buy in the same way so why wouldn't you want to leverage like 95 minutes by the way on average every tik-tok user spends on the platform every day like why wouldn't you want to leverage that it's just it seems very arrogant to me that you would be like oh it's not for me that's for dancing teenagers like the world has moved on Steve I want to go back to something you said we'll bring up late in the podcast and I think this is a problem with a lot of people trying to start on a personal brand or on social or anything is how do I figure out what do I talk about what type of content should I pose where do I start with that yeah that's a really good question it's actually one of the reasons why we created the platform in the first place because like we kind of or I looked at all the questions I always were getting which was what do I need to be known for what do I talk about how do I start and like who am I talking to like like that was the kind of four questions that I got all the time and so we basically built this platform that you know you go through an assessment it gives you a free personal bra I'm not free but part of the platform it gives you a personal branding strategy and then it sends you content prompts off the back of that strategy so for example it would tell you Daniel like you need to be known for marketing your audience our marketers you need to probably be posting on tick-tock and LinkedIn and you need to be posting this many times a week and here are your prompts for this week and so that's kind of the premise of the platform and the reason why I think that is is a great thing is because so many people don't know what to say and a huge part of the value that I bring to customers that we work with and clients that we work with is actually knowing what they should be saying because that's my area of expertise and I know I can look at someone immediately and go right you should be talking this this and this but it's like an inherent thing to me it's not something I can teach to someone so if you're starting out and you're thinking okay I want to be known for X Y Z but like what where do I start with that the easiest thing to do is to go right let's take marketing for example so you want to be known for I don't know some kind of marketing niche let's say social media because that's an easy one to do if your overarching goal is to be known as the social media guy or the social media girl you need to then think about okay what are subtopics within social media so some subtopics within social media might be things like tick-tock community LinkedIn assets graphics community engagement you know hacks that you can use to grow what is a viral formula you know how to convert off the back of ads like you could you know all those subtopics and then what you do is create another five subtopics under every single one of those subtopics and now all of a sudden if you started with 20 subtopics you now have like what 50 to you know 100 even if you're doing 20 a hundred subtopics that is enough content to last you like three months if you repurpose it properly well I think a lot of people spend too much time thinking that their content needs to be intelligent to be valuable the marketing Millennials Instagram page and LinkedIn page is literally sharing memes and it's one of my favorite accounts on those platforms you're adding value to me because your content resonates with me as a marketer like that's valuable you're not you're not giving me like a white paper and a blow-by-blow way I can like scale my business through marketing like you're actually giving me something that I can laugh at and go oh my god someone else feels like that too so your content you know when you're posting doesn't need to be like it's five tips on how to grow your social media it can simply be like when I first started out in social media like here are some bullshit stuff that I did and I regret like if your audience is other social media people they're gonna listen to that and read that and be like oh my god I did that too so it's about kind of understanding like what your audience wants and then creating subtopics off the back of that stuff and you know another good hack for that is you know go to answer the public see what's trending in the hashtags that you might be relevant in using so you're trying to get you know big in social media like what's trending in this hashtag social media marketing chat like hashtag on tick-tock like what is trending on hashtag marketing Twitter on Twitter you know what are people searching for an answer the public what are people asking in your DMS and that's something that I always start with with a lot of our clients it's like what is your top 10 most frequently asked questions and that normally will give you all the answers you need to bring off your first batch of content. The subtopics are good and it's easy it's also great too if you know your subtopics and say what are what do I know the best out of these subtopics and because I think a lot of people try the problem with I see a lot on social is a lot of people try to write things that they're not experts on and sometimes you're the best at social media had XY niche and if you just double down on that you'll be way more popular and try to bullshit your way through a yeah why do you talk about personal branding and not over marketing overall like I'm not an expert in marketing overall but I fucking know personal branding. And the the one the one thing you said about memes and stuff I think the memes not as a strategy and for everybody but the reason why I think memes or this type of content resonates with people is because if you can create a meme that hits someone that means you actually are deeply understated in your audience because nobody who isn't a marketer could create a meme that will resonate with their audience you can I could easily go chat GBT five social media hacks and put it on LinkedIn that's easy to do but nobody could say oh that feeling when five hundred thousand tabs are open and blah blah blah like like whatever or that that six cup of coffee like chat GBT doesn't feel but what a marketer feels like when the sales team come up to you and go can you just jazz up this presentation exactly exactly all those little things are things that just show you and you've you've been there which is a different type of thing than saying oh here are five hides here and stories also stories show that you've been there more than going in depth and saying I know XY and Z topic because I could easily today go look at 3,000 blog posts and take those blog posts piece them together and write a good marketing piece of content but that doesn't mean I I know the topic but again if I really know the topic I can write something that is original that from my experience that is a thought leader type of topic that's why I think people really need to stick to what they know at first and and start adding stuff as they grow in their career or they grow what they're doing in work what they're doing outside of work things that they're learning in conversations because that's the most authentic content is taking content that you're hearing or doing instead of taking chat GBT stuff and stuff like I'm not saying chat GBT is bad it's great for inspiration and stuff it's just really glad you brought it up because I don't know about you but you can see you can tell when someone's used it and actually I quite like that people use it because it makes people that don't use it stand out so like my content is very clearly written by a person because there's like bad grammar and like it's it's in my language and there's lots of like metaphorical hand-waving because that's how I talk right like I write how I talk and I think it's really easy for you to stand out in a sea of sameness when everyone else has access to chat GBT and just goes hey chat GBT can you give me five top social media hacks for 2024 and just spits it back out again that's great but like it's it's your turn of voice is your lived experience and I literally posted about this on LinkedIn today I said you know if it was knowledge that people wanted they'd go to Google but they don't just want knowledge they want your knowledge and the only way to get your knowledge across is by giving people your lived experience as to why you have that knowledge so for example a big part of my knowledge when it comes to personal branding has come from I've just trialed and tested a bunch of shit over a period of time and then figured out how what works and so when I'm giving people advice I'm saying like if you want to get more engagement you want to resonate with your audience more like tell them honest stories like talk about your fuck-ups talk about your you know your failures your wins your successes your obstacles I then will back that up with my most viral post was about the time that I sent 15,000 emails out to the wrong people like and I give context as to why I know that and I think it's like it's this layered approach right we spoke about layering platforms are like giving depth if you are really really serious about building your brand and you want to build an audience that will ride or die for you right and I know the marketing millennial like people will ride or die for you if you want to build a group of people around you like that you have to give them depth you can't just say like oh here's some knowledge like you're welcome it needs to be like here's some knowledge but here's why I think that because it adds credibility it adds vulnerability and also it gives you an opportunity to show people going back to myself right at the beginning that you're a human being and that is why I think we are in such an incredible time right now because you know we have totally democratized information access right chat GPT has totally democratized our access to information has meant that anyone and everyone can research pretty much anything up to 2023 right but the beauty of that is if everyone has access to that information that just means that people that do it like harder and better and more honestly and more authentically are gonna be the ones that win and you cannot use a bot to replace your personality you could definitely use it to inform like I love I love it I know all my you know newsletter topics are gonna be for the next 52 weeks because I've used chat GPT give me inspiration for that but I'm never ever gonna use a bot to write my content because it's a personal brand and to your point about the memes the reason why memes are so powerful is it forms a human connection and a bot can't create a human connection it can only imitate it and you can feel when it's imitated going back to that too is the one thing that bots can't do or is taking real-day conversations that you're having what are the most shared things are the way you talk on text messages memes shared in DMS funny posts about something that resonates you that gets shared heard, all these things that are shared and resonate with you are things getting shared to other people. So if you're going to post thing, nobody's going to share something that top five marketing, marketing tips, because that's not what is shareable content. Unless you give something that's so out of the box that people are like, oh, I'm, I never heard someone say that, but most of the stuff that is out of the boxes is not, I would also say that was out of the box. The only way that you'd get people to trust you is you were like, I found this out because I did. Why? Like, even then you have to still give depth. If you were just like, Hey guys, I hacked the TikTok algorithm. All you need to do is blah, blah, blah. You'd be like, shut up. But if you were like, I know this because I did it and I got 50 million followers, you might be like, Oh, okay, let's give it a go. It was also going to add on to the depth conversation because I think we're in a world that there's so many platforms and so many people are on every platform. TikTok did this. Now there's, you can watch videos, you can read memes, you could do this, you chat TBT, but the way to build people coming back to you is going deeper and deeper in your niche with your content, with your personality, because like you said earlier about TikTok, how I could just scroll marketing, hashtag, find out a thousand things, but never resonate with one person that said that the ultimate goal is you becoming that person to an audience that come back, not only because you were a market expert, because they like you as a person, they think you're cool, they think you're, and that's what real depth is. And it's the hardest thing to do now. Three years ago, it was actually way easier to build depth because everybody would had COVID and everybody was indoors and everybody was consuming content. Now people have to take their kids out to go to do their hobbies and play a football match and people have to go, are going on hikes now and people are going to dinner with friends. You're limited time to show up in a way that is deep to your, to your audience. So that's why if you can figure out how to build depth with the audience, you're going to win over people who are just putting out viral content that just hits for that three to five seconds in someone's life. And I'm glad you brought that up because there's a big difference to me between followers and community. So like you could have 5 million followers of people that like your content. And a good example of this is, you know, you come across those TikTok channels that will like share clips of videos. And like, you just keep wanting to watch the part two, part three, part four. And so they have loads of followers and loads of views, but they don't have a community because the people aren't following that page for the person creating the content, they're following that page for the content. And so to me, there is a massive difference between a follower and a community, a community is, is a group of people that will ride or die for you that buy into you and your brand. And that, that's not just from a personal branding perspective, that's from a company branding perspective too. Like I would say that Marketing Millennials has got one of the strongest brands around because you guys have managed to create a human connection from a business with people, right? And that's very, very difficult to do. But with like any kind of brand, whether it be personal or company, if you want people to buy into you and not ride the, you know, price train or the discount train or whatever it is that you're selling, you have to find a reason, like an emotive reason for them to buy from you, whether that be, you know, loads of brands are on this sustainability thing right now, because that's emotive and like, whatever, but there has to be something that has to be a thing that people are like, Oh my God, that's me. People need to be able to see themselves in your content, whether it be promoting a product or service or a person. They can't see themselves in what you're talking about. That's where you lose that share piece. Like people are going to share content and adopt ideas as their own, which is what they're doing when they share content. If there's no resonance in that content, that's what, that's what, that is the definition of shareable content. It's like, it's, it's, I'm adopting it as me because I resonate with it. I see myself in that content. And that is what your brand strategy, regardless of what you're promoting should be, is like, how do we connect human beings together with what I'm saying? And, and also the community aspect is it's finding common things of belonging in a space. So for example, you sharing that you're a powerhouse entrepreneur in, in England doing X, Y, and Z builds your community of other powerhouse people in England who are building fast companies who are grinding. And now you're, cause you're sharing that, not only personal branding, people are connecting with you because you're an entrepreneur building a business, doing this, working the nine to five, also have children, and then now you say you're a mother. So now mothers who are also working and grinding are connected with you. So these are all these sub communities that you're creating by sharing other things, but also they're following you because they want to build their personal brand too. So it all comes back to that one common thing. Yeah. It comes back. Like literally, I feel like the theme of this today's podcast should be depth. Like that is what everything that we've just spoken about comes back to. It's depth, creating, creating layers. And that it all starts with just starting, which is the funny part. Just fucking post it, as I say, I had a message from someone today and it made me laugh so much. So I did, I do a lot of consultancy and workshops and stuff with, you know, a lot of big businesses. And one of my friends who I've made through that work has just left to one of the larger organizations that we do work with. And she said to me that she had a message from one of our colleagues today. And, you know, he's got really big on LinkedIn recently. Like he has eight and a half thousand followers. And she was saying, you know, you're doing so well. And he was like, yeah, like every single time I go to post and I think, oh, I'm not really sure I should say that. I have Amelia's voice in my head going, just fucking post it. So she was like, oh, that, that training's paid for itself. It's also a lot of people need that accountability. So that's, you could be someone's accountability person. You could be someone's inspiration. You could be someone's education. You could be, that's why diversifying content and putting things out is so important. What is a marketing hill you would die on? That people buy from people and that all of your comms and your marketing has to come back to human beings. Like particularly in B2B, I think so many B2B businesses are like, oh, we're a B2B business. We have to market our business to solve a business problem. Dude, there is a person with the credit card behind that buying decision. So you need to make their life easier in order for them to want to buy from your thing. Right? Like, why do you think so many people pick Salesforce over HubSpot or over any other kind of CRM? It's because Salesforce has built this incredible brand around it that people go, oh yeah, I'm a Salesforce person. So they don't even entertain any other CRM because that's the one that resonates most with them. That is not a business that's made that decision. That is a sales director or a marketing, a CMO that has gone, yeah, that's what resonates most with us. And I feel like a really good example of that was when Apple first launched the MacBook, like way back in the day. Like their marketing was all about like, you know, we want to sell products to people who want to challenge the status quo, right? And so all of their messaging was around like, we only want people who challenge the status quo to buy our products. And so of course, human beings like, well, I challenge the status quo. Like I'm a maverick, I'm a problem child. Like I'm part of that Apple crowd. And it created this human connection, which is why Apple is so big now. It continues to do that. That's why people are so fiercely protective over their iPhones. It's also why people are so fiercely protective over their Samsung because arguably Samsung has now become the Apple of today, right? They are the ones that are bucking the status quo. They're like the alternative phone. So yeah, I would die on the hill of, if you want to build a successful business brand, whether that be personal and product or service, you have to understand that whatever it is that you're selling, there is a human being behind that buying decision and knowing the life cycle of that person and actually what influences their buying decisions and what kind of goals they have and aspirations they have in their life goes a long way in terms of working out how to market you and your products and services to those people. Because if you know these issues are happening in these people's lives, you know, I think it was Caitlin that said this, I forget her second name, but she always says, you know, in marketing, you need to sell painkillers, lifestyles and dreams. And that's stuck with me because you don't sell products and services. You don't sell benefits and features. You sell painkillers, lifestyles and dreams. So if you can capture that, like that emotiveness, then you're good. You've nailed it. Yeah. And even going back, when she's saying that, it doesn't mean that it's a personal brand. It's just being human in your marketing. Everything. The messaging you put out, the understanding of your customers, the reviews that are on your website, the people, the faces you put on your website, every little thing comes back to understanding the human being that is buying and the human being that's a whole, not the human being that is in that moment of time saying, I'm selling to a marketer, not a marketer that's a mom, that plays pickleball, that does this, does that, does this. That's the whole picture you're selling to. And there could be a lot of commonalities that your audience could be a lot of mom pickleball players that are also marketers. And if you could figure that out, you could do a lot of cool things. Oh my God, the personalization. Imagine. Yeah. Imagine. Exactly. Exactly. And those are the ways you stand out because everybody, everybody who's selling to marketers should be understanding the marketer's pain points, but they're not winning on the human level, which is why a lot of the ones who are winning are winning on that human. Yeah, a hundred percent. Lastly, where could people find you? Well, I'm the only Amelia Sordell in the world, so if you whack my name into Google, that's pretty much me, like everywhere. But I'm on, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and we also have a newsletter now as well, which is fucking awesome. Like I have 3000 people have signed up for that now. I basically just write them a brain dump of an email every Friday of like all the things that I'm thinking about as it pertains to personal branding and failure and fuck ups and confidence. And yeah, if you're one of those people, sign up. Also, your parents being OG of like understanding that your personal branded name is so important and being the only one. Well, I wish it was my parents. It's actually my married name. My ex-husband's name. Yeah, just, but you, and you're understanding. Yeah, he gets it. Yeah, no, you were just like, hmm, I'm going to pick this last name because it's the only one I could be out there. It's really easy for me to get like email addresses. It's like emiliusodell.gmail.com. Ari, my wife, went from being the only Ari Sadowick to probably there's probably like a thousand plus Ari Murray's now. So I'm like, you should just, I feel bad that you couldn't have been the only one. She's fucked up with how bad you're branding her now. Exactly, exactly. Well, thank you so much for joining. I really appreciate it. It's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. This is like an opposite honor to do this twice. So I appreciate you. And also, I just want to say like the power of personal branding is how we became friends. So it's not just about selling stuff and whatever. It's also about like forming friendships, too. So, yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks so much for listening. Tune in next week to hear more great insights from marketing's coolest operators. If you haven't already, please consider subscribing to the Marketing Millennials podcast and giving it a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.