So you want to build a community online and you want to position yourself as a leader in your space? Well that certainly doesn’t happen overnight, BUT, in today’s video I’m going to share my 6 C’s for helping you establish your authority and your leadership in your industry and you can start doing these things today to help position yourself moving forward.
The first C is Content. This is so important because you need to be sharing things that are relevant to your ultimate target audience. One of the biggest questions that I get asked when I work with clients and with businesses is, “What do we talk about online?” and “What do we talk about on social media?”. You talk about what your ambassadors and your target audience actually care about and want to know from you. I separate it into tiers of content, which is something I suggest doing for your business and your brand. Basically what that means is separating that into two or three tiers that you want to focus on – those are content categories or buckets. For me, I talk about education, so that’s my YouTube videos for example. I educate my target audience on social media and how to implement video marketing. My other category would be inspiration – so how to inspire people to get over their fears of making videos and to live the life that they want to live and have the kind of business that they want to have. The other tier for me is product. So that’s my course, Recording for Revenue, my coaching services, where I work with clients, and my consulting services where I work with businesses on helping them develop their strategies. Those of my tiers of content, and I always try to keep them in those buckets. When you’re coming up with content to create for your brand, the best thing to do is to look at where your audience already lives online. You can look at things like Twitter lists, you can build lists around your industry or your niche – so if there’s industry publications that you know that your target audience will be reading, put those into a list and use that as a content hub, where you can retweet their or share their content across your social platforms. You can do this through Hootsuite with search stream set up and you can also do this natively through Twitter as well. Another thing you can do is just cruise through those publications in your industry and look at influencers in your industry and see what kind of content their sharing and what’s resonating with their audience. See if you can then create content that will resonate with that same audience.
The next C is Cross Promotion. This goes hand in hand with content. If you’re having a hard time coming up with your own unique content, and what I mean by unique content content is, blog posts that you’ve written or your company has written, or videos that you’ve created – basically it means your own native content as a business or a brand. If you’re having trouble creating that, you can look to those publications, those content hubs, and you can pull from them and use content that their pushing out and share it and give them credit for it. At least it’s on brand and on target with who you want to be reading your content anyways. That’s what I mean, overall, by cross-promotion. Taking content from other content hubs and sources that are relevant to your audience and sharing them on your own network.
The third C is Creating Relationships. This is a no brainer when it comes to the digital space, it’s called social media for a reason. Don’t want for people to come and find your brand online, reach out and find people that you know will be interested in what you’re doing. Like I said, you can find those people in those content hubs, so find them by searching industry related hashtags. One of the greatest tools that I use to find people that might be interested in what I’m talking about, and I mentioned this earlier, is Hootsuite’s search stream functionalities. You can set up a search stream in Hootsuite where you can actually put in a specific keyword or hashtag that’s related to your space, and see real-time conversations happening around that hashtag. It allows you to reach out to those people who are activating in conversations in that space, and therefore, you’re introducing yourself before they have to find you. So you’re being proactive about creating relationships and finding brand ambassadors for your business.
The fourth C is Cultivating Relationships. Another way to put this is, engaging. This again, seems like a pretty simple concept, but what it means is that when people comment on your post, or they like your post, or they share your post, a little thank-you goes a long way and a little acknowledgement goes a long way! Don’t ignore the fact that people are taking the time to like, share, comment, subscribe to what ever it is that you’re doing, because those are the people that are going to be the most loyal to your brand. You have to show them that it matters to you and that you actually care. Even the biggest brands in the world who are super successful on social media, take the time to respond to the people who are most active on their social platforms. This is a really big key to your success. Even if you allocate 30 minutes of your day, just strictly to engaging, you’re staying on top of your mentions, and engaging with your people that care about your brand – that’s harvesting and cultivating those relationships.
The next C is Collaboration. This is one that people get a little touchy on, but I’m a big believer in collaboration over competition, because it benefits everybody and really, at the end of the day, if you’re doing your own thing in your own unique way – there is no competition. So I recommend finding people in your space who are doing similar things to you and who have built up a following and trying to find a way to work together. Maybe doing something together as in a cross-promotion blog post, or guest blog post on their site or on your site, because at the end of the day it’s going to drive traffic to both sites. Really focusing on the brands that have already established themselves in your industry and reaching out to them and seeing what you can do. Another way that you can collaborate is finding people that have 6 degrees of separation from your brand or business and have complimentary attributes in their business that can work with yours. For example, I’m in video marketing so an easy and perfect fit for me is working with someone who creates videos. I do them myself, but this person that I’ve recently met with, creates videos for clients so her clients are looking for my services and my clients are looking for her services. So that’s a great way to collaborate. So if you can find someone in your industry that has a complimentary service, see how you can work together and cross-promote each other and have a mutually beneficial relationship.
Finally, this is something that I say ALL the time, and I’m going to say it again, is Consistency. You need your audience to know that they can trust that you’re going to be there when you say you’re going to be there. You need to have a consistent schedule for when you’re putting out content and a consistency in the level of engagement that you’re giving people. Being conscious of your time and your resources – don’t go into an essay of feedback with every single person who comments on your posts, but at least stay consistent in responding to those people who comment to those posts. When it comes to consistency in content, you can keep a content calendar, which I highly recommend, and I do have a free content calendar that you can download which I will link below this video and also in the cards in this video so you can check it out and download one for yourself. Finally when it comes to consistency it comes down to tone. So what kind of tone are you using on your social platforms? Are you funny? Are you sarcastic? Are you serious? What kind of punctuation are you using? So making sure that you use a consistent tone across social platforms as well, so you’re easily recognizable to your audience.
I do have other resources listed below this video about creating a community and positioning yourself as a leader in your space, so check those out! It’s just a few TedTalks and a few books that I highly recommend. And in the name of collaboration, I’m going to link to a few people below this video that I absolutely love in the video marketing and social media space, so you can check out their channels for other great resources! If you liked this video hit the like button below, make sure you share it with your friends, and subscribe! AND if you want exclusive tips on online business, social media and video marketing make sure that you sign up on my website!
Thanks for watching and I will see you guys next time!
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