Becoming a globally prominent expert authority is something many authors strive for, but struggle to achieve. The name of the game for most experts is exposure and credibility. Expensive PR campaigns and enormous time and effort are expended to secure exposure, with the expectation this will increase credibility and overall ROI.
In researching the platforms of today’s leading content experts, including Dr. Phil, Tony Robbins or Wayne Dyer, and resource experts like Dr. Oz or Oprah, I have found a common denominator. Even in the expert platform of lesser known experts, I see the same pattern for experts and authors who have been effective in increasing their audience and attracting opportunities that surpassed their hopes and goals.
Here are the 7 insights that will move you from exposure and credibility to global loyalty and conversion for your message.
Shift your Perspective.
Your initial message should be focused on how people will experience their lives emotionally and how they will feel, rather than what they will do, based on your work. Experts typically provide strategies and specific tools to help people, but they often do so without creating a tangible emotional connection, or emotional brand, first. Information is far more well received once we determine trust and are secure that the expert is truly invested and committed to our well-being, and that we can have a meaningful connection with that expert. The academic approach will attract strong media interest, but it will not typically build a platform to effectively build your business.
Step Back.
Take the time to re-evaluate the emotional presentation and impact of your brand. Choose a few key words that reflect how you want to help your audience to experience life, regardless of their circumstances. Once they feel a strong emotional connection with you, your strategies and credibility will be far more relevant. Be very specific and choose emotional words. Avoid words that describe a state. Happy is a state. Excited, content, satisfied, joyful…these are emotional words. There are many thesauruses online that focus on emotional words. The stronger and more unique your words are, the more you will create a unique and powerful presentation for your message and brand that will connect with audiences.
Create a Content Map.
Utilizing the emotional words you have chosen to reflect your brand, create an editorial map of potential articles that speak directly to audiences you want to reach. Your content should closely correlate to your emotional branding. Leading with your emotional message and then including strategies and research tie ins will increase conversion to your products and services and attract media, speaking and other business opportunities. The “Tony Robins effect”, as I call it, is about creating a powerful, sincere and meaningful belief in the impact of his work to people who are looking for his specific expertise. Effective experts impart a profound and intense sincerity about their audience. They are also extremely accessible emotionally to their audiences. Utilize a specific content design to build that bridge, based on your emotional brand.
Branding Integration.
Review your website, current and past content and related materials. Look for ways to incorporate your emotional branding into your entire body of work. It should be clear, prominent and repetitive.
Sound Bites.
Create media sound bites and short quotes that represent your emotional branding. As you build your exposure with your emotional message in front, audiences will begin to connect with you personally, and then to your work. The more methods you have to communicate your message and your emotional brand, the more people will remember it and identity the concepts with your work.
Branding Evaluation.
Review how audiences are reacting to your new branding and build on the messages and emotions that resonate the strongest. As you create your emotional messages, you will be able to evaluate which messages truly connect with people. As long as the response is consistent with your brand, you can let audience response help direct your path to new content, products and services.
Message Compartmentalization.
Rather than creating content and media segments based on demand from media outlets, focus on creating ongoing materials that closely mirror your EB words and concepts. Stay on brand. Tony Robbins could write about anything, however he maintains a clear voice to reflect his message and maintain his audience. It becomes tempting as interest in your work increases to broaden the scope of your work. However, you can dilute your brand all to easily in today’s world.
Avoid the common mistakes of being too broad and scattered in your messages, accommodating media requests regardless of the content and its relevance to your brand, and being too fragmented in your work creation. You can create a platform that lacks continuity and an emotional presentation crucial to creating a meaningful connection and long term loyalty from the public. Too many authors and experts find they have been spinning their academic wheels and end up feeling burned out, as they didn’t build their PR on a solid foundation of emotional branding.
People buy from people.
Credentials, media appearances, great content, proven strategies and attractive branding are all meant to support an emotional brand and meaningful messages that truly connect with audiences. They are not meant to be the entire branding process. It is this crucial difference that builds powerful platforms with global impact and provides the opportunity to change millions of lives.