Last week, we closed the doors to the latest round of the Fast-track Your Business in 90 Days programme. As you’re reading this, the second cohort is getting started with Module One, where we’ll be looking at clarifying the big vision for their business and how that fits into their lives.
The structure we’ll work through is starting with the WHY of your business, defining WHO you’ll be targeting, identifying WHAT your brand stands for and how to bring that to life in the content you’re creating, mapping out WHERE you’ll be sharing that content, as well as HOW all this fits together when it comes to your financials and your day-to-day schedule.
And it’s that last point that’s the not-so-exciting but also oh-so-crucial piece that we want to talk about today, as we wrap up our focus on personal branding content strategy and shift gears a little into more practical concerns.
Because the number one thing that you’ll need to be successful? It’s CONSISTENCY.
The number one thing: CONSISTENCY
I’m a big fan of visions and strategies. These will help you get clear on the big picture of your business, what you truly value and what are your priorities – in life and in your business – as well as guiding your decisions on a more practical level.
However, all these pretty vision boards and charts and frameworks are not going to do you a whole lot of good if they just sit there on your computer or lie there in your drawer! As important as the strategy is, you need to actually implement it to see results – and you need to be implementing it consistently.
Consistency does a few things:
1. YOU,the business owner, will feel clear and confident about where your priorities are and you’ll be able to start each week, and wake up each morning, getting straight to work on implementing your plan;
2. YOUR AUDIENCEwill know what to expect from you, will start to look forward to getting, for example, the latest blog post every Tuesday, the newest podcast episode every Thursday, and the weekly email every Friday, and will develop trust along with an understanding of who you are and what you do; and, finally,
3. YOUR BUSINESSwill grow as you create and build a coherent brand and story that attracts the right audience, gets them involved and engaged and, ultimately, gets them to want to work with you.
So, as you can see, consistency – although it might be a bit dull – is pretty crucial!
What does consistency actually look like?
Okay, so what exactly do I mean by ‘consistency’?
What consistency is NOT:
· Creating content on topics that happen to inspire you in the moment without any thought as to whether it’s relevant for your audience, or a good fit with your brand (although inspiration and spontaneity of course have an important part to play as well!);
· Writing a blog post or sending an email sometimes every other Monday, sometimes once a month and sometimes not for many weeks; or
· Starting, for example, a podcast or a Facebook live and then giving up after a few weeks when you haven’t seen the results you were hoping for.
What consistency really looks like:
· Creating and sharing content that fits together into the bigger picture of who you are and what you stand for;
· Showing up every day, every week with a regular schedule across your different channels, with that message in mind; and
· Sticking with your strategy and plan for a decent time – I’d say for three months – in order to begin to see results (and before you even consider making any changes).
This kind of consistency, again, doesn’t sound too exciting, but it’s the reality of what it means to be running a business that gets consistent results.
How do you achieve consistency?
First, this is where the strategy does have an important part to play.
Having a clear strategy means you’ll have an understanding of who you’re targeting, what their wants, needs and desires are and how you can provide a solution for them, as well as the kind of content you want to be creating and where and when you’ll be distributing it.
It means you’ll have an end in mind – for example, you’ll know that you want to sell a programme that helps clients do X, or a package that gets them Y result, and you’ll be able to build a story and a content plan around that.
Second, it’s all about planning
Once you have your strategy in place, you can plan out the content you’re going to create along with when and where you’re going to distribute it. In our Personal Branding Boot Camp over in the Facebook groupa couple of weeks ago, I had the participants map out their content for their first month and, ideally, for the next three months.
Third, you need to show up – and do the work
Again, there’s no point in having a plan if you don’t actually execute it.
When you’re first starting out especially, it can really help to use time blocking, meaning that you schedule time in your calendar when you’ll be doing specific things. For example, you might want to start every Monday morning with recording your video(s) for the week, creating graphics, and drafting your posts.
You can get more sophisticated as you add layers to your content and to your platforms – for example, you can record your videos on Monday mornings, write your blog posts on Tuesdays, draft your emails on Wednesdays…
Ideally, you’ll get to a place where you’re at least a couple of weeks ahead of yourself, to make sure you have buffer in case ‘life happens’ (whether you get ill or you have a big project come up, or maybe you want to go on holiday!).
So, one more time: the number one thing that will drive success with your content creation, and in your business, is… CONSISTENCY!”
If you’re not sure about your ‘why’, you’re stuck on getting clear on exactly who your client is, or your have any other areas where you’d like some support, get in touch to book a 30-minute consultation session.