Barriers to Build a Brand Online and what you can do about it.

Barriers to Build a Brand Online and what you can do about it.

The popular advice:

There is a popular school thought which says it has never been a better time to build a brand, this because of the rise of social networks globally and free flow of information. This rise has given space to creation of unconventional careers like social media influencer, Youtuber etc. . . .

It’s easy to become an author , you don’t need a publisher, you need to be able to write and upload to Amazon, you do not need producer or agent to build a music career , you can  play your music and upload to soundcloud or YouTube  and your community will find it .

You do not need money to start a television station you need a Vimeo account!

Even I have written about it here

Anybody who has attempted to build a career online or a brand online understands, there is more to it than just the ability to create and upload content.

So even though we no longer need the old gatekeepers like agents, publishers or producers who open up access to careers like becoming an author, an actor or even an entertainer as much, the emerging class of gatekeepers are the algorithms of the social media platforms.

[want to build your own niche and brand , try the Advanced Course: Creating Your Niche and Becoming a Category of One Now! before all places are taken]

The new gate keepers need to make money from marketers and advertisers and in order to keep them spending they consistently adjust the algorithm so not all followers or fans can see your content, forcing people to spend money to reach less and less groups of people or if you believe these companies are altruistic then you might believe the explanation that the algorithms are there to ensure content (post, tweets and videos) are relevant to the timeline of the people online.

Whatever you believe, creating has only become half the equation, making sure the world see it ,is a different story all together .

As someone who started blogging over 20 years ago, I have seen and experienced the evolution

This has led to thousands of articles online on how to hack these systems and probably a cottage industry on how to trend and go viral.

So what do you do when you want create a brand for yourself online but are consistently faced with the algorithm gate keepers.

The path to building a real brand online

Take the long game strategy (consistency)

All the platforms reward consistency over time , stop worrying that your blog post got only 10 readers  or your well written Facebook post got 2 likes or even that your totally awesome Instagram photos got less than 100 likes .

Short term gratification does not auger well for your motivation, understand that building and offline brand and supporting it with an online brand takes time , it took me over 10 years to build my brand , it might take a little less time for you but commit to at least 2-3 years of work

Find and become useful existing communities first.

If you are trying to create a community and following of your own, its best to find related communities and become relevant in those groups, signaling to people that you can be trusted and your content is relevant to their interest

Example: if you brand goal is to become the go to person in the logistics industry in the specific niche of developing innovating solutions for your employer , then it makes sense to join 3-4 logistics groups on LinkedIn and spending maximum 2 hours each week not only sharing content  but also asking and answering questions that come up in these groups.

Create a structure

In building a complementary online brand to your offline brand, seems like a daunting task if you don’t have anyone to help you, I have found it become easier when I created a structure around it.

My structure looks like this

Monday 10 am: 1 hour reading on different topics, I could be book or online articles

3 pm: post blog post from the week before on blog.ethelcofie.com and set up my social media tool (https://drumup.io/) to recurringly share the post with 2 or 3 different post text over the week on the different social media channels.

Tuesday 8 am: Make list of the two blog post I want to write that week

Wednesday 12 pm: write 200-300 words pay day, should take 15-20 minutes, most of my articles are 500-800 words long.

Thursday 2pm: write 200-300 words pay day, should take 15-20 minutes, most of my articles are 500-800 words long.

Friday 10 am: complete and have my blog post reviewed for spelling mistakes and issues with clarity (30 mins)

*I try to jot down my blog article ideas on my phones notepad throughout the day when the inspiration hits me

Happy Brand Building!

[want to build your own niche and brand , try the Advanced Course: Creating Your Niche and Becoming a Category of One Now! before all places are taken]