Your personal brand is unique. It’s a combination of your skills, your experience, and your personality… Ultimately, it’s you.
And no one else has that.
When you’re looking to promote something unique about your product or services, nothing is as powerful as you, but how do you get the you-ness of you across to people? The answer is email.
Email is the primary tool for building and promoting your personal brand. It’s a consistent connection with a personal touch, and it allows you to form meaningful relationships. Here’s how.
The Email Advantage: Building Connections That Last
Online interactions are the very beginning of a conversation between you and your customer. They can be small and tentative, but they’re there. Someone liked your post, they downloaded your guide or attended your webinar, they followed a call to action, and now you have their email. Now, you can continue the conversation and keep it going in a more intimate and focused way.
Social media posts are valuable, but they’re broad and fickle, thrown out there to the whim of the social media algorithms. With emails, you are in charge; you can determine when and how they are delivered, you can tailor the content, and you can bring your personal brand to the forefront. When a customer, already engaged with your brand no matter how lightly, receives your email, they’ll stop, they’ll think, and they’ll very likely look at it.
If what they see is of interest, that connection grows, and over time, with small incremental boosts, it becomes a strong, lasting connection between you.
Writing Emails That Reflect You
If this connection is going to be useful, it has to be from you. Infuse your emails with your you-ness, your personality. Use your tone, whether that be funny, straight, wacky, technical, impassioned… Whatever makes you you needs to be laced throughout the emails, and it needs to be authentic.
Share your insights, open yourself up to tell your stories and the experiences that reflect your expertise. Don’t chase trends or follow other people’s leads – stay true to yourself.
Another power of email is that it’s a two-way conversation, not a megaphone. Encourage replies, engage and build rapport, ask your customers questions, and get building that relationship.
Remember, you can use the data and technology at your fingertips to hone your message to the right audience – segment your email lists to tailor the messages you send out to really hit their target. If that means half your customers are horse lovers while another half are passionately into tattoos, you can write your marketing emails with a distinctive focus on each topic and send them to the right group. Your message will resonate with your customers and help strengthen the shared interests within your personal brand.
Strategies to Boost Your Personal Brand Through Email
You need to think before emailing, though – especially at the beginning. You’re looking to build rapport, not dive straight in as if you’ve been friends for years. A welcome email sets the tone for future communication.
Then share your insights, add curated content, and provide personal updates in a newsletter.
After a short while, you can offer your subscribers special perks, something that makes them feel appreciated, like early access to a new product or some behind-the-scenes stuff.
The more you share your stories, thoughts, and experiences, the more human you become, and the more welcome your emails are in the inbox until your audience is looking forward to them! ‘Ah, it’s Tuesday; I’ll get an email from Nathan today… wonder what he’s been up to!’
The Power of Combining Email and Social Media
Remember that wide casting of social media – that’s still got its place. Email fosters the deeper connection and engagement that solidifies your personal brand, but it’s those wide reaching social media posts that garner interest in the first place – that’s where you can encourage people to join your email list.
And the opposite is true, too – remind your email subscribers to engage with your social media and make it active, heightening its effectiveness and making it constantly relevant.
When you create content that works across both channels and each platform works with the other, your personal branding builds and builds. It’s that constant reminder that you’re there that keeps you top of mind and ensures that when the time comes, you’ll be the first person they reach out to.
Building Your Personal Brand with Nathan Littleton
If you’re anything like me then you’ll find the idea of crafting these emails that build your personal brand a load of fun. You’ll be diving into it now, excitedly thinking of what you could say and the best way to say it. Plus, once you’re done, you’ll be digging into the email stats, analysing what worked and what went flat.
But, maybe you’re not just like me, and actually, the idea of developing an email strategy to promote your personal brand fills you with a little nervousness. That’s fine too because I’m here to help. Business is all about working together, playing to our strengths and using others’ services to plug the gaps. If you want to build your personal brand but need a little advice and hand-holding (even if it’s just for the early days), then talk to me about it. Contact me, Nathan Littleton, and we’ll work together using the power of email to get you incredible results.
