That’s what I often hear from brilliant people who have very special talents to share with this world. But they keep struggling at the beginning stages of a business. They are not making enough money to make a living as it is too hard for them to bring in new clients.
They hate marketing themselves.
I know, me too. It seems fake and phony and strange to brag about myself. I don’t enjoy talking about myself.
But, see, you don’t need to talk about yourself to be doing effective marketing. Instead, you can focus on three pillars of content that all focus on the people on the other end who are reading, listening or watching your marketing content.
Three Pillars of Marketing That Take Talking About Yourself out of the Picture
Your content does not have to focus on yourself. Your content should focus on your potential clients. Let us see how to do this in steps.
Pillar 1: Build Your Tribe
Building a tribe is not difficult, but it does take persistence.
I say it is not difficult because all you need to do is to show your authentic self. You can do that in various ways. You can be sharing your worldview, your lifestyle or your take on issues that affect us all. My personal favorites are sharing your imperfections and your humanness.
The good part of showing your authentic self is that it is different from talking about yourself.
You do not need to pass judgement on yourself. You do not need to say what you are good at or assign any value to your brilliance. You just need to be yourself and that is easy.
That is in fact much easier than trying to fit into a categorical description that somebody else has assigned to you.
If you manage to do that consistently over a certain period of time, the word will spread organically and more people will find you on their own.
Pillar 2: Show That You Understand Them
Nowadays, people are exposed to too much information. Most of it comes in a very impersonal way, so it is not that difficult to stand out and be different.
You can start by showing that you understand your followers. You can acknowledge their concerns, priorities, pressing problems and desires to improve.
Aim at maintaining a meaningful conversation. People are tired of being talked at.
Pillar 3: Offer Solutions to Their Pressing Problems
Both your paying offers and your free content should be geared at making your tribe’s life a little bit easier.
We all turn to Google and social media if we have a pressing problem.
Be out there. At one point, your potential clients will be searching for a solution to a pressing problem. Make it easy for them to find you when this happens.
The content that you provide should bring value.
That can be in a form of an emotionally honest piece of writing that relates your own experience.
It can be a lesson learned from own mistakes.
It could be an advice that you have for newbies so that they have an easier path ahead of them.
It could be doing research and providing a well-informed commentary to the compilation.
In Conclusion
Marketing does not mean talking about yourself. It means talking about the people that you are able to help with your services or products.
Now that the pressure is off your chest, go out there and make some amazing content. Build some amazing connections.
And let me know how it goes!
