Last weekend, we hosted our very first live event in Pittsburgh. It was so much fun! About a week before this event, we got our plan together. We sat down in my (Katy’s) office and we sort of just laid out “what is it that creates an actual brand”. We thought about it and created this bulls-eye with all of these things that need to be done before we can actually call people to act and before we can actually ask them to purchase what we are offering. We called this ‘The Signature Plan’ and we walked away from this brainstorming session saying “oh my gosh, this is amazing!”. Every business owner needs to know exactly the audience that they are speaking to.

And so we are just going to pull a small piece of that today for you. We are going to talk about your personality because that is one of the outer layers. Part of what you have to establish first is knowing your own personality and what you lean into when you are on social media vs what makes you cringe and move away.

Let’s break that down and go over why that matters and what that actually looks like.

The very first thing you want to do is establish a connection with the people that you are talking to. So it is not about serving the masses, it is not about having this huge following of people who are watching you but not really interested in what you do, but it is really about people who follow you for a specific reason. A lot of that has to do with ‘what are the values that you are showing on social media?’, ‘what are the things that matter most to you?’ and ‘how are they speaking for you on your social media?’. 

For example, one of the sites that I (Katy) often follow, as a cancer survivor, is called Stupid Cancer. So, when I think of Stupid Cancer, some people would be cringing over the word ‘stupid’, which is what I originally did (thinking “I don’t like that word ‘stupid’”). They are specifically looking to create an audience of people who have been impacted by cancer and who have directly felt that inclination to call it ‘stupid’ because there is so much anger, hurt, and frustration. So when they are putting that out on their posts or content, the people who they are speaking to are not the ‘Melanie’s’ who would be offended by the word ‘stupid’, but they are talking to the ‘Katy’s’ who have been impacted in such a close way by cancer. So they are very much honing in on that person. But not just a person impacted by cancer, they are very specific in who they are speaking to. So it is maybe a cancer survivor or somebody impacted by cancer who is a little bit younger, somebody who would use the word ‘stupid’ just in regular vocabulary. Not in an offensive way, but that is just how they speak. It’s not just about faith, hope, and overcoming. It is about the gritty and hard part about battling cancer… the things that nobody wants to talk about. They are willing to walk the line of ‘is this really appropriate?’, ‘is this going to offend?’, ‘should I post this?’, and ‘this might be too raw’. And I (Katy) like that because I relate to that and I connect to that. So somebody looking at this from the outside who does not resonate with this message might cringe. But Katy is going to lean in.

So my question for you is ‘are you creating that in your own content?’. A ‘Katy’ and a ‘Melanie’ might be looking at it and one of them might totally lean into what you are saying, while the other might cringe. But it is all based on your personal experiences and what matters most to you and your personality.

One more example that I (Melanie) find is in the health, fitness, body image, and confidence field. While looking at accounts that you want to follow, for example with body confidence, there are many people who promote body confidence from many different perspectives. You may say to yourself ‘I really struggle with body confidence’, so you may find yourself an individual who talks about body confidence in such a way where everything is loving, kind, and compassionate. They take a point of view where you own this body and you have these stretch marks because you grew these beautiful babies. It is deep, sentimental, and really calls you to think. I would be really attracted to something like that where they talk about a deep emotional connection and what these stretch marks mean to me. Now, I could go to another site that was really ‘in your face’ and using cuss words and the f-word and were really vulgar about body image and body love. Even though it has the same powerful message, it actually makes me kind of lean away and cringe. So anytime someone pops up in my news feed, regardless of their message, but if they are using swear words or vulgar images, I turn the other way or unfollow.

Actually lean into ‘what are you attracted to?’ and ‘what are you repulsed by?’. That really does tell a lot about your brand and the people that you are going to attract.

One of the easiest things that you can do is to actually go to your social media and look at ‘what am I leaning into’ and ‘what am I reading more of’. Pay attention to captions that captivate your attention. Why did it captivate your attention? What are the images that really speak to you? What makes you stop your scroll? Whatever is speaking to you is a little bit of your truth and should be embedded into your own message. That’s the type of marketing you are looking for! It has to be personal. It has to be personal if it means something to you.

So, this is just one of the layers when it comes to creating your signature plan. And it really hones in on who you are marketing to and who you want to do business with. Do a little social media audit on yourself. Pay attention to who and what you lean into and who and what you cringe at and that will give you a really good indicator of what your brand can say about you.