Gary Ware on Building Something Uniquely You

By Kim Hanna

Welcome back to Let's Talk About Brand! This week's guest is Gary Ware of Breakthrough Play, which facilitates personal and professional breakthroughs through the power of play. As adults, we often forget how to do that; Gary rediscovered the power of play himself through comedic improv training, and figured out how to apply that to something new. 

Marketing is a creative application when you think about it. Gary very brilliantly made that twist from a marketing career into creating Breakthrough Play, where he works with corporations and teams and groups to rediscover the power of play to enhance their creativity, productivity, and facilitate team building.

How Breakthrough Play came to be 

Gary knew that he didn't want to do something that he didn't like. He explored web design, graphic design, and attended the Art Institute in Los Angeles. He also grew an interest in marketing, so he started a digital marketing agency. As a manager, he felt a little in over his head. 

When a friend suggested he try an improv class, Gary wasn’t very into the idea at first. But he tried it out and loved it. 

“It changed my life. For two hours I was completely present. I was playing these silly games with, like, 15 other people that I didn't even know and we connected. And I immediately saw the connection between those games and what I was learning to prepare me, to be able to think on my feet on the stage to be able to connect with other people.”

Fast forward a few years later, Gary connected the power of play with his experience in marketing to develop Breakthrough Play. 

What is the power of play?

Breakthrough Play provides a very unique service. Since that service is so unconventional, Gary sometimes encounters hesitance when proposing this idea to companies. Gary says, “the biggest thing that I get is 'oh, play? We got a lot going on, it's a global pandemic. We don't have time to play.'” 

Gary explains the importance of play and why businesses should incorporate it into the workplace. Breakthrough play is perfect for companies that are looking for unique and novel ways to help their employees improve in several ways. 

Gary points out that every year, LinkedIn releases a ranking of the top skills that employees need to be successful. Those attributes generally include creativity, the ability to be adaptable, and communication. All of those things are attributes that Breakthrough Play brings to companies. 

Not everyone is immediately on board. Gary says, “Through my training, in applied improvisation and communication training, I developed this curriculum that allows people to slowly edge into it. And that's the beauty with play. If you think about when you were a kid, and you would play, you would forget about time. You would feel so present with whatever is going on. And then by the end of it, you're like, 'I want more!' And so that is what I'm super excited to bring to companies.”

Unlocking your creativity

Gary talks about a study done by NASA where they followed a cohort from kindergarten through high school. They put them through a series of tests that were used to measure their level of creativity. And they found that 95% of those kindergarteners had genius levels of creativity. However, by the time they were 18, only 3% of that group had genius levels of creativity. What happened?

Gary goes on to explain that as children grow up, they’ll develop insecurities as they start to compare themselves to others. Gary says, “You’ll see someone that has an innate talent. And you're like, 'Well, they're good at that. I'm not. So I'm not creative.'”

Anyone can learn to be creative again through the power of play. Gary says, “Think about when you're playing a game, like a video game. You just play just for the sake of playing. But when you run into a challenge, whatever you're doing, whatever game that you're playing, you don't just throw in the towel. You get adaptive. You start to get creative, and so it's a muscle that you can cultivate.”

Gary advises people to set aside time every day and work out your brain. He calls it ‘going to the gym for your brain.’ Gary mentioned an exercise called Droodles to work out your brain. A Droodle is an abstract image that you look at and interpret however you want. The point is to work out your brain by thinking creatively. 

What’s so great about Droodle and other brain games? Gary says, “You have to allow yourself to be silly. You have to allow yourself to think about whatever you want, and that takes practice. So if you wanna get creative, it's all about being intentional. Plus, you're doing it in a low stakes environment, your brain.”

Find Gary

Where can you find Gary Ware? You can find him as @GaryWare on social media, or check out his website, breakthroughplay.com. He loves chatting with people, especially if you're interested in creativity and curiosity.

Thank you so much to Gary Ware of Breakthrough Play! Tune in next Friday at 12 noon Eastern on Facebook Live for the next episode of Let’s Talk About Brand. In addition to this Friday Livestream, you can also check out Let’s Chat About Brand, the Tuesday Twitter chat that’s on the same topic as the Friday Livestream. See you next week!

Ryan Foland on Branding with Authenticity

By Kim Hanna

Welcome back to Let's Talk About Brand! Today’s guest Ryan Foland is all about ditching the act, keeping it real, and bringing his whole self to the table rather than playing some sort of part of what he should be, because what he should be is himself. 

He’s the perfect person to talk with us today about this week’s topic, branding with authenticity.

Being known as authentic

Since Ryan is known as the authenticity guy, we asked him how that came to be. How did he have that moment where he realized this is his niche?

Ryan’s answer: “I was sick of trying to flip flop between what I was thinking I should be doing.” This was when he ditched the act.

For example, Ryan wanted to be a speaker. He tried to emulate what other speakers were doing, write blogs and tell others what he wanted to do. He soon realized he needed to do more than that. 

He continues, “I had this moment I was like, You know what? I'm just so sick of having to rebrand myself. I was the guy who was running the entrepreneurship center at UCI. If I'm gonna get fired, I'm gonna have to come up with what I am next...and I realized at that moment that I need to build a brand that is who I am.”

How to Build an Authentic Brand

What happens if you’re not being authentic? Why is it important to be authentic? Check out what Ryan had to say on this.

“When I tried to build a brand that wasn't truly authentic, I sort of erased everything up until what I was now. And I think a lot of us do that where, when we build our bio or we're trying to take on a new profession, or even in this pandemic, we're trying to rebrand because whatever we did before maybe didn't work.”

“Sometimes we downplay or erase everything that's happened in the past and just get people to focus on what I'm doing now. But the problem with that is that you lose all of that experience that you can share. And I truly think that building an authentic brand is highlighting your experience and letting somebody else decide that you have expertise as opposed to just telling people you have expertise.”

“It’s a process, I sort of owned my whole story where I talk about not just the good shiny parts. I talked about how I was at a point to file bankruptcy and I actually mailed it in, and it got returned to me because I didn't have enough stamps on it. And for me, that was a change in my life.”

Why does he share those low points? He says, “It's about not trying to build a brand on your highlight reel. It's about trying to build a brand on your highlight REAL. And it gives you the opportunity to sort of be imperfect and to connect with people where they might find common ground.”

In summation, Ryan explains that we all have a lot to share. And you can talk about more than just the shiny parts, even though it’s not always easy. Ryan says he was fearful about sharing his bankruptcy, but now it’s something he’s proud of as it’s changed the way he looks at the world and who he is a person. As per the name of Ryan’s book, it’s okay to ditch the act!

How to discover your personal brand

Ryan has a process called the Rapid Reflection Discovery process. This is a way to discover how people currently perceive your brand. We have control over the content that we create, so a personal brand is the intersection between what people know about you and what you want to be known for. 

How do you duplicate this as an experiment? 

• Ask your friends, family, coworkers, or followers to give you words and phrases that come to mind when they think about you. It's best if this is done anonymously. Have somebody collect the answers. 

• Then, gather that data but don't look at it yet. Take post-it notes on your own and decide all the things that you want to be known for. Think about in an ideal world, what do you want to be known for?

• Next, look at these pieces of data. Ryan likes to put them up on a wall. 

• Then, group the post-it notes into groups. The outliers you get rid of, and you will have chunks of post-it notes that have a theme to it. The challenge is to pick three of those clusters. This is how you start. 

Now, you have three things to start your personal brand on. Maybe it’s something professional, something personal and something that you do as a hobby. 

Ryan says, “This process allows you to start with this common ground, and then you have the chance to evolve your content to then create digital breadcrumbs. People evolve to see you on your journey, so that that's where I hope people start.”

Find Ryan Foland

You can find Ryan at ryan.online. That’s it! There you can find his podcast, his four TEDx talks, and how to work with him. Also, check out his book, Ditch The Act!

Thank you so much to Ryan Foland for ditching the act, keeping it real and being here with us today to help all of us do the same. Make sure to tune into the live show, Let’s Talk About Brand, every Friday at 12 noon eastern on Facebook. See you there!

Chocolate Johnny on Personalizing a Brand

By Kim Hanna

Today’s guest joins us all the way from Sydney, Australia: the fabulous Chocolate Johnny, talking with us about personalizing a brand. 

John Kapos is a-third generation chocolatier. His family business, Perfection Chocolates, was founded in 1939 and they still hand-make their chocolates and confections in Sydney, Australia. Years ago, John realized the power of social media, especially video, for small businesses. Today, he spreads that message to small businesses all over the world, as well as continuing to put it to use for Perfection Chocolates.

Social media wasn’t around yet when John first took over the family business. However, John is an early adopter, so it didn’t take long to hop on all the social media platforms. He used social media to grow his business and to become well-known through his personal brand, Chocolate Johnny, as well.

How did you become Chocolate Johnny?

Forming a personal brand doesn’t happen overnight. The name ‘Chocolate Johnny’ had already been a nickname of John’s for many years. It wasn’t until he got involved with social media that he was able to turn this fun nickname into a personal brand. 

“I took over the business more than 30 years ago. Back then, we didn't have social media. We had the newspaper, radio, and TV. Then, up came a thing called a website and a web page.”

Chocolate Johnny was an early adopter to all social media platforms. He made a Facebook business page, then a Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Now he’s even on TikTok!

He says, “I'm an early adopter. Give me an app, and I'll make sure I rip it apart and make sure I put it back to use it for my branding, for my business.” 

Chocolate Johnny, Perfection Chocolates, and John Kapos

John manages three brands online: John Kapos, Chocolate Johnny, and of course Perfection Chocolates. To separate the three brands, he made sure to secure social media handles for each. 

“I made sure that when Instagram came on, I got all three. Twitter, I got all three. Facebook. I got all three. For any app that came on, I just made sure I went straight into it.”

Managing three brands could sound a little overwhelming, right? We asked John about how he manages all of these accounts. He responds, “Some of the accounts suffer. Where I make my money is where I look. The truth is, we're here to make money, and Perfection Chocolates makes us money.” 

One of his strategies is keeping a spare iPhone in the Perfection Chocolates retail store. It’s used by John and the employees to post about the day-to-day activity in the store. He calls it the ‘social media phone.’

This strategy allows people to get to know the Perfection Chocolates employees and get a behind-the-scenes look at the business each day. 

“It's funny. When I interview new staff for the team, the first thing I say is, ‘show me your social media.’ And they go ‘okay, here it is.’ I said, ‘great. One of the first things you're gonna to do is at lunch, you get 35 minutes for lunch. 30 is to eat  and five minutes is to do a post. If you're doing anything with chocolate, if you're making anything, If you're weighing up stuff, just pick up the phone, and you're allowed to video record it. As long as it's in the parameters of Perfection Chocolates, go for it. You want to put yourself on there? Do it. And it's funny, when we go live all the people who watch it know our team!”

Is there a right way to brand?

John’s answer: “Brand recognizably.”

“I always say this, people built a relationship with me. People built trust with me, and then they bought from me. I tell everyone, don't sell. Never sell. Just show me. And if you show someone, they will buy.”

What goes well with each type of chocolate? 

We couldn't talk to the one and only Chocolate Johnny without asking about chocolate! 

He said, “We're starting to make our own Nutella! We just bought a new machine from Europe that's gonna make its own peanut butter and our own Nutella.” 

He also has a new creation in the works. It’s something that involves a layer of milk chocolate, peanut butter, white chocolate, salted caramel, and dark chocolate! 

Find John

You can find Perfection Chocolates and Chocolate Johnny on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook @PerfectionChocolates and @ChocolateJohnny.

Thank you so much to John for talking to us today about personalizing a brand! Tune in for our next episode of Let’s Talk About Brand every Friday at 12 noon Eastern time on Facebook Live. You can also check out the Let’s Chat About Brand Twitter chat on Tuesdays at 12 noon Eastern time. See you next week!

360 Marketing Squad on Branding a Collaboration

Today is really exciting because we have four guests on today: the 360 Marketing Squad, four incredibly well accomplished professionals in their own right, talking about branding a collaboration! 

Content and blogging expert Mike Allton blogs as the Blogging Brute and The Social Media Hat. He's also the brand evangelist for Agorapulse.

Instagram expert Jenn Herman goes by Jenn's Trends. She has literally written the book on Instagram many times over. 

We also have Facebook live expert Stephanie Liu, who is the reason I'm on Ecamm! She's known for her Lights, Camera, Live training programs, blog, and livestream. She's also an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) trainer. 

We also have Facebook ads, chat box and analytics expert Amanda Robinson, a.k.a. The Digital Gal. 

Together they are the 360 Marketing Squad, running an incredible private membership group full of trainings, tips, and incredible strategies. 

Their most recent collaboration - along with co-author Eric Butow - is “Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing,” published by Entrepreneur Press. 

The Origin Story:

MIKE:

Jenn introduced me to Stephanie at Social Media Marketing World 2018. I had met Stephanie online about a year prior to that, but we hadn't met in person yet. A month later, Steph and I were both speaking at MDMC here in St. Louis, where we got to hang out and get to know each other a lot better. In our conversations, we both came to the conclusion that we needed a personal mastermind group. I'd been part of some mastermind groups that had recently fallen apart, just stopped meeting. We wanted that support group, that mechanism to connect with other people, other colleagues and professionals in the space that we could relate to. We both knew Jenn very well, and all three of us had young daughters. So the three of us formed what was initially just a personal group where we could share the challenges and things that we were going through and start to collaborate. That's what spawned the idea of the 360 Marketing Squad. 

JENN:

We started talking about doing a membership - all of us had wanted to do one, but the idea of running our own memberships by ourselves, with all of the work and all of the management that goes into a membership, was overwhelming. So we partnered up: it would be a lot less work for each individual to have to manage, and we could give more value to each of our audiences because we have our own individual, unique areas of expertise. As we started thinking about it, we realized we wanted to do something along the lines of “360 degrees,” which would mean we would probably want a fourth person to cover that other component which the three of us weren't necessarily experts at - and that was the paid advertising and analytics side. We all agreed that Amanda would be the perfect fit to do that. So we roped her into the chaos that was our lives, and that was how we formed 360. 

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You're four very accomplished people with your own distinct personal brands.

How have you joined them together In a way that doesn't water any of them down, but also doesn't have any one star standing out?

How did you figure out how to brand 360 Marketing squad? 

AMANDA:

We always say that Mike is the glue that holds us together. He's the one that keeps us all sane. 

Each of us has our own superpowers in our own arena of digital marketing and social media. So everything just interlays and play so nicely together between all of our brands. For example, Jenn speaks on organic tactics; as soon as someone asks her a paid ads question, she's like, “You’ve gotta talk to this girl over here.” As soon as someone asks, “How do I up my game on live streaming?” we point the finger right over at Stephanie. As soon as someone wants to know, “How do I start producing more content that's going to move the needle?” we point the finger right at Mike. We have a solution for everything among the four of us, and it really does make us feel like a complete superpower squad. And it just makes a lot of sense together. So it's been good. The strength of our individual personal brands makes the group of us that much more able to help everyone. We each amplify with our own audiences. And then when that comes together, it's like this cataclysmic magic, awesome digital marketing sauce! And it's all encapsulated in that one book. 

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360 Marketing Squad has been a private membership group where members can go and get tips, trainings, and support in all areas of digital marketing.

How did you decide to spin it out into a book? 

Are there plans for more things beyond the group and beyond this book? 

STEPHANIE:

When it comes to the book, as far as delegating who's going to take care of the content, I think that was really easy to do because we're all content creators in our own right. So if someone wants to talk about strategy, Jenn does fantastic presentations from soup to nuts, all about strategy; paid media, of course, you would tap Amanda; and so on and so forth, especially with Mike being the glue that holds us all together. Once we had the table of contents, it's like, “Oh, here's your homework. Boom!” “Here you go - Boom!” And it was really easy for us because if you had asked me to write about Chatbots, I don't want to do that! So we delegated the topics by who’s most passionate about those specific topics. 

As far as what's next in the future, I think in our own little private mastermind we've all just been saying, “What are our plans for 2021? What is it that we want to do?” Because the book in and of itself has opened so many opportunities. Mike is now VIP-contributing over to Entrepreneur.com. And I think all of us have done webinars at this point. So that's really a jumping off point for the next thing for us. We even have an internal joke that we need to write the ultimate guide to launching a book! 

Jenn and I made that joke of, “Do you remember what it was like giving birth to a child? And then you totally forget about it? That is happening right now.” 

JENN:

Writing a book is the equivalent of going through childbirth. We did joke about whether or not we would write a book about launching a book. Because we had, thanks to - I'm gonna throw Mike and Stephanie the bone on this one - thanks to their amazing planning and coordination, the launch strategy that we put together to launch the book was unlike anything I had ever seen, and unlike anything I’ve done on any other books that I had written or seen from anybody else in our industry. So we jokingly said that, but you never know. Crazier things have happened! 

MIKE:

I wasn't joking. Just putting that out there.

STEPHANIE:

I'm actually rooting for a Jenn and Amanda live reality show…

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What makes for a good on brand collaboration partner? What do you look for? 

AMANDA:

I've tried to collaborate with other brands. And what I have found is that certain brands have that “only in it for me” viewpoint where there's tension, there's push and pull, but it's trying to take from you and not give back to you. And when there's a really natural fit, it's a win win for both parties, completely, 100% equal across the board. It's a full win and it's collaborative. There's a lot of brainstorming and energy and excitement, and there's just a sizzle that happens when it's a good fit. So it shouldn't be hard; it doesn't have to be hard to have a brand collaboration. That's my opinion. 

JENN:

For me, it's making sure that they are well aligned with you and your brand: your brand style, your brand voice, your brand audience. You don't want somebody that is a direct competitor to what you do because that could get a little bit competitive; you want someone that's aligned. The four of us, even though we're all in the same space, don't look at ourselves as competitors: we complement each other in all of our strengths. But even when working with large brands, or with other people that I've collaborated with, it's important that their target audience is something that is relevant to my goals - and vice versa, that my audience is relative to their goals - but that we have an alignment in terms of how we speak, how we teach, how we produce content. Because if those aren't in alignment, it starts, again, being a really hard problem with creating that content - who's going to market when it's going to get marketed? When the four of us came together, we all have a very similar mentality in terms of sales, in terms of marketing, in terms of ultimate goals, so we don't have one person over here getting resentful because we're not achieving or we're not working hard enough. We all have the same mentality, and that's really important when you pick that team.

STEPHANIE:

It's helpful to make sure that it's a win-win situation. Like when I partnered with Ecamm and we did the Leap Into Live Streaming [event], we had the shared vision that we wanted to help people take the leap into live streaming, so that was really cool. And then in working with Katie, who's absolutely amazing, I was like, “My superpower is in creating content. As far as things like project management and setting up Hey Summit, would you like to do that?” And she's like, “Oh, I'm so all about that.” I was like, “Okay, cool, that's like that that's you. You do that.” 

But then I think the other thing is also noticing how they want to market the collaboration - for example, if someone's like, “I need you to constantly email your audience,” I’m like, “Nooo, that’s not me.” 

MIKE:

To add to what Stephanie just said - in addition to making sure that it's a win-win, I like to try to make sure that the brands or individual influencers that I'm partnering with really want whatever it is that we're hoping to accomplish. I work with influencers all the time, and sometimes it's a win for them, but they don't really want it. And when you're asking somebody to put time and energy and passion into something, and they don't really, really want it, it's just not going to be there. 

Take our personal mastermind group. That was just the four of us, our support group. There's a time investment in there, and there's an emotional investment in there, right? And getting to know each other and support each other and, you know, hop on Zoom calls and that sort of thing. And if we had somebody in the group that didn't really feel like they needed us - maybe they were at a different point in their career, and they didn't feel like they needed that kind of support - maybe they'd show up, maybe they wouldn't. Right? They wouldn't necessarily give to the group the way that everybody else is giving. So I like to view collaborations that same way: to make sure that, whenever possible, everybody not only wins, they win big.

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A7: What are some ways to get on the radar of brands you want to collaborate and work with? -Chelsea #ChatAboutBrand

— ReviewTrackers (@reviewtrackers) October 13, 2020

Chelsea at Review Trackers would love to know how to get on the radar of brands you want to collaborate with and work with?

MIKE:

This is what I wrote about in the book. This is what I do every day: influencer marketing, relationship building. And I think that the easiest, most natural, organic way to make those inroads into brands that you might want to work with - perhaps as an influencer, as a brand ambassador even - is to engage with those brands, talk about those brands, and not seek payment or compensation or anything like that. You're building a relationship naturally, and that's where social media becomes such an easy tool and an easy route to do that. You can just go to their Twitter account or their Facebook page and you can make yourself known. Just as you, Christine, have done with Agorapulse, right? You show up in our lives, you show up in our group; you show up. Which is so key to any kind of relationship, and that gets noticed. We've got our Friday show with Agorapulse, and people show up to that live every single week - and Jennifer, our host, she sees them, she calls them out. And some of those people have now become guests on the show. Some of those have even become influencers for Agorapulse. And it's all due to the relationships that they kicked off by being present.

JENN:

To dovetail off what Mike was saying, it's really important to build the relationships with those brands. You can't just send an email to a brand and be like, “Hey! I want to work with you!” I recently had somebody else send me something about her book - and it's somebody I know, but there was no context. And I'm like, “I don't know what you want me to do with this.” There was no preface; there was no, “I'm writing this book, and this is what it's about, and I want you to be a part of it” pitching. I'm like, “What?” You need to form those relationships and you need to have those conversations. And that could be done via email, direct message, Zoom, or even a phone call at some point. But you do have to start - to Mike's point - by showing up: liking their content, leaving comments, sending them a DM and thanking them for doing something, sharing information, sharing something valuable - whatever it is, get on their radar as an actual person, and then, from there, start fostering those relationships. Start looking into who the people are that book their podcast - are they a team of one, or do they have 20 people on that team? Do they have people that are doing live shows, that are doing podcasts, that are doing webinars? Find out who those people are and start looking to foster those relationships as well. Because even though you may be active on their social, their social media manager may have nothing to do with the person who books their podcast that you want to get on. And you could be the best social media presence and still get nowhere for getting on that podcast interview. So do that research, if that's who you want to work with. And that's where - when you pick those two or three brands that you really want to work with, and you build those relationships - you get great return in terms of those relationships. We're not sending out mass pitches to 50 different types of brands hoping that somebody wants to work with us, because those are never going to be those relationships that Mike was talking about: those passionate ones, the people who really want to be involved. You're better off picking those small handful of brands that you really want to work with and build those relationships over time to the point where they become very valuable.

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A7. What worked for you when building your brand that you least expected?#ChatAboutBrand

— Linda Rey #SmallBiz Cheerleader 📣 (@HeyLindaRey) October 13, 2020

The next one is from Linda Rey. What worked for you when building your brand that you least expected? 

AMANDA:

I rebranded. I worked for four years in my business with the wrong brand name, and it didn't fit, and I just didn't have my stride. And then when I finally rebranded to the name that fit me, which is The Digital Gal, I rebranded and I embraced the pink. I just took it all in. I'm like, “All right, this is me.” As soon as I found something that really just resonated with me - honestly, I just have pink everything everywhere around my desk. I started sprinkling my pink across the Internet like Skittles everywhere, getting branded stickers and just putting my brand on everything - like, legit, I have my brand on my computer dongles for my Mac, I have it everywhere. Embracing the brand “all in” is something I couldn't do when the brand name wasn't the right fit. I'm not saying that I would tattoo The Digital Gal on me - I won't - but it's close enough. Whereas with the old brand name, heck no! Even just putting my name out there with the old brand felt awkward, like an awkward baby deer that couldn't walk properly; it just didn't fit. I just did not have my stride. And then once I found the brand that clicked with me, it just felt like somebody let me run at full tilt the way I wanted to. It felt so good, and it started taking off so quickly: people just had brand recognition happening left right and center. It feels like they thought I was that brand for all of the years that I have been in business.

STEPHANIE:

So, live streaming, honestly, it was a big surprise to me. I had always been an ad agency veteran: I was in the trenches doing social media, paid media, and all of that stuff. And when I started live streaming, then the first event organizer, Amanda Nelson, had reached out - and I think, Jenn, you were on the same conference, right? Social Vidcon - and she said, “Can you come and talk about live streaming? And OBS?” And I was like, “ME? I am now an expert in OBS?” That was the part where I didn't really realize the power of live streaming. And ever since then, it's just been this fast pass into getting into a key decision maker’s, “Hey, I want you on this project,” or, “I need you to produce this event.” So live streaming in and of that sense was, “Wow - that's cool!” 

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The last and biggest and possibly best question is from Marianne; she has a question for each of you.

A7: Wow so many great guests.

❓ @mike_allton what is his favourite thing about AP?

❓@jenns_trends is she still wearing heels whilst wfh?

❓@heystephanie what her #1 live tip?

❓ @thedigitalgal what's the best ROAS she's achieved?#ChatAboutBrand

— Marianne Avery | Social Media Manager (@sociallymaz) October 13, 2020

Mike, what is your favorite thing about Agorapulse? 

MIKE:

My favorite thing? There's a couple things - I can't pick just one, because there's two different aspects. 

Agorapulse the company, it's all about the people and the culture inside. I've worked with a lot of different companies. I came from an online website builder company. I was the CMO of a whole different company. And coming to Agorapulse was just a night-and-day difference in terms of how the company is led, the vision of the company, the culture that's created inside, the teamwork, and everything. It's amazing. 

From the tool itself, I have to say the category queues: being able to create a category of a type of post and then create different time slots and then just fill that queue like a bucket and have that content go out on a set schedule. Hands off. You can pause. You can shuffle the queue. You can delete it. You could move stuff around. It's one of my favorite features, and it's almost a mind blowing feature. Often when I show people, “Hey, this is how you could do that - this is how you can replicate almost every other publishing feature on any other tool - just use the category queues,” that is beautiful. 

Jenn, your high heels are a fabulous part of your brand, and I can vouch that the high heels and long nails are always a thing.

So are you still wearing heels and doing all that stuff while working from home? 

JENN:

The heels? No, they're unfortunately getting very dusty and neglected, I have literally a whole shoe wall, so I see them every day, and I kind of pine after them, and wait for the day when I'll be able to wear them. On occasion, yes, I'll slip on a pair of heels if I'm going out. But let's face it: most of my excursions into the grocery store. So that's still flip-flops. And I really don't have a good reason to wear the heels. 

The nails. I started doing my nails in COVID, so I bought the entire kit: I got the drill, the acrylics, the gels, that UV lamp and everything. And I've managed to be doing my own nails for the last seven months or whatever, because I refuse to give those up. So at least I kept that. 

Stephanie, what is your number one live tip? 

STEPHANIE:

My number one live tip: Have fun. 

Live streaming, to me, is like improv. You're just going to have to say, “Yes, and - that just happened, and we're just going to keep going.” So have fun while you're doing it. Because if you're stressed out, you're stressing out your viewers. You might not see us all in the green room. But when one of us is speaking, we're just like, “Yeah, you go, girl! Yeah! Go, Jenn!” Have fun, because then your viewers are going to have fun watching you, too. There's so many distractions out there. Things that are like emotional vampires. Have fun. Be that entertainment that your viewers want to see, especially on a Friday. So cheers! 

Amanda, what is the best ROAS return on ad spend that you have achieved? 

AMANDA:

That's actually one that I won't even touch on, because the majority of businesses that I help are small and medium sized businesses who have a difficult time - they don't have products that you could add to cart and then have a return on ad spend. You can't tie it 1-to-1. So you have to get creative with different types of strategies that can still prove that it is working and prove that it is bringing revenue into the business. But you can't actually tie it into a ROAS. People who can't achieve a ROAS, I'm the person they come to. 

What I recommend to most people is when you're starting out, start your strategy, and then layer it on. Set your goals smaller and achieve those goals, then layer on bigger goals. So when you first start advertising, start going through reach, engagement, and video views. Once you can consistently increase those numbers and achieve your goals and how you can move that forward, then start layering on, “Okay, now I want to get traffic to my website.” Once you start achieving that, then start laying layering on, “Okay, now I want some conversions.” But most people are going from zero to trying to get conversions. Then their ads don't work for them. Then they get frustrated and they fall off. So it's a matter of kind of layering on those expectations.

---

Thank you very much today to Mike Allton, Jenn Herman, Amanda Robinson, and Stephanie Liu: the 360 Marketing Squad. Anyone who wants this book - and trust me, you want this book - can get it at SocialMediaBook.shop. 

Roberto Blake on Creating a Brand, Not Just a Channel

BY KIM HANNA

This week we’re talking about building a brand, not just a channel, with YouTube creator and educator Roberto Blake. 

In addition to his work on YouTube, Roberto is also a creative entrepreneur, public speaker, and business coach. He's all about educating and motivating creative people with new videos every week on his YouTube channel which has 475,000 subscribers.

His Awesome Creator Academy helps creative entrepreneurs leverage YouTube to grow their audience, increase revenue and develop their businesses and brands. 

Check out some of Roberto’s top recommendations on building a personal brand here:

Is it a good or bad idea to go hard on one particular channel as opposed to having a broader footprint? 

Roberto has achieved great success on YouTube, but he agrees that it’s important to have a broader footprint. 

It's all about having a purpose as to where you should be. For example, Roberto is mainly known as a YouTuber, but he has a very active and engaged Twitter presence as well.

Roberto’s philosophy is “why not?” He says, “If you're already spending three or four hours on your main thing, taking away or adding 15 minutes to your plate to do something else doesn't really impact that...there's not a downside.”

Many people believe that having multiple platforms dilutes your focus. Roberto suggests that there is no downside to posting a few Instagram stories, replying to people on Twitter or things like that. If anything, It can help increase your exposure as people find your brand on other platforms. 

Becoming known as a YouTube creator

Roberto did not start building his brand solely through YouTube. In fact, he started as a  blogger; in his YouTube videos, he would include his website in his video intros. Roberto made his channel partly to drive traffic to his site. 

He’s also active on Twitter and Facebook. This brings us back to Roberto’s earlier point that using multiple platforms does no harm. He says, “I actually probably for years was just as hard on live, streaming every single day on multiple live streaming platforms in the early days of mobile live streaming more than I was even when I was doing daily YouTube content.”

Roberto’s live streams and blogs were largely about his career as a graphic designer and digital artist. His early focus was helping other freelancers and creative professionals. He interviewed other up-and-coming digital artists who would later be featured in various magazines and publications.

As Roberto consistently posted on his blog and did livestreams, he realized that his own brand was growing at quite a rapid rate. From February of 2015 through December of 2015 Roberto grew from 20,000 to about 75,000 subscribers on YouTube!

Differences between a creator, an influencer and a personal brand

You might have seen this question in our #ChatAboutBrand Twitter chat on Tuesday. We thought we’d ask Roberto how he feels about these three distinctions. 

Roberto’s definition of a content creator is basically anyone that creates content. They could be an influencer, personal brand, or none of the above. 

“A content creator doesn't have to be a content creator in the sense of being a public facing or forward figure,” Roberto explained. “If you produce beats but your voice isn't on the track, you're a content creator. And if you're making money as a musician doing that, you're a content creator. If you're not the face, and you are the editor of something - you're remixing content, but you're not personally in the content - you're still a content creator.” 

You can also be an influencer without being a content creator. 

“You could be an influencer by virtue of being a politician. You could be an influencer by virtue of being a public figure and a public speaker and having a story. That doesn't make you a content creator.”

A personal brand is a forward-facing figure with a public reputation. Personal brands can also be content creators and/or influencers. 

Roberto says these three words are not interchangeable. “Some people can encapsulate multiple buckets. Some of them it's just one bucket, and you can't assume that you've got the others.”

What do you think? Are you a content creator, personal brand, or influencer?

Creating the Brand

When asked why he branded the way that he did, he said, “I built a brand with the understanding that I wanted to build a brand that I could live with. But some people are a caricature of themselves online.”

Roberto’s brand is very authentic. Being authentic is a great way for your followers to feel like they know you a little more. Plus, a part of being authentic is showing that you’re not perfect all the time. To be successful on social media, you do not have to be ‘perfect.’ 

“I think what people get wrong is they think that they have to be 100% all the time, but that's exhausting, and you're not your best all the time. And so giving people your best sometimes means, ‘OK, it's not going to be exactly how I feel in that moment. “

How to get inspiration

Roberto sheds some great insight into our next question: “What do you do when you're not in the mood to create content, but you have to? How do you find inspiration when you need to create content, and what tools you use that help you out with that?” 

Roberto’s saying is, “‘When motivation fails, your discipline won't.” You might not always have an idea for everything, but Roberto always plans everything out. When inspiration comes, he’ll move on that. But he moves more on planning and designing, meaning he’s already mapped out what's going to happen rather than waiting for that inspiration.

Roberto also creates the opportunity to be motivated and inspired. He does that by building the perfect office that will help generate inspiration. He has inspirational quotes everywhere, and posters about patience, ambition, failure, happiness, persistence, and success. Building his office this way makes it a very motivating place to do work!

Find Roberto

Check out Roberto’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/robertoblake. He’s also @RobertoBlake on most social media (he’s most active on Twitter and posts to Instagram stories pretty much daily). And, of course, you can work with Roberto via AwesomeCreatorAcademy.com.

Thank you so much to Roberto Blake for his incredible insight on building a brand, not just a channel! To watch our Let’s Talk About Brand show, join us live on Facebook every Friday at 12 pm. 

Julie Cottineau on Building Your Unique Brand

BY KIM HANNA

This week we’re talking about building your own unique brand with Julie Cottineau of BrandTwist, a brand consultancy that helps entrepreneurs and corporations build stronger and more profitable brands.

Julie is also the creator of Brand School by BrandTwist, an online master class that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs develop more focused and distinctive brands. 

Julie was previously the VP of brands at Virgin, and before that, she held executive positions at Interbrand and Grey Worldwide. She's also the author of the incredible book, Twist: How Fresh Perspectives Build Breakthrough Brands.

What is “brand” at its most basic level?

Before diving into the topic of branding, we asked Julie how she defines brand. She says, “a brand is a story...and that story should have who you want to talk to. You want to tell the story too. What conflict are you overcoming? And then, importantly, what's your twist? Great books, movies, every kind of story, podcast that we listen to, they always have something different, something unique, and a Twist.” 

...and that is why her book is titled Twist. A twist is your unique point of difference. How do you stand out? When thinking about your own brand, think about what makes it unique. 

Others may define brand as how people would describe you, or maybe your reputation. What does brand mean to you?

Personal brands vs corporate brands

Julie has worked extensively with both personal and corporate brands. And they actually have a lot in common! The biggest similarity is that at the end of the day, both personal and corporate brands have a story that they want to tell. 

The main difference, however, is how people approach them. While corporate brands always seem to have a plan with clear goals and accomplishments, personal brands are looked at based on personality. Julie explains that a personal brand is not just your personality, but a more curated version of your personality.  

“You probably don't put up the pictures where you look your absolute worst or where you're doing absolutely nothing for the weekend, right? You tend to put pictures on social media and comments that help people understand what you're about and present yourself in the light that you want to be presented in.” 

Julie emphasizes that whether it is a personal brand or a corporate brand, keep company values at the core of everything.

Social media & personal brands

Since personal brands are based on your personality, social media platforms have been life-changing for personal brands around the world. For those starting out, you can simply create an Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn account for free.

 “It's made us all professional branders with free tools at our fingertips,” says Julie.

This might sound easy at first, but the challenging part is to remain consistent because most people engage in more than one channel. Think about your own brand for a second. Does it have the same look and feel on LinkedIn as it does on Instagram? Do viewers get the same message? 

Brand consistency

What are some things that people should keep in mind when they're defining their personal brand in terms of making sure that they're able to show up consistently?

To maintain a consistent overall look and feel of your brand, Julie’s biggest tip is to “own a color!” The color that Julie uses is purple. But she makes it meaningful. “Purple is a twist of red and blue. My business and my approach to branding is about looking at different things from different places and twisting them together.” Julie stays consistent with her brand by incorporating purple into her book, website, and even clothing. 

What color do you think of when you look at Christine Gritmon, Inc? Hopefully, you think red!

Another way to stay consistent is with a consistent tone of voice. “We defined our tone of voice and we made sure that whether we were writing a piece of copy or we were hiring somebody to do it, they had tone of voice guidelines,” said Julie. Figure out your tone of voice and then set guidelines in place for yourself and other people that might be helping you such as a ghostwriter or social media person.

Finding your “Twist”

With Julie being the author of Twist, we had to ask her, “how do you find your twist? Here’s her answer:

• Start looking outside of your category to brands that you admire and you learn from them. 

• Pay attention to the storytelling of people that you admire and then twist those lessons into your own brand. 

• Try new things. Julie spends one day a week where she does something she’s never done before. She calls it Twisting Tuesdays. That might be taking her dog to a new park or watching a documentary and Netflix on a subject she knows little about. Making time in her calendar to experience something new helps her stay inspired. 

Work with Julie

Julie is the creator of Brand School, an online master class that is great for solopreneurs, nonprofits, or just anybody who feels like their brand is getting a little bit stale and wants to learn! It’s an eight-week program starting on October 8th, 2020, on Thursdays from 12:30 to 2:00 Eastern time.

Brand School will help you figure out who to target, your brand promise, and how to raise your prices when you get clear on your story. This semester, Brand School will focus on COVID and the specific challenges of how to market and how to be sensitive during these times. You’ll go through an interview process where you'll get a 30 minute Brand Booster session where you get immediate feedback on your brand. To get started, email julie@brandtwist or go to brandtwist.com and click on Brand Booster session. 

Thank you so much to Julie Cottineau of Brand Twist for her incredible insight on building your unique brand! To watch our Let’s Talk About Brand show, join us live on Facebook every Friday at 12 pm.