Help them buy into you so they can buy from you, with Britney Gardner

Welcome to Amplify the Personal Brand Entrepreneur Show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Brittany Gardner. New content is what we're regularly creating. I highly recommend my clients choose one platform. Shall we say. Video is one, a video channel, audio, a podcast like this is another channel, and then a blog is another channel. I recommend that people create a new piece of content for your channel every week. You don't have to do it on a weekly basis. You can batch it all at one month, once a month. You can do it once a quarter if you're super organised. Hi there and welcome back to Amplify the Personal Brand Entrepreneurship. My name is Bob Gentle, and every week I'm joined by amazing people who share what makes their business work. If you've just hit play, then while you've got your phone in your hand or your laptop open, hit the subscribe button. And if you're on an iPhone, that's the plus or the Follow icon. That way you won't miss any new stuff. Before I jump into introducing this week's guest, Just a quick reminder. After nearly 200 of these interviews, I've learned a thing or two about what makes business work online. And I want to offer you a tourist map if you like. So if you jump over to my website, you can grab your copy of The Personal Brand Business Roadmap. It's everything you need to start scale or just fix your personal brand business so social media can feel like a hamster wheel for most people or like painting a bridge. It's a big effort, and as soon as you think you're done, it's time to start again. There are really two core problems when it comes to social media. Number one, showing up and that's really all about the hamster wheel. And number two, being effective and that's making it worthwhile. What the hell should I post on social media to actually attract my ideal client rather than just posting for visibility is something that everyone should be thinking about. And to misquote this week's guest, we need content which moves us from the nice to follow box to the must do business with box. So this week, I'm John By, the host of the Know Like and Trust Show, Brittany Gardner. Brittany, welcome to the show. Thanks, Bob, so much for having me. So I was really keen to have you on the show because I speak to lots of people who focus on lots of different things. But it's actually not that often that we spend a lot of time talking about the content that we create. And content really is everything. And I was thinking about the idea of your vibe. Everybody has a vibe. And when I say that content really is about transmitting a signal, and that signal carries a vibration, it's received by the other person. And what they receive and how it lands with them is how they're going to feel about us. So each individual person and their content has a vibe. Problem is, most people aren't transmitting, they're just consuming. So I want to talk about that today. So anyway, I'm rambling a little bit. I haven't asked you as I normally would. Sorry. Brittany, can you tell me about who you are, where you are and what you do? Yeah. So I came into the topic that we're going to be talking about today, kind of in a roundabout way myself. I started out in business when I was 20 years old. I was very young. I worked as a photographer for over a decade. And eventually I transitioned into doing brand photos, headshots and photos for people's, websites and photos for people's social media. And I would deliver my fantastic photos and my clients would fall all over themselves telling me how beautiful they felt, how lovely the photos were. And then they would say, but what do I do with them? And I realised really quickly that things that came naturally to me that were just kind of intuitive were not intuitive to my clients. And they needed guidance on how to use the photos, how to create a content strategy that really did show off their personal brand. And it was through that realisation that I kind of transitioned into the business that I have today. And with that transition, I do focus primarily on content strategy. And I still offer brand strategy. I can still well, if someone asks really nicely and they're a good referral, I might pick up my camera for them. I don't do too much of that these days, but it kind of all moved in that direction. And one of the really big things that I will die on the Hill for, I will plant my flag for is your content needs to say something about you. And specifically, it needs to say, why should person A, B or C even pay attention to you in the first place? And I don't mean that in a harsh way. I don't mean it in a pointed like, how dare you show up kind of way. I mean, you have to give your audience a reason to pay attention to you. And that is the crux of everything that I teach. But it's also the thing I have noticed that is really hard for some people to internalise that it's not enough to just show up online. You also really, truly need to give people a reason to identify with you, a reason to connect. And for that reason, I love that you mentioned vibes earlier. Right. And everyone does have their own vibe. And I think and teach and again will shout from the rooftops that your content should act as a Philtre. And by Philtre, I want you to picture your average kitchen funnel or an oil can funnel and realise that in the whole great entrepreneurial world, and everybody who shows up on social media for business online, there's a lot of people and your content needs to winnow those people out and Philtre them out based on your vibe. You have things that you stand for, you have an attitude, you have an internal essence, and that is not going to be for everybody. And until you understand that, showing up with a really good content strategy is probably going to feel very difficult. So there's something here that I feel very strongly because I suffered with it for years. And it really is this idea of if you want to attract people with your content is basic physics. You're going to have to accept that you can't have this strong force of attraction without the equal and opposite force of pushing others away. It's just the basic physics of how we are. It's just physics. I can't remember exactly what I didn't pay attention in school. I mean, I'm with you, so we're good. But a lot of people, they get so hung up on the people that they might push away with anything that they say when they open their mouth on social media that they end up saying nothing. And if we get down to the brass tacks, what is a brand? Often the definition is given. A brand is what people say about your business when you're not in the room. And a personal brand is no difference. A personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. The problem most people have is nobody's talking about them. And if they are talking about them, they're giving nothing out into the world in order to direct that conversation, whether it's a conversation between people or if you're triggering self talk in somebody else's head. So the vibe really matters. And the thing that really seems to prevent a lot of people taking action is the fear of turning off rather than the excitement of turning people on. And how do you help people through that? Well, I think you actually just paraphrased it really well. Your content should actually turn more people off, then it turns on. And once you know that, I feel like it just gives you permission. I feel like most of my clients, when they first come to me, they're like, But I might upset someone by saying that or they might not want to buy my thing. If I say that and I always nod and say, that's good, we're almost there. We're getting there, you know, and sometimes it's just knowing that you have permission to not be for everybody that gives you that clue. Sometimes I have to tell a client a story of any service provider I've ever worked with. My favourite is a doctor. And you go in for your annual physical and the doctor does everything correctly. They weigh you, they ask you about any symptoms, maybe they do some blood work by any stretch of the imagination. They've technically done their job. And then you finally find a doctor. By sheer coincidence, or referral that actually says, well, so how are you doing? That doesn't sound like everything is quite right. How could we fix that? Maybe we should order this other lab work to figure out what that is, and they really dive in and they help you be at your optimal levels. And if you have not experienced a doctor like that and you think that this is like a unicorn thing, that's never going to happen, I promise you it's possible. But I think all of us have experienced a doctor that just kind of checked the boxes and moved you in and out and you were just another number to them. And once you understand the difference between those two kinds of doctors and you can use any kind of business or service for this, right? Once you understand that difference, I think it's easier for you as a content creator, as a business owner who is using content to market to understand. You want to be the second doctor. You want to be the person to your clients who not only is caring and really wants to help them achieve things. You want to be the person that actually knows how to ask the right questions because you are so interested in what they're doing. And you can only do that with a select number of people. I can't take my services and give them to anybody because the amount of work it would take me to truly understand where they are coming from is a mountain. And rather there is a whole select group of people who I already have a really good base knowledge about, about their needs, their desires, their current struggles and problems. And since I'm already at a good base level, it's like being at a mountain base camp. And yes, you're still climbing a little bit because you have to get into the nitty gritty, but you're not having to climb the entire way. Once you really understand that, you can say, okay, I want to create content for people who already understand the base level. I want to create content for people who just need a little bit of a push to realise that my service or my product is right for them. And it becomes easier to not say, oh, hey, everyone else in the rest of the world, my content is not for you just to say, I'm not creating it for you, but if you stumble upon it and learn something along the way, that's awesome, maybe you will also climb to that base level at some point. But for right now, I'm trying to serve this group of people over here. So when we talk about content like everybody knows what we're talking about and there are lots of different styles of content that are available to people. You can go the super corporate style of content, or you can go the complete other end of the spectrum, being hyper vulnerable. And dare I say it over sharing. There is no right path. But for the person that's maybe and you know, the kind of person I'm talking about, the kind of person that's never posted on social media is super anxious about what happens if they even click the like button, let alone post something. How would you advise them to go from never having posted anything consistently to posting the kind of content where they're going to create a relationship and a rapport? Because the problem I see a lot of people having is everybody has a default setting of the kind of posts that seems obvious to them. So if I'm a designer, I'll post a piece of work. If I'm an engineer, I'll post something super nerdy. This is true even if social media consultants if I'm a social media consultant, I'll post a quote telling everyone why they should do social media. Nobody's met me through my content. So how could somebody who's never really been visible in any way sort of step into that with some baby steps? All right, so I have two parts to this answer. The first part is why are you showing up in the first place? Why are you even considering it? And then the second part is knowing how to balance what you are posting. So hopefully we have time to cover both of them. So the first part is why are you showing up in the first place? Right. I assume that you have created a social media account of some sort, or you've launched a YouTube channel, or you've decided to start a podcast or a blog for a reason. And one is just simply stating to yourself, what is that reason? And then two, once you have that reason, I like to tie it to a few different levels of motivation because like we said at the beginning of this interview, content creation can feel like a hamster wheel at times. So the levels of motivation, I like to kind of just state from the outgo. Or I'm showing up for myself because why? And in my personal case, I'm showing up for myself because I really, truly believe the information I have to share will help people. All right, so that's showing up for myself and then showing up for my clients. Well, again, I've already stated that I think that it's going to help people. How is it going to help my clients to learn this information? Well, my clients will become more at ease with showing up, which means they will do it more consistently, which means that they will have a more consistent cash flow. And we all know the cash flow is King cliche. Right. And that means that their businesses are going to be more successful, which will ultimately make them happier. All right, so that's why I'm showing up for my clients. Next is I'm showing up for the greater good. So if we extrapolate what I just said a little bit further, then we go for. I'm showing it for myself because my information can help people. I'm showing up for my clients because I want their businesses to succeed. And if their businesses succeed, they will be happier. And I know it sounds corny, but I truly believe if we have more happy people in this world, the world will become a better place. And all of this stuff we see that's kind of divisive and nonsense on social media will maybe tone down a notch. And maybe a happy person is more likely to give a breakfast sandwich that they just bought to a homeless person on the side of the road. And that homeless person does something nice for somebody else. And there's less crime in our cities. I really, truly believe in the butterfly effect in this case. So I tie my showing up to those three levels of motivation. And I help my clients kind of go in the same way because it's not just enough to say, well, I want to earn more money. The reality is some people are very money motivated, but the majority of people are not entirely money motivated. They may be motivated by certain things. They think that money will afford for them a better home, more space, being able to afford more extracurricular activities for their children. But it's not the actual money that motivates them. So tying why we're going to show up, especially if we've struggled to be consistent so far and struggle to even post on social media so far, will help them kind of commit to the idea of doing it. And then the second part of that answer is knowing how to balance what you do share on social media. And you intimated, Bob, a little bit about this in the question, you said some people are super corporate and then others are vulnerable over shares. And we've all seen examples of both. Right? So I like to give my clients a balance. And when I'm doing a full done for you content strategy for them, I have a slightly more strategic way of explaining it. But when I'm just talking to somebody or if I'm not sure if they're going to become a client, I like to give them something that they can gain from it. And that is the old, new, borrowed and blue strategy. You may remember it as a wedding rhyme, but I think it applies really well to social media as well, especially if you've never created a content plan before, because it gives you a way to move through different kinds of content so old that is referencing something that you've already talked about. Most businesses have some sort of cornerstone of what they stand for, some sort of pillar content, and you may have heard it by various different names. But most businesses have a few handful of things that they talk about frequently with their clients. And even if they have not yet put it out in terms of official content, I would label this as old content. So when I talk about it, I call it Cornerstone Content. And these are going to be the three or four things that you most commonly need your clients to understand before you become an option of working with them. And that would be your old content. There are ways that you can just literally repurpose exactly what you posted about that three months ago. If you don't have anything that you've posted three months ago, go ahead and put out that Cornerstone Content so that you can reference it in the future. You can also find new ways of talking about that old Cornerstone Content. I constantly in my daily life run into stories and think this is a really good way to explain that. And I'll just kind of add it to my content database so that the next time I want to talk about that particular topic, I have a new story to lead into that content. All right, so that would be old content. New content is what we're regularly creating. I highly recommend my clients choose one platform, shall we say. Video is one, a video channel, audio. A podcast like this is another channel, and then a blog is another channel. And I recommend that people create a new piece of content for your channel every week. You don't have to do it on a weekly basis. You can batch it all at one month, once a month. You can do it once a quarter if you're super organised. Personally, I'm not that organised, so I typically do it once or twice a month, and then you publish that content once a week. So you now have a new piece of content every week. And this can also kind of fill in your old content in the future. And then from there, we talk about borrowed. I love quoting people. When someone says something that resonates with me, I will often share it. But I don't just share their quote. I don't just retweet, I don't just swipe their Instagram picture. I tell why it matters to me. And this is how you can really start connecting your personal brand and your social media content beyond the services that you offer, but really more what you stand for. And when you do this, you give your audience a reason to believe in you. So let's say I'm listening to your podcast, Bob, and I hear you talking with a guest, and one of you says something that just hits and it's like, AHA, oh, I love the way they said that. I would then grab that quote and I would share and say, Bob Gentle said this. And first of all, he worded it way better than me. His phrasing was impeccable, and it really got me thinking about X and then I can make it my own at that point. I'm giving credit to the original person, which is very important, but I'm making it my own by moving on from there and kind of building upon it. And if anyone is interested in my free download, my Lead Magnet, it's called the Content Creation RX. I do talk about borrowing people's content in there because I see people doing this wrong all the time. They borrow someone's quote and they just post it and they don't say anything about it. And it's like, oh, cool, you're posting for the sake of posting, but you're not really making it relevant to your audience. And I think doing it that way is a big content mistake. But when you make it your own, it's a really good way to kind of balance your new and old content with somebody else's, but still keep it on brand for your business. It's flattering when it happens, I tell you. It is flattering, right? I love it. Very rare, though. And anyone listening, I'm open. Just go for it. Yeah, we should all go find one of Bob's quotes and do this because he'll feel really good about himself. And he'll also see that he is making a Mark in the marketplace that he's actually resonating with people. And it helps him create better content for you guys in the future because he now knows what resonates with his people. Absolutely. Sorry, Brittany, I interrupted. Oh, you're fine. Oh, yeah. Old, new, borrowed, and then blue. And I like to say blue as out of the blue. It's out of the blue content because it's not necessarily business related. But I really like this kind of category because this gives people who love being more personal the opportunity to be more creative, show more of their life, things like that. I do like to remind people, always tie it back into what your audience needs from you, give them a reason to connect with you. And if it's a person who struggles with showing their personal life, having that blue category in there kind of reminds them, oh, I'm not just a corporate robot. I do need to remind people of the person, too. So whichever side of the spectrum you fall on, you can find a way to use this. This blue content can be anything from hey, everyone, I just went and refilled my tea mug. I am caffeinated up. And I can now dive into today's big tech project because Lord knows I need to have some caffeine in me to accomplish this. Right. If you're connecting with your audience, you're like, hey, I do some of this sort of technical work, but even for me, I got to buckle down and I've got to really focus. It could also be something as kind of, like, silly and delightful as your child burst into a Zoom meeting and streaked across the background and, oh, goodness, hey, we're all people, right? We've all seen the BBC dad. We loved it. You know why we loved it? It personalised. Someone that is normally so corporate and so buttoned up and we were like, he's a person too. It's okay. There's the blue category. So I love this framework because it's outrageously simple, because I've seen lots of ways of approaching this to help make sure people provide a balanced range of content. But for people like me who are in it every day, complicated frameworks can work. Frameworks that aren't necessarily particularly memorable can work, but this one is memorable and simple. And if you do balance across this old, new, balanced blue spectrum, you're going to come across as a person in 360 degrees, and that's what's going to connect with people. So I'm really impressed with that. I'm curious to know you've been very generous with your knowledge, but I'd like to know a little bit about your own business and how you engage with clients and in particular, in your opinion, who should be doing the things themselves, which I guess the answer is most people. But then at which point should you decide? Actually, it's time to get somebody like Brittany involved? Yeah, there's a couple of different answers to that. So in my own business, I create my weekly content, which is also a podcast. In my business, I have a podcast manager who does parcel it out into various different social media venues for me, and I manage it all with templates that make everything very consistent across week over week. I also will go ahead and make the occasional video in addition to my weekly podcast content. And that video can be broken up into various clips and put into various social media platforms as well. In terms of my own business, I've always had the heaviest presence on Instagram, and I am considering at this moment, I have not made a final decision moving more of my presence to LinkedIn rather than Instagram, but I haven't fully decided that. We'll see by the time this airs, who knows whether I've made that decision or not? It would probably be pretty obvious, right. But in terms of deciding how much you need to do and how much someone else can do for you, whether you need an outside consultant or anything, it kind of depends on where you're at in your business. And right before this courting, I was actually on the phone with a potential client. I think she'll be a client soon. And I told her, you're going to pay with either time or money. It's usually a combination of the two. And really only you can decide which combination leaning it's going to be. And I said, if you're kind of starting scrappy and you're not super well funded in your business right now, then you're going to have to put a little more time into this. If you have a regular, ongoing cash flow situation, that's good for you and you don't have a plethora of time, it might be time to hire some of this out. And there's various different ways you can do that. I did Intimate. It a little bit in my own business. I show up for my weekly podcast and I write my weekly email to my audience about my weekly content. And I usually will take the transcript of the podcast and pull out clips of that for my Instagram posts that I do that week. But that's in terms of my hands on this about as much as I do. So if it's a solo podcast, I've probably spent a half hour to 45 minutes creating my notes for the content of the podcast. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, right? If it's a guest episode, which I do kind of like in every other for those episodes, it's a little bit less intensive on preparation, but usually a little bit more in having to parcel out the content later because it's not my words. So I don't know exactly where to look when I go to the transcript. I'll have to Hunt out a little bit more that kind of thing. And that's how I handle it for my business. I do have some clients who they just show up for their weekly video and they have either a virtual assistant or a staff or team member handle everything else from there. So it kind of depends. And all of that, of course, depends on having a good content strategy in the first place. So if you are someone who is sitting and listening to this and you're like, that's great, but you clearly have ideas of what to talk about. And I don't, that's where you really need some more high level help. People like me do exist. Brand, strategist, messaging, pros all people like that can help you determine exactly what you should be saying in that weekly content. And if that's something that you're really struggling with or if you haven't even gotten that far to think about that, and every day you open your phone and you look at the Facebook app or the Instagram app and you're like, oh, Jeez, what should I do now? And you just throw something up because you know you need to be present, but you're not really sure. You're probably not helping yourself out by doing that. And that's probably the time where you really do want to hire a strategy level kind of consultant to help you. That makes perfect sense. One more question I have, which is really getting back to the content is something that I hear very often. It's what can we do to try and encourage people to take action? How can you trigger action with social media content instead of simply having people sort of look at a post, read a post, listen to a podcast and think, well, that's nice, I enjoyed that. But actually have time, feel motivated to do something. I'm a big fan of just sliding in a CTA at the end of whatever your post or content is. It does not have to be professional. It does not have to be polished. It's just a quick, hey, if this is resonating with you and it's giving you a few ideas, DM me or drop a Flamingo emoji. I just did that one last week. Just drop a Flamingo emoji. If you're interested in talking more about this, that's literally all I said. One line. And you know what that really sums up for me is if you ask anyone in sales, what's the biggest problem with most salespeople? They don't ask. Yes, and this is exactly the same. If you don't tell people what to do, they're not going to know what to do, so they will do nothing. Brittany, if people want to go further with you, if they want to find out more about you, if they want to connect with you, how would you like them to do that? Probably email is the best way. So my email is say Hi at Britney Gardner.com. And I know I mentioned my Lead Magnet earlier in the broadcast that's available at britneygarner. Comcontrix. The content description is what it stands for, and it goes over the four big mistakes I see people making with content and three kinds of content that you really do want to focus on in the future. So that's probably the best way to contact me. I'm also available. Like I said, LinkedIn and Instagram is where I hang out the most. So messaging me on either of those platforms is totally appropriate. I welcome messages. I'm not the kind of person that's going to be like, I don't know you. I will not respond. I will respond. I promise. And I download all the guests freebies. And yours is a good one. Doesn't it sound really crass to call them Lead Magnets? But it is what it is. I always feel slightly guilty describing them as that. Yeah, there's all sorts of names freebies Lead Magnets. The reality is I'm offering something to you as a way that you can decide whether you want to connect with me or not. So labels aside, I think they're helpful if they're done well and people include good content in them. Exactly. And yours does. I need to ask you one question, and that's what's one thing you do now that you wish you'd started five years ago. Well, this is going to sound incredibly self serving, but I really wish I had measured the results of my content a lot longer ago, and I've been teaching brand strategy and content strategy since 2014 officially. But I didn't truly start measuring my results until a couple of years ago. Part of it is I took off some time for having a second child. I really wanted to be present for his first year of life. And then when I came back, I realised that my business hadn't changed a whole lot, even though I basically done not that much during my, quote unquote maternity leave and realising that made me see how much busy work I truly had been doing in my business and a big part of that really was in content. So I looked at what I had actually shown up to do during my quote unquote break and from there I actually changed a tonne of things in my own business because I had actual data to tie it to. I think any honest marketer will tell you that all marketing is a test and the only way we can truly know if something is effective but is by looking at the results. And I like saying I'm a creative but I'm also analytical and I love pouring into the numbers. But even if you aren't a fan of pouring into the numbers you're doing yourself a disservice. If you do not do that because you'll truly just hang out on that content creation hamster will never knowing when what you've done is enough if you aren't measuring absolutely. And for the listener who's thinking this has given me an excuse to not create any content because I need to look at numbers instead. No create some content for a while and then you get to look at the numbers. You do the work first. Exactly. Brittany Gardner, you have been great fun. I've really enjoyed that. I learned a lot. Old, new, borrowed blue. Everyone go and write that down. It's been great to meet you. Thank you so much. Thank you Bob and thank you for giving me this opportunity and I'm so excited to help more people with us. Before I go, just a quick reminder to subscribe and join our Facebook group. You'll find a link in the show notes or visit amplifyme. Fminsiders. Also connect with me wherever you hang out. You'll find me on all the social platforms at Bobgentle. If you enjoyed the show then I would love a five star review on Apple podcast. It would make my day and if you shared the show with a friend you would literally make my golden list. My name is Bob gentle thanks to you you for listening and I'll see you next week.