What ARE the right key words – especially, OMG if you are actually talking to someone face-to-face – or at least cell-to-cell? What are you saying – and how clearly are you communicating it online and offline? You get so much good stuff about your online behavior, I want to touch on the you that is hopefully off the computer from time to time, and on a call, presentation, meeting, or some other conversation.
The rules stay the same
The rules don’t change from online to offline – which means your online self must be aligned with your real life self, unless you’re doing something that would disgrace your family.
When successful personal brands speak, they are crisp, clear, compelling, consistent, and relentless. That doesn’t mean bombarding someone with “why don’t you buy from me?” messages. Or, “buy now or risk losing out!” Those are pretty clear, but fail the test of the other rules.
The bar for your personal brand’s key words has got to be what is:
- Authentically true for you
- What you want people to see you as a purveyor of
- Clearing connecting with your audience’s interest and concerns
- Legitimately delivering so that your audience receives the utmost results
- Promoted in a way that delivers your intention as much as “the goods”
Leave your passion in the bedroom – or hobby room
Definitive keywords are not about passion. Passion doesn’t play a part in personal branding. Passion does play a part in personal development – and that is the distinction.
Developmental psychology addresses the stages of maturation, and sets standards for what you do as a normal 8 year old, that isn’t the right behavior on a date when you’re 28 years old.
In other words, passions change. Think of when you were drinking wheat grass everyday, or desperately wanted tickets to the Goo Goo Dolls, or dated your neighbor. Some passions leave more residue than others. I may be revealing too much here.
On the other hand, if you are a passionate person – someone who invests themselves fully, and unceasingly strives to bring benefits to others: you can keep up your passion play. Personal brands are passionate about their audiences or, as Seth Godin calls them, your tribes.
When you see yourself not in the mirror but as a metaphorical bridge between your audience’s real lives and their ideal lives, you’re starting with a winning strategy.
– Do you know your audience and their unmet needs?
– Exactly who are the people and businesses you seek to serve and derive revenue and profit from?
– Where are they?
– Have you chosen a large enough segment so you don’t have to do an endless number of one-offs, but can syndicate the time it has taken to learn what you do really well?
When you are keyed in on the words and thoughts that express the pain and craving you can remedy, you begin to SEO yourself. You become a walking, talking advertisement for who you are and what you do.
Only then is my adage true: if you can say it, you can live it.
