Marly chats about three things she wish she’d done sooner to amplify her brand.
Welcome back to The Marly Dice podcast. This is your host Marly and, as always, thank you for tuning in. If this is the first time you’re tuning in, I’m so glad you’re here. I hope you’ll stick around and hit subscribe when you’re done listening to this episode.
It brings me such joy to do this podcast and share what I’ve learned along the way. I love learning and I learn new things every single day about blogging. I hope you enjoy learning too because this business and practically every other business out there is full obstacles and learning moments. The reason I want to bring this up is because the things I’m going to discuss today will probably require you to learn something, which I’ll get into in a bit.
So today, I want to talk about amplifying your brand because I’ve slowly started rolling out ways to amplify my brand, and I really wish I’d done many of these things sooner.
Before we get in to today’s episode, I want to take a minute to read a review of my podcast. This one is from Melanie McDaniel entitled “Authentic and Helpful.”
Melanie says “I started listening just to learn more about Instagram so I can tell my adoption story better. Marly made me fall in love with the entire business of blogging. She is authentic and her podcasts are practical. Highly recommend for beginners or bloggers with years invested.”
Wow, thank you so much Melanie for your kind words. I try to be authentic as possible, and honestly, I’m a terrible liar so it’s hard for me not to be authentic. I’m pretty much one of those people who just can’t lie, and I don’t want to anyway so there’s that.
I’m so glad that you are falling in love with blogging. Blogging is my jam, my creative place, my happy place and hopefully a place that you love too.
I aim for my blog to be a place where you can take a moment out of your busy life to pop over and get some fun and practical ideas for your home and blog.
So thank you so much Melanie for taking the time to write a review of my podcast. If you want your review read on an episode of my podcast, make sure to leave one on iTunes.
Today I really want to delve into amplifying your brand. First and foremost, I want to take a minute to talk about building a brand and not a blog. As a blogger, of course you’re building your blog but it’s so much more than that. Building a brand is the larger picture, and I like to think of it as your blog is a component of your brand.
This is how it works in a lot of cases: someone comes to your blog because maybe they saw a piece of great content they wanted to read.
But why do they stay? Usually, it’s because of the brand and because of you, that they stay. As a blogger, you’re a huge reflection of your brand.
You can create brand words, brand colors, brand images, brand language and so on, so that everything seems consistent with your brand.
Amplifying your brand is essentially marketing your brand in a big way, and that’s what I want to talk about today.
It’s not enough to have a great brand. You have to promote it so that your audience knows you’re there.
It’s like when you come across an awesome blogger on Instagram and they have these amazing images and beautiful home, and you’re like why do they only have 500 followers and they’ve been around for 3 years?
The fact is so many people have a great brand but they’re not promoting it and therefore not many people know about it.
Not to sound cliché, but we’re living in an increasingly visual world. Pretty pictures are great but we’re in a world dominated by video. People like to connect with people by hearing their voice and seeing their face.
And these types of avenues can be really tough for bloggers. I know I was in a state for a long time, just very nervous to put myself out there. But, eventually I did and it’s been nothing but great.
Sure, some people may stop following you because once they see more of you, they might not find a good connection with you, but that’s actually a good thing.
Why would you want someone to follow you who doesn’t share your passion? They should go follow someone else who does share their passion.
When you start to amplify your brand, your message, you’re going to eventually start attaining followers who want to follow you.
So that’s my little tidbit about branding and amplifying your brand and why it’s important to do it.
So let’s shift and get into what I exactly I started doing to amplify my brand. Here are three things I wish I’d done sooner to amplify my brand.
1. I wish I had started a podcast soon.
I started my podcast in April of 2018, and it’s been such a great way to communicate my message and amplify my brand.
I really have two parts to my brand message and that is #1. I want to help home enthusiasts beautify their home and #2. I want to help them build a blogging biz.
So, my podcast really gears to that second part of my brand message because it’s pretty much focused on blogging and how to grow a blog.
Starting a podcast is a great way to gain authority amongst your peers. And podcasting is really not that hard.
From the outside, it probably looks like it could be a challenging thing to do, with getting the technology set up and so on, but really it’s not that difficult once you learn how to do it.
And I think even more than the technological piece of it, people think , well who am I to start a podcast? I’m not qualified to talk about this or that. Or, I don’t know what I’d talk about.
There’s so many comments like that but the thing of it is: Listen closely: Anyone can start a podcast. Anyone. Yes, you. You can start a podcast.
If you’ve learned something a long the way, like, let’s say you’re great at decorating on a budget. If you’ve mastered how to do that and have come up with a great system a long the way, then there’s a topic for a podcast.
What I’m saying is that if you have something you can teach people, then there’s a great starting point for a podcast.
Podcasting is great because people start to hear your voice more and they get used to you and your brand message, and you’re ultimately amplifying your brand
There are so many types of podcasts too. There’s podcasts about every topic. I think you’d be surprised if you actually went and searched for podcasts.
I tend to enjoy business focused podcasts and blogging focused ones, and home/DIY focused podcasts. But there are seriously so many: there are finance ones and news-focused ones, religious ones, celebrity ones and so many others.
And, the thing is, You don’t have to put a podcast every single week. You could do it monthly or you could create a series.
Podcasting is just a really great way to get your name out there. And it’s not like you have to public speak. You can write scripts and edit out when you say “um” too much.
It can also be a source of revenue if you get podcast sponsors, so that’s another great perk of having a podcast that’s regularly listened to.
I’m so happy that I started a podcast. It’s one of my favorite things to do each week.
I’ll be honest that sometimes I miss that corporate world I used to be in. I miss getting to talk about business and marketing focused concepts and what I’m seeing in the marketplace. My podcast gives me a place to do that.
#2 is that I wish I would’ve started doing Facebook lives sooner. And doing more of them.
I did my first FB live in February of 2018. I did a total of just 10 fb lives in 2018 and I wish I had done so many more.
This is a place where I really want to grow and I’m going to start to put more of an emphasis on.
To give you a little stat, my first video I did reached over 3300 views. At that point I had less than 600 people following me. That’s awesome. That’s been my highest viewed video, and it reached such a large audience.
The great thing about FB lives is that there are so many people on FB spending time watching so many videos.
It’s awesome to be able to do free promoting of your brand in those videos. Yes, you have to provide content, and hopefully good content, but it’s one of those things where this is where people are spending time, so this is the place you want to be showing up. In people’s FB feeds.
Going live on Facebook is intimidating, for sure, but I will say that it gets easier the more you do it.
A great way to practice is by doing Instagram stories because they’re not live, and you can get a feel for how you can improve when you talk on video.
I’ve slowly gotten better over the past year talking to the camera, and honestly, I think the comfortability just comes with practice. I wouldn’t say I’m fully comfortable going live all the time, but it’s way easier now than it was just a year ago.
I think Facebook lives are really great for home bloggers in particular because there are so many topics you can go live about.
If you’re doing a project, why not go ahead and do it live on FB with your audience. If you’re decorating something, why not show the steps to decorating that bookshelf while you’re live. You don’t have to be perfect when you’re talking.
People love connecting with people, and once they start to see your mannerisms, your quirks and your body language, they can start getting to know you better, which, in turn, helps amplify your brand.
If you’re scared about going live on Facebook, one thing I did when I first started was I rehearsed exactly what I was going to say. And when I say I rehearsed, I mean I wrote down what I was going to say and then I studied it, and spoke it out loud several times. Then I went live.
And if you stumble on your words, so what? We all do it. It’s ok. It shows you are human. People don’t want to see a robot showing them how to decorate. They want to see you and your talents.
Now, I actually enjoy going live on Facebook. I always feel so accomplished when I’m done.
The only thing that makes this a little bit more challenging to do is that you need it to be somewhat quiet so you can talk.
If you’re a mama like me, then it can be difficult when you have your kid screaming or needing you. You can’t really go live when you’re watching your kid. So there’s that.
You have to be strategic with your planning time.
Whereas, with a podcast, for example, you can record it, and then if your child starts screaming, you can stop recording and pick up recording when they’ve calmed down.
So that’s just something to keep in mind when you’re trying to venture into the wonderful world of media.
# 3 is Video. Now, I’m talking about video in a different sense than Facebook lives. I know FB lives are video but I’m talking about actually making a video.
So recently, I created my first video. As in, I recorded it, and then I edited it and put it together, and shared it on Facebook.
I had been wanting to do it for awhile but it seemed really intimidating to me, trying to get all the equipment I needed and so on, but I did it, and I figured it out, and now I have what I’m calling an “intro” video.
So, essentially, I created a 2 minute video talking about me and my blog and my goal with my blog, what viewers can expect to see on my blog and get out of my blog. It’s kind of like going to the about page on my blog but in video format.
One of the reasons I wanted to make an intro video was because I wanted to put it at the top of my Facebook page.
Now that I’m doing more Facebook lives, I wanted to have a way to make myself stand out a little bit more, and I thought having an intro video in that cover image section would be a really cool touch.
I ended up having to trim it down to under 90 seconds for that cover spot because that’s what Facebook allows, but it ended up working out just fine.
And, one thing you can do too, is if you’re really nervous to do Facebook lives, you can always start by doing pre-recorded videos.
That way you’ll get used to talking to the camera. The main difference with Facebook lives vs. creating videos is that creating videos is a lot more work.
Because after you actually record it, you have to edit it, and jazz it up. Videos are kind of expected to be somewhat professional looking whereas Facebook lives, you can kinda get away with it not looking as professional since you’re going live.
There’s also obviously YouTube that you can put videos on, so that’s something to also keep in mind.
So to recap, the three things I wish I’d done sooner to amplify my brand are: to start a podcast sooner, to start & do more Facebook lives sooner and to create videos sooner.
Podcasting and video creation, at least for me, required me to learn new things. But even though theres a learning curve, they’re both really great ways that I’ve been able to amplify my brand.
Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode. Please leave me a review on iTunes!
Facebook community: www.facebook.com/abrickhome
Instagram community: www.instagram.com/abrickhome
PIN IT FOR LATER!
