How to Build Your Brand Online by Tom Ward #438

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. My name is Matt Bertram, your SEO specialist. Specialist, welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 438. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is... It's such a tip that we're reading it. Make sure your website is prepped for mobile-first indexing. Google is turning on mobile-first indexing left and right. If you're in your search console, you're probably getting notifications if you've got a lot of clients. So make sure your mobile sites are ready. You should also subscribe, follow, boom! That was a public service announcement last podcast. Let's see. So we dug into that. If you want to know more about that, go to podcast number 437. Please remember, we are filmed live here in Houston, Texas. And Matt and I, we are the Results Rebels! I got this review. I got to read it. It's from Jeremy. It says, I want to thank you guys for your time. I like the game plan we discussed. I'm very, capital V, very interested in working with your team and the crew at eWebResults. Punch in the face to you, Jeremy, with 3J's cigars. And thank you for leaving me a book review. Oh yeah, he did, yeah. He did use his logo of the cigars, so it's showing up in my Amazon account. So he did an old SEO technique to drop it in the forums. I guess that still works on Amazon. First person I've actually seen doing it. Really getting into more Amazon marketing. But thank you for the review. We're looking forward to working with you. So, punch in the face. Punch in the face. All right. So if you're a returning podcast listener, you might be interested in the tips and value you're getting from the podcast. You might also be interested in, I don't know, we have a whole plethora of mini, what is it, mini guides? Yeah. Of mini guides.

The fastest way, I mean, you can get into our menu structure. The quickest way to get there for you is to go to eWebResults.com slash SEO tip. Boom. And you'll be taken to the mini guide page and then you can get whatever tip you want. For instance, you could get five online marketing mistakes that can tank your business and how to avoid them. We got a good article today, how to build your personal brand online. By the way, if you're in our email list, right? And hopefully you are. If you're not, go to our website and get in our email list. You've probably received some notice about, I don't know, a certain author. I'm pointing at him standing next to me. And a book that he's written and that it was free yesterday, right? You were giving it away free on Amazon? It was free on Amazon and our goal was to hit 25 reviews on Amazon and we hit 25 reviews. So thank you all for your help in that. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the support. We love you. But Chris, also I noticed that you're a little dressed down today. Yeah, I'm not wearing a jacket. You're not wearing a jacket. I'm just curious what that's about. I'm excited. I'm excited because I'm wearing a shirt. And by the way, I went to lunch and somebody was like, just saw the back of the shirt, right? And it says, making marketing great again. So the back of the shirt, right? It says, does it make or making? Make marketing great again. Make marketing great again. And I guess I could read it over there. And then the front has the little Trump hair switch. By the way, we're not endorsing or against either way. We're just saying, hey, this is really cool marketing. Make marketing great again. And we're making marketing great again. Yeah. And yours, I see you have a shirt. I'm fancy. What is it called? I'm fancy. Like, I don't know what the word is, but he's

wearing a black shirt with white lettering on it. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? He's currently modeling with a black shirt. It's in the large sports fit cut. It's very soft. It's the tri-cotton. Yes, we are fashion experts, as you can tell. It says, do you, SEO, question mark, and the back of it says, unknown secrets of internet marketing. We're going to add podcasts. Yeah. Podcast. Yeah. But this is actually my second favorite shirt over the Star Wars shirt we got. Yeah. Like, let the rank be with you. Let the rank. Luke, let the rank be with you. I love it. Darth Vader never says that. To the... I don't think. Hey, if this is the first time you've been, joined us on this podcast, howdy, and welcome to the podcast. We really appreciate you. We would like you to... So, we've had our reviews have been kind of falling off, so we are going to mention it right now. We're going to say, just go to ewebresults.com slash G plus. Okay. If you get to G plus, it will redirect you to a place where you can leave a review. Please make that review. Five stars. So, Google My Business. We want reviews on Google My Business. Yes. Please. Please. Thank you very much. Let's see. T-shirts are available. We've already talked about two of them. How many do we have? We have like 12 t-shirts, right? I don't know, but... So, this is a little kind of pet project that you started in the company, and you're like, hey, everybody make one shirt, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then everybody... But I would say that this is really Johan's pet project. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, Johan brought it up. He said, I really would like Star T-Shirt Company. Right. And I was like, let's do it. Let's do that inside of eweb. Yeah. So, um... We have a very entrepreneurial environment in our company. If that's in any way exciting to you... But the business model is not great, because we're just giving

them away. But if you want a t-shirt, let us know. Sign up for a free 15-minute call. We'll give you a t-shirt. We've got free codes for it. They do take a minute to ship if you're used to Amazon. It's not coming in two days. It's not coming in two days. It's not even coming in two weeks. We're like, what is going on? It's not even coming in two weeks, I'll be honest. Or maybe it was two weeks. I think it was about two weeks. But I mean, that was the longest two weeks. I was like, when are these shirts getting in? Did we actually order them? Can we confirm? Has the credit card been actually processed? Yeah. We got them. We're excited. You can get those at ewebresults.com slash swag. We're still working on that, right? Or did you fix it? Yeah, by the time they hear that. Oh, perfect. All right, cool. We'll just say, Manny, don't go there right now. We'll have it up soon. And Health Business Alliance, appreciate you being here. Not sure who. Who you are. Who you are. Mr. HBA. Oh, and nice shirts. I like it. Yeah, thank you. It's amazing. All right, so let's jump into this article. So we kind of touched on this earlier. We thought we'd cover an article. Matt was handing a gift, just giving his book away. He got his 25 reviews. So thank you for everybody who helped him get those 25 reviews off and running. And we decided to talk about, we found a Forbes article, How to Build Your Personal Brand Online. And this one is by Tom Ward. And by the way, here's a good opportunity. If you are in front of some of our electronic device, go ahead and tweet. Tweet hashtag SEO podcast. This is podcast number 438. Tag us in it, at bestseopodcast, at ewebresults, at Matt Bertram live, at Chris Burris eweb, and at MottDraw1. That's M-O-T-D-R-A-W-1. And that's actually Tom Ward's Twitter handle. Yeah, he's a Forbes contributor. Yeah, that's nice. Forbes

contributor. I don't know if he's written a book, though. Anyway, he's got How to Build Your Personal Brand Online. So we're going to kind of go through these things. And we're going to get our in-house expert, who wrote the book, Build Your Brand Mania, which you can find at buildyourbrandmania.com. And we're going to get him to comment on these. So let's just jump in. Assess your current brand. Like, where are you? What five words will you use to describe me? Right? Figure that out. Like, what is your brand? Who, what, when, where, why? Is that what we're talking about? Again. He was like, well, again, you've got to figure out where you're at. And then if you're going to kind of build out your brand, he's talking about first figure out where you're at. I think it's talking about what your purpose in life is. Like, where are you going? What is your path? What are you, you know? I don't know. Is that? Like, what is your core brand? He's talking about core brand as opposed to, like, just brand at the office. If that makes sense. So next he says, look for inspiration. Who are the top five people in your field? What do they have in common? Do they all write for major publications? I don't know. Like Forbes. Do they sell courses? Do they appear on podcasts? Do they write? I know some of those people. Right? Try to find a common thread for anybody. I don't know if you talk about any of that piece in your book. Oh, have you not read it? He knows I have. I've just forgotten it all. Only 20% retention 10 days after. This is way more than 10 days. And it's close to 20. I think really what I, and when I look at this article, and I mean, we're already halfway actually through it. For all you out there that can see this, this is really, Chris, what I was getting consistently. Right? Right. Okay. Like, so when I was online and

I was like, okay, how do I build a personal brand? Right? Like, how would I build a personal brand online? There's got to be a process. Let me go find it. Let me go find the process. Let me go find the articles. Right? There was lots and lots of 500 word, 350, what is this, 250 probably, word articles about how to do it. There wasn't a step-by-step guide. Right. Right? I had to go to all these different places to find it. You know, it just, there wasn't a lot of information out there. When I look at this, and we kind of talk about it a little bit more, he's talking about building your own persona. Right. Right? Like, and I, that's what I, when I see here, we're like looking for inspiration, determine your audience, uh, be niche, uh, find your voice, have a social media plan, clean up your profiles, create content, start a website. And we can go through and kind of talk about all these, but that was just really like, so, so if I'm getting this right, correct me if I'm wrong, it's almost like this article is about defining your personal brand and where you might try to market it. And then you're like, okay, great, you've defined your brand and you have some ideas about where you might market it. You should probably pick up the book, build your brand mania. So you know exactly what to do with what you've defined as your brand. Yeah. I mean, I, I think we can kind of go through it. And if you want to jump into the book, we, we can, it's just, this looks like, you know, what you found. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it's pretty consistent with what I found, but also like, okay, who, who are you? Right. Are you genuine? Right. Right. Who are you targeting? Uh, and then, you know, what do you want them to think about you? Right. Right. And I think a lot of people already kind of have that. Maybe

they need to focus in on a little bit more, but I think a lot of the people already know this and they read this and they go, okay, how do I do it? Right. You know what I mean? And step two. So we'll add that at the end of this, right? So, so look for inspiration in people who are in your industry, determine your audience, right? So you only just figure out who your audience, and that's going to come from some of your inspiration. It's going to come from some of the message that you want to get out there. Um, better to be a niche, right? Well, I, I think you need to decide who do you want to do business with, right? Right. Like if you're passionate about your work, you love your work, you're going to be successful at it. So like, who do you want to do business with? There's people that are potentially maybe your clients or not your clients. You don't want to attract those type of people, right? Right. You want, you want to attract the type of people you like to work with. We're getting a lot of clients. Now we're, we, you know, we just brought on like a wedding venue place, which that's not like what we're doing, but we brought on about six or seven clients that are all between say 25 and 35. Right. Right. That are all small business owners and they're the core, uh, you know, they're, they're the core proprietor, uh, and they're growing their business. They know online, uh, marketing is something that's going to help them take it to the next level. Yeah. And that is me looking in the mirror. Right. Like a lot of these guys I would go have a beer with, you know, I really like talking to them. I want to help them. They know what they're talking about. Yeah. Those are the best clients for me, right? Those are the best clients because I'm drawing people to it of the market that I'm

most like, or go after or want to do business with. That you connect most. And then I can, and then, you know, they become good clients because I know what they need and like, we're on the same page. Right. But there's people sometimes that are like all over the place. Right. That is that, is that what you want to attract? Right. Right. You're kind of, so I don't know. That's kind of my two cents on that. Oh yeah. And that's kind of defining your audience. Yeah. Make sure you're in a niche, uh, find your voice. Right. So his points are like, are you funny? Maybe you're sarcastic. Um, you can't be clapping back on Twitter and then trying to inspire people on Instagram. Right. So there's just things that, uh, you know, where, what does your voice really look like? Um, so, so, uh, one of the ladies that I talked to that's in a niche outside, they do outside the norm, they outside the norm. They do, uh, well, we were doing more of that. Right. But like hair and eyebrows and wax and all that. Um, it was funny cause she called me back cause she was calling some of the top agencies in the country. Uh, she had found our podcast and she goes, she goes, uh, the reason I called you back and signed up for the profit plan, which, you know, we've got the proposal on Monday is she goes, the first thing you told me is you told me my website sucks. And, uh, you know, the punch in the face marketing that we offer here, uh, it's, it is, it's intended to be brutal. Like sometimes I did, I did say it nicer, but I did say that. And she was like, I agree with you, you know? And so, I mean, but that's who I am. Right. Like if I'm going to try to button up and put a tie on and all that and, you know, Gucci glasses, you know, that's not going to be me,

you know? And, and, and some people are not going to like that. Some people are. You and Eweb, right? Like, cause, cause that's our whole, our whole mentality here is like, you've got to, you got, I love the phrase, um, speak your truth with compassion. I love that. Right. I love that. So it's the truth that your website's ugly. Um, often when I was on calls, I'd get in and I'd be like, so tell me a little bit about how this website got made. Right. So I could have an understanding if it was just something somebody else did, or if they had a lot of passion behind it for, before it kind of broke down why it was bad and what particular areas it was bad. I don't, and it was never like your website sucks, let's go on to the next subject. Yeah. It's like, here's why, here's the weaknesses, here's what's damaging. And I don't know if I use those words. I don't remember, but I could. Okay. But, but she got the message, but she got the message and it was, it was done in a respectful way. Yeah. But, but it was, I, that's what I love about, uh, working with everyone on this team is the best idea wins. Right. It's not your idea or this idea. It's my idea. Yeah. Like it's, there's no ego. It's the best idea wins. And it's so great and refreshing to talk to people that just cut through all that. Yeah. And you can get down to it. Cause you know how many meetings, right? You got a Gary V, right? Like he's doing all these short little meetings, right? He's like, I can accomplish in 20 minutes, which you can accomplish in like five hours. Right. Well, by speaking the truth. Well, let's cut through all the nice, you know, I mean, keep the niceties, but like, let's get right to the point because really, I feel like in a lot of meetings we have, it's like sometimes with clients, I mean,

we got pulled into the big old school, like, uh, you know, big corporate, uh, project management infrastructure meeting and it was dinner and lunch and nothing happened. Right. And really all the talk was done in the last five or 10 minutes. Yeah. As we're walking out the door. As we're walking out the door, the real business got done. And so think about that for the full hour, the full two hours. Like what can you get accomplished then? For two hours. And so I, I don't know. I don't know how we got to that, but finding your voice. Okay. Yeah. Um, have a social media game plan. You definitely, like we always say, don't, don't throw money against the wall and see if it sticks. Uh, you want to know what channels you want to be on. Again, you want to be using that consistent voice, clean up your profile. So, you know, you don't need the picture in Hawaii with the mark, with the margarita. Like that's just not going to work unless that's your persona, right? Then you can use that. If you're the margarita guy, if you're the margarita guy, if your selfies in the bathroom is you, you know, and there's people out there that that's them. Absolutely. You know? Um, and then create content. So duh, content is king. So make sure that you're creating that content and creating it with this consistency of knowing who your audience is, what that niche is and what your voice is, and then start a website. And we would agree. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. This is, this is unique information for me. Okay, good. The 99 one rule. So that's 90 dash nine dash one. Yeah. States that 90% of people view content without contributing. Yep. 9% edit or modify the content and only 1% of people create content. Be the 1%. It separates you from your, we need a t-shirt. I'm a 1%er. Oh, I'm a 1%er. We are creating content. I love it. I love it. Right? In this

day and age, in this day and age, um, uh, Facebook, Instagram, uh, Pinterest, all the different social media channels are channels. They're the CBS, uh, NBC, Fox news, and you're the news journalist, broadcaster, media company promotion, like, I mean, commercial and commercial. Yeah. Like, so understand that that's the new world we live in. And I mean, there's data out there to support. Most people get their news from social media anyway. Right. Um, so also even like, you know, I think the Google Facebook battle is pretty interesting. A lot of people is homepage is now Facebook. Right. Yeah. So I don't know that, but I just thought that that was a, a great point. Yeah. So punch in the face to you, Mr. Tom Ward. Yeah. Tom Ward. And, uh, and then, and then, I don't know, do you want to, is there like three bullet points that you maybe want to pull out of the book kind of moving forward from, okay, we've defined these things, you've created this website and you've got the persona, you know, who you're targeting. Is there, is there three things or one thing or I don't know? I don't know. First off, read the book. Well, I mean. Go buy the book, read the book and write a review. Those are, those are, are those the three things? I mean, Chris, you could read your forward on the podcast. No, but, uh, I'm just kidding. So, so if you look at the table of contents, right, like this is kind of how I outlined building the book. Right. Right. So, um, introduction, a little bit about me, background, blah, blah, blah. Right. Why should you, why should you read this? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. A little about my personal story and also, um, some testimonials and supporting evidence from, from people in the industry. But what I went into first was the science of building credibility. Right. Right. And like, what is credibility, how to use it, how to create a reputation you want others to see, how to

create a personal brand. Right. Right. So I did a whole chapter on, on this article and then it went right in to the buyer persona. So this article, I think kind of tied those two together and, and I, I felt like they went together as well. Then, you know, unique selling proposition, your USP. Right. Like everybody's got to have that even, you know, business coaching, you know, you've got to have your USP, what makes you different, um, how to win over prospects by telling your story. So content storytelling, like all the fact that storytelling is so valuable, so important. It gets past that kind of sales funnel and creates that connection. Yeah. Then I went into, uh, like small, small business marketing or local SEO, that sort of thing. I didn't use the word SEO, but it's kind of more in the nitty gritty, right? Yeah. But, but, but content marketing for local businesses, establishing yourself as an authority. So also that's like, uh, the press releases, uh, getting yourself on the news, how to do that, uh, becoming the local kind of, uh, authority in your area. Then also, uh, that tied into, you can see how it ties together, getting free media coverage for establishing celebrity. Right. So, so that is like getting on the news and you're going to start seeing that happen. Uh, I got some, uh, good, uh, yeah, I got some exciting things happening and then how to reel in your leads with landing pages. Right. Right. So how to, how to, uh, uh, effectively using landing pages. A lot of people buy traffic. Right. And then it's just not converting, throw their traffic against the wall. Yeah. It doesn't stick. Yeah. Uh, getting more traffic to amplify your status. So also I think that that's the most important thing, taking the traffic that you currently have and optimizing that, right. Getting more out of what you already got. Yeah. And really a lot of people are like, well, let's get the traffic first and then convert it. Now

you can do that with data, but I'm liking to take best practices first. Yeah. And then turn on the guns, you know, the rocket field. Right. And then the fortune is the followup. So like email marketing. Yeah. So really I wanted to go full circle and everything that we talk about in this podcast and break it down into chapters and put it in a step-by-step order that people can leverage it, build a foundation and then actionable steps they can take to grow it. And then, you know, I kind of sum it all up. So it's a, it's a really good book. I've been asked to, uh, put together another book, uh, with some coauthors. Um, that's something we're looking at doing. Uh, but thank you for the support. I appreciate everybody helping you, uh, helping me get, get the reviews on there. Cause, uh, it was kind of sad with only four reviews. Uh, so maybe that's why the Google, my business has fallen off a little bit. I don't know, but, uh, please leave, uh, reviews on Google, my business. Check out the book. Audible will be out in the next couple of days. So I'll have the audible version. A lot of people told me they don't read anymore, which I read all the time, but give the book to somebody as he was putting it in his bag, in his bag. He was like, is it an audible? Cause I don't read books. Like, well, give me the book. If you're not going to read that, it'll be an audible soon. Give me the book back. Uh, all right. So punch in the face to Tom, punch in the face to you for writing the book and sharing this knowledge, uh, giving the book away for free yesterday. I know that's something that you wanted to do and it's important to give back. Um, so, uh, and tons of value. I mean, this is basically like 50 books. Okay. 50 books that I've read all the nuggets rolled into one and then

woven into the specific task of building brand. I mean, building the brand and personal knowledge. So, uh, really proud of it. So, uh, check it out. Very cool. Um, all right. So if you like this podcast, we're going to ask you to tell three people just three, you can, and do that. You can do that now. You can do that now. Uh, Hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, the internet call eweb results for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is seven, one, three, five, nine, two, six, seven, two, four. If you have a referral, remember all of those things, Matt's talking about that he wrote about in his book and that he can implement in the company. We, we do that and more, right? So, you know, websites and then the PPC traffic and then Instagram and Facebook. And like, if it's digital online marketing, we do it, right? And it's soup to nuts. It's that total feedback loop of like, we created the landing page. We stuck traffic to the landing page. And then we made sure that like through content, contact with a customer that it actually turned into business. Well, here's what I can tell you is we drank our own Kool-Aid. I know you don't talk about it a lot, but you're generating $60,000 a month in your e-store. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, we have over 20 people working at eweb and we have zero salespeople. Okay. How many companies out there do that? So everything, everything, everything that we do or we're promoting that you should do, we drank that own Kool-Aid. We do it ourselves. Yeah. So, um, you know, I, I just, I think that that's really important to highlight that we're not just saying, do, do what I say. We actually do what we do or how we do ourselves and for our customers. That's a lot clearer. It's valuable enough to do for ourselves and valuable enough to, to sell to our customers.

So, um, yeah, make sure you get your 15 to 30 minute call. Go to ewebresults.com, uh, and you can click the website analysis link. If you send those referrals to us, by the way, we have a link in our menu structure. It's like, there's, so this is the thing, Chris, let's talk about this a little bit. Right. So I know it's our website and we're talking, well, yeah, we're going to work it out. We're going to work it out on air now. No pressure. Yeah. Well, so, so here's the thing, right? We're drinking our own Kool-Aid. Right. We have two hamburgers. Okay. On our website. Yeah. You want to kind of talk about, if you're hungry, hamburger menus is what he's talking about. So we have two hamburgers. Okay. So I feel like that's too many. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of feel like. We should shorten, shorten that up. I mean, I want to like a full pound. Like what? You want a double, you want a double pounder. I want a double pounder, right? But on the one on the right side, up in the corner, you can go down there to client referrals, put in your information, put in the client's information. We keep track of all that stuff. When they pay us, we pay you. And it's ongoing and it's reoccurring. You can build a revenue stream off it. So if you have any people that need some online marketing, please send it our way. And punch in the face to you guys who've actually submitted those referrals. Yes. They're kind of going through our process. So you should have checks coming soon. So that's pretty exciting. Please remember, we're filmed live here at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. If you would like transcript audio or video of the podcast, you can get it at our website, eWebResults.com. We want to thank you. You guys have made us the most popular internet marketing podcast. That is all of you, you, you, you, all over the world. Thank you

so much. Thank you. Thank you for leaving the reviews at eWebResults.com slash G plus. And until the next time, my name is Chris Verres. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.