The Secret That Increased My Brand Growth
How to build a sustainable online presence
I didn't think it was possible.
Growing a brand this quickly, I didn't think it was possible.
I've been writing on Medium for about 2 months and I have close to 10 followers.
It's been an interesting journey so far but it wasn't always like this.
When I first started writing on Medium, I used to write extremely valuable articles.
I mean I wrote articles I thought would be worthy of being punished in the New York Times. I used to feel so happy each time I hit the publish button expecting that my audience would feel the same joy I felt.
It didn’t work out. My first article in under two days had only two views. I honestly didn’t even know what I did wrong, I followed the advice I heard and wrote something valuable but then it seemed as though my audience didn’t care about the value I was providing.
Build a connection
They didn’t care about the value I was providing. I wrote subsequent articles that performed the same way and I began asking questions.
I wanted to build my brand by dishing out valuable content.
It turns out that when building an online brand, people care more about the person behind the brand than just the value you provide.
I made the mistake of thinking that just because it was really valuable, I’d begin to grow. It didn’t work that way.
To my audience, I was a faceless person who was just dishing out valuable stuff.
The interesting thing is people don’t even care about your profile picture when they want to follow your brand.
They care more about the personal stuff you post than just your picture.
Personal content
I remember one day, I stumbled upon Eve Arnold’s article on Medium. I read her article to the end and I didn’t even realize I was done reading.
She took her reader on a personal journey into her life and then used her story to teach a lesson.
This seemed all strange to me and I wondered who would like such writing. When I checked the number of her followers, it turned out a lot of people did.
Your branding
One thing to note about building a personal brand is that it’s about you, the person. We make the mistake of thinking your brand is about your product but your brand is first about yourself before your product.
People will follow you because of your personality and buy your product as a means of showing that they trust the person behind the product.
It took me a while but I began adding personal stories to my content and it increased my growth by a large distance.
Conclusion
When building your online brand, your audience wants to get to know the person behind the brand before they even get to know about your product. This will increase your chances of building your brand quickly.
