How To Craft Your Uniqueness Statement

The average person has an attention span of merely 15 seconds. You don’t have a lot of time when someone asks you the inevitable question, “What do you do?” In the personal branding process, it’s imperative to have a Uniqueness Statement that establishes rapport and sets you apart from the rest. 

A Uniqueness Statement (often referred to as a Unique Selling Proposition or USP) is an opportunity to make an emotional connection with your target market by touching on the qualities and values that you stand for, and by highlighting the benefits that a potential client will receive by working with you. There’s nothing worse than being caught off guard when someone asks you about your work, or feeling unprepared or flustered, and not taking advantage of an opportunity to make a powerful connection.

A Uniqueness Statement will:

• Increase your confidence when speaking about what you do
• Help you present yourself with polish and professionalism
• Build credibility
• Differentiate you from the rest of the pack
• Help build rapport with your prospect
• Create excitement about your products and services

So how do you build a powerful Uniqueness Statement? Here are four steps to get you started:

1. Identify Your Target Market – Who are your clients? Who do you most want to be working with?
2. Communicate Your Area of Specialization – What is your “Zone of Genius?” What do you do better than anyone else?
3. Highlight the Benefits of Working With You – How have your clients benefited from working with you? What have they achieved as a result of your working together?
4. Motivate Them Into Action – After meeting you, how could they learn more about you or even work with you?

For example, you’re not just a fashion stylist. You help female executives over 40 build chic, well-curated wardrobes and present themselves with flair and confidence. Your last three clients purged half of their closets and now can’t wait to get dressed each morning. One of them received a promotion at work and another met her husband-to-be. Anyone can sign up on your website for your weekly tips on “How To Build A Wardrobe That You Love.”

Or, you’re not just an herbal acupuncturist, you help mothers between the ages of 35-55 who have struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome regain their energy and vitality through custom immune-building programs and treatments. Within six months, most of your clients have renewed energy and are sleeping better than they have in years. A recent client just climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro after battling chronic fatigue for more than 10 years. For more information and to get your article “Ten Tips For Increasing Your Energy TODAY,” potential clients can sign up at your website.

You get the idea. Anyone can be a doctor, lawyer, event planner, financial planner, personal trainer or freelance writer. But only you can be YOU – in all of your unique glory.

Much of the work in crafting your Uniqueness Statement is in practicing your message and perfecting its delivery. Remember, this is a living, breathing statement about who you are, so it’s going to be a work in progress and will evolve over time.

I know you’re wondering, so here’s mine – as of today.

I teach female entrepreneurs and small business owners how to build powerful, confident personal brands that attract more clients and position themselves as experts . Through my proprietary system I help them develop and implement an effective marketing strategy that will build their buzz online and off. Results often come quickly; recently two different clients tripled their business in less than a year by gaining clarity around their personal brand and implementing a solid marketing plan. If you are interested in learning more (as I hand them my business card which has this exact information on the back of the card), you can sign up for my free e-book “101 Ways To Build A Powerful Personal Brand” at www.shebrand.com. You will also get a subscription to my bi-weekly newsletter, “SheBuzz” that is filled with marketing and client attraction tips and ideas. Clients are waiting. Are you ready?

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2010

Tweet This Post

Why Should I Choose You?

When a potential client asks, “why you?,” do you have an answer? Are you prepared to communicate your unique message about what makes you special and different from everyone else in your industry? Why should someone work with you?

A brand is either positive, negative or neutral. If you don’t decide what your own personal brand is, others will do it for you. You exude your personal brand in everything you do – from the clothes you wear, the tone of your voice, the manner in which you treat people to how you communicate your brand message. Your personal brand is the great separator – it distinguishes you from everyone else and it’s what makes you stand apart from the rest.

In the personal branding process, it’s imperative to have a uniqueness statement that sets you apart. The average person has an attention span of merely 15 seconds, so that’s about the amount of time you have to effectively communicate your message. A Uniqueness Statement (often referred to as a Unique Selling Proposition or USP) is an opportunity to make an emotional connection with your target market by touching on the qualities and values that you stand for, and by highlighting the benefits that a potential client will receive by working with you.

A Uniqueness Statement is not just about winning people over or making a sale. It’s about:

• Managing brand credibility
• Building rapport
• Creating understanding
• Separating yourself from the crowd
• Communicating your values
• Touching on the features and benefits of working with you

You want to be the kind of person and have the kind of business that people want more of. Be interesting. Be dynamic. But don’t be boring. In today’s marketplace, if you aren’t sensational, you’re pretty much average, or worse, invisible.

So how can you be sensational and answer the question, “Why you?” Be interested in other people. Be thoughtful. And create a Uniqueness Statement that illuminates your brand. Determine what emotional appeals and benefits your product or service delivers to your target market and be able to communicate them easily and effectively. Practice, practice, practice. As Michael Jordan once said, “I’m not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat. “

Much of the work is in practicing your message and perfecting its delivery. Become spectacular at delivering your message, exhaust people with your consistency and you will build powerful brand equity and an emotional connection to your target market.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2010

Tweet This Post

4 Tips To Build Your Brand

Here are four things you can start doing today to build your personal brand:

1. Work on Your Appearance - First impressions  count. People make up their mind about you in less than one second, so you better make sure that you look the part. The way that you dress supports or detracts from your personal brand.

2. Be Interesting and Interested – Are you well-rounded and dynamic? Do you really care about the people you are speaking with? Be thoughtful and show interest in what others are saying.

3. Build Your 15 Second Commercial – The average person has an attention span of 15 seconds. You better make sure that you can communicate your brand message in a unique and compelling way in this amount of time. And remember, it’s not about making a sale, it’s about building rapport.

4. Spend Time With People Who Are Smarter and More Successful Than You – They say that you become the five people you hang out with the most. You automatically enhance your brand by the caliber of people you spend time with.

The truly great are excellent at what they do because they are willing to put in the effort and go the extra mile. If you don’t spend the time crafting your own personal brand, others will do it for you.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

How to Build Your “Know, Like & Trust” Factor

Marketing is moving online at a rapid pace and there has never been a better time to bypass the traditional mediums of advertising and media to reach your target market directly. One of the best ways to build your “Know, Like & Trust” factor online is through remarkable content. Consumers are heading to the Web in droves to research whatever interests them at the moment. Ultimately, they want valuable content that will improve their lives.

Google provides three-quarters of a billion search results a day – the perfect platform for useful content. The Web allows smart marketers to deliver compelling content that people actually want to consume.

In order to attract more clients, establish credibility and build trust, you must create remarkable content and publish it online for three important reasons. First, remarkable content builds your personal brand and positions you as an authority in your industry. Second, it is easily and quickly spread on social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Digg. And third, it attracts links from other web sites pointing to your web site. In other words, you want your content to prompt other content producers on the Web to “remark” about you (and your products and services) and link back to your site. These links send you qualified visitors, and they signal to Google that your website is worthy of ranking.

Keep it simple and create content that you can produce rapidly and that people can effectively spread online. Here are a few examples: 

• Blog posts – Personal and professional musings about your industry and your area of expertise.
• Articles – 500-700 word articles that can be published on article submission sites such as ezinearticles.com and ideamarketers.com.
• White papers – Five to seven page papers that educate your marketplace on an industry trend or challenge.
• Videos – Short (under two minutes is best) videos about a topic within your area of expertise.
• Webinars – Live online PowerPoint presentations.
• Podcasts – Ten to twenty minute audio programs or interviews with industry experts similar to radio shows.
• Webcasts – Live video shows viewed online.
• Special Giveaway – Provide 10-100 pages of special content on a hot topic in your industry. This can be set up as a pdf download right on your website. Tom Peters and David Meerman Scott are well-known marketers who give away generous amounts of valuable content for free.

The interesting thing about remarkable content online is that the more you give, the more you get. The more valuable and noteworthy the content, the more links to your site and the better it will rank in the search engines. You want to move away from the mindset of hiding all of that remarkable information behind closed doors and instead, use it to attract more clients by building the “Know, Like & Trust” factor. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – you can repurpose the same content for your blog, newsletter, article submission, speaking engagements, webinars and workshops.

In our rapidly changing business environment, the entrepreneurs who are going to thrive are the ones who engage their clients and build long-term relationships. Offering remarkable content is an opportunity for your target audience to get to know you better and develop trust in you and your brand. It also happens to be one of the most cost-effective ways to market yourself in the online marketplace.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

Do You Have An Online Action Plan?

We are living a revolution in the way people communicate. Practically everyone turns to the Web first when researching products, services and people to do business with. If you want to build your brand and your business, then a great Web presence is critical.

I am asked on a regular basis, by clients, friends and strangers alike, “How do I stand out and where do I begin?” Once you’ve got the basics covered – your brand attributes, collateral materials, tagline and focus, what’s the best use of your time and money? When you are clear about who you are, what you stand for and how you can help your target market, you are ready to start building a powerful personal brand presence online.

There are six main areas where you actually have some control over how people will perceive your brand through what you put out on the Web – both visually and content-wise.

1. Website – Are you still relying on a static, brochure-style website? If so, you will eventually be invisible online (if you aren’t already!) Statistics show that when someone visits these types of sites, they click around a couple of pages, never to return. Nothing on these sites compel them to stay. If you want your brand to compete, you’ve got to create something interesting and interactive; remarkable and consistently fresh content, resources, links, blog (#2), freebies (#3) and a way for people to sign up to join your list.
2. Blog – Starting a blog is a great way to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry and build your personal brand presence online. Including a blog on your website -  with lots of new, remarkable content – will turn a brochure-style site into a living, evolving destination for your target market and a magnet for the search engines.
3. Pink Spoon – Also known as your “Free Taste” or “Giveaway,” this is a content-rich item that you give away to your target market just for signing up on your website. It can be in the form of an e-book, white paper, video, webinar, tip sheet or anything else you feel would be relevant and helpful to your target market. And yes, you are giving valuable information away for FREE! People do business with people they know, like and trust. They also do business with those they feel are the authorities in their industries. In order to build your personal brand and position yourself as the expert in your field, you must build a relationship with your target market and be willing to educate, inform and share.
4. Newsletter – Also known as an “ezine”, this is a great opportunity to stay in touch with your target market on a regular basis. It can consist of a feature article, list of resources, tips, images, links or anything else that would benefit your readers. Once people sign up for your Pink Spoon, they should be automatically subscribed to your newsletter.
5. Article Submission – Have you Googled yourself recently? One of the best ways to take some control of what comes up about you is to send your own articles to submission sites such as ezinearticles.com and ideamarketers.com. These sites request a personal bio and link back to your own site, and the search engines often pick up on this content. Articles that you submit to these sites will attract links from other sites pointing to your website. Also, good content is easily and quickly spread on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Digg.
6. Social Media – Social networking, news and discovery sites provide a great way to reach and engage potential clients. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious and Stumble-Upon all have different uses, but most share the ability to connect to others and interact and share information. The keys to effective social media are to tell your story in an authentic manner, participate by following up and commenting on others’ posts, offer valuable information on a regular basis, be courteous and respectful, and don’t overwhelm your community with sales pitches and self-promotion.  And this goes without saying: don’t ever post anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.

Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can repurpose your content for multiple use – on your blog, in your newsletter and for article submission. You can also link your blog to Twitter and Facebook so that every time you post, your followers will be alerted to new material. Select one or two of the areas above to focus on and go from there. There are millions of resources out there to get you started. All you have to do is Google them.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

Your Personal Brand Questionnaire

In order to communicate, express and exude a powerful, confident personal brand, you must be able to answer the following questions (they might seem a little repetitive, but humor me here):

1. How do I make people feel?

2. What three words best describe me?

3. What words would others use to describe me?

4. How do I want to help people?

5. How does someone benefit from working with me?

6. How would I describe my unique gift in one or two sentences?

7. What do I do differently from others in my profession?

8. What are the results someone will achieve from working with me?

9. How do I “WOW”  friends, family, clients, and even complete strangers?

10. What imprint or legacy do I want to leave on this planet?

When you have answered these questions and feel excited about your responses, then, and only then, are you ready to put a strategic marketing plan into action.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

What Are People Saying About You?

In personal branding, as in life, the little things matter. Every move that you make and everything that you put your name on reflects your brand.  Brand and reputation are closely linked. Companies are constantly evaluated by the way they are perceived by the competition, the media and their customers. You are constantly being judged based on perceptions as well.

A brand is all about perception, and as frustrating as it might be, you don’t always have control over how potential clients or the public sees you. That said, with the right focus, strategy and consistency, you can certainly influence how your personal brand is perceived. Pay attention to what you are putting out there – everything from how you dress, how you communicate, what activities you participate in and who you choose to work and socialize with, contribute to your overall brand image.

Cultivating your brand means investing time, effort and eventually money into determining what you want to communicate and how you want to communicate it.  Once you have clarity, content and a plan of action, you will be well-prepared to implement it.

Here are four important areas to consider when determining your personal brand strategy and how you might influence perception:

1. Brand Attributes – These are the adjectives or “descriptors” that best describe you. What are the qualities that you want to exude and be best known for? When you make decisions about your brand collateral, website, promotional materials etc., ask yourself if they truly represent the attributes that you have chosen.
2. Brand Identity – Visual continuity is a critical aspect of brand building. It’s important that you create a “face” for your business and that this is replicated in all facets of your image. This not only includes your logo, letterhead, packaging, website, advertising and promotional materials, but also your personal wardrobe and presentation style.
3. Brand Definition – Make sure you clearly define your brand in a way that you want others to perceive you. In one sentence (often referred to as your tagline), you should be able to eloquently communicate what you do and how you can help the other person. For example, my tagline is “I help female entrepreneurs build powerful, confident personal brands with style.”
4. Brand Message – In Politics, one of the Golden Rules is to stay “on message”. This means that everyone on the team understands and is able to clearly communicate the same brand message. A thread of continuity should run through all aspects of your business – from employees to your website and collateral materials. Whether I speak to an employee, peruse your website or receive a letter from you in the mail; I should walk away with a sense of your brand attributes and an understanding of your message.

A strong brand contains an element (or elements) that its target market emotionally connects to and therefore stands out in that consumer’s mind. In order to be memorable – and to influence the emotional connection that a potential client has with your brand, you must be consistent with your brand attributes, identity, definition and messaging in everything that you do.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

The Twitter Do’s: Build A Powerful Personal Brand One Tweet At A Time

 

There are three important things to remember when engaging other people on Twitter. First, they want to be a part of the group and feel popular. Second, they want to have a good time and be entertained, and third, they want to be acknowledged and recognized. If your “tweets” meet the needs of your target audience, then you’ll be well on your way to growing your followers naturally and building a powerful personal brand online.

Keeping this in mind, here are six “do’s” for best using Twitter to build your brand:

Twitter Do #1: Be Interesting – It’s fine to tweet about what you’re doing or what you had for lunch, as long as you do it in a way that’s entertaining to your followers. Twitter is considered micro-blogging (you have 140 characters to get your point across), so if all you do is give a play-by-play of your daily mundane activities, you will lose followers fast. However, if you find a way to incorporate a little humor, a little of the unusual or something off-the-beaten-track, you’re much more likely to engage and amuse. If someone reading your tweet thinks, “wow, I know what she means!” or gets a good chuckle out of it, you will never be lacking followerers. Not every post has to be funny or clever, but when you are sharing your insights and happenings, try to make it interesting.

Twitter Do #2: Be Informative – Not every tweet has to answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” As a participant in the Twitter community, you have daily opportunities to give something back. Post links to helpful articles or tweet bits of advice and information. Including educational tweets as a part of your repertoire is an effective way to add value and variety. You’ll know if you’re on the mark because you’ll get positive feedback in the forms of replies, re-tweets (RT) and direct messages.

Twitter Do #3: Be Helpful and Interactive – If someone posts a question, reply with a thoughtful response. Send out links to articles that would be helpful to your target audience. And re-tweet (RT) relevant information, tips, ideas and insights. Re-tweet others when they post tweets you like and want to share with your audience. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you, so re-tweet generously. Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue, so the more you engage and participate, the more successful your relationships will be.

Twitter Do #4: Promote With Care – It’s fine, and even advisable, to promote your own work, just as long as it’s not all you’re doing. Take the time to introduce links to your blog posts in a thoughtful and interesting way. Mention something that you’re working on and even ask for a bit of advice.

Twitter Do #5: Variety is the Spice of Life – If all you do is promote yourself, people will tire of you and you will quickly lose followers. If all you do is update your mundane daily happenings, people will get bored and disinterested. No one is that important or that interesting. Balance and variety are key. Tweet with a healthy mix of personal, business, informative, quirky (or funny, if you have the gift) and helpful.

Twitter Do #6: Be On Brand – Twitter allows you to build relationships relatively quickly. Use this opportunity to share information about your area of expertise – give away valuable tips and ideas that your target audience might be able to use immediately. Constantly remind yourself of your brand attributes and express them with your tweets. For example, if one of your brand attributes is to inspire, then perhaps you will want to tweet an inspiring quote every day. Or you can send out links to inspiring stories. If you Twitter often enough in a targeted way, your followers will start associating you with a particular attribute or area of expertise.

The winning strategies for building your brand on Twitter are to consistently provide value and engage your target audience in an interesting way. If you are a small business owner and you’re not tweeting, you’re missing out on a worldwide virtual networking event that’s at your fingertips 24/7. It gives you the opportunity to build your brand, stay informed, drive traffic to your website and attract new clients 140 characters at a time.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

Discover Your Marketing Mix

 

While every personal brand is unique, they all have one important thing in common: they communicate confidently with their target market. To position yourself as a thought leader with a strong brand, you must be clear about who you are and who you are not, and consistently communicate your message to those who need it most.

Richard Branson is someone with a clear, consistent brand message. He is not your typical stuffy CEO in a blue suit, white shirt and patent leather shoes. Instead, he’s a risk-taker who sold airline tickets for Virgin before he even had a plane and signed the British punk-rock group the Sex Pistols on his record label when no one else would consider them. Outside of the professional arena, Branson stayed true to his daredevil ways and circumnavigated the world in a hot air balloon.

Once you know yourself, your unique offer of value and have a clear understanding of the needs of your target market, you can identify the right combination of communications tools to increase your visibility and credibility – making you the go-to person for your area of expertise. Your marketing plan needs to include a lot more than traditional tools such as your business card and brochure website. You need to consistently communicate your thought leadership by expressing your point of view and demonstrating your expertise through a customized marketing mix.

Everyone’s marketing mix will be different depending on their goals and the needs of their target market. Here are just a few areas to consider:

1 Speaking Engagements – Public speaking is an excellent way to communicate your brand message to multiple members of your target market. The words you choose, your facial expressions, the tone of your voice and the way you dress all give you the opportunity to communicate your passion, expertise and personality.

2 Article Marketing – In this new world of marketing we can now harness the power of the Internet to position ourselves as authorities in our industries. Writing articles and white papers that express your opinions and expertise allows you to get your brand out there in a big way. Getting published on multiple article submission sites (such as ezinearticles.com and e-how.com) will improve your search engine rankings and you’ll be more in control of the content that is actually getting picked up. Regularly submitting content to the right article sites will consistently drive members of your target audience to your website or blog.

3 Develop a Newsletter (or Ezine) – One of the most important factors in creating a powerful personal brand is engaging your target market and offering information of value. One of the best ways to do this is to write a newsletter. Pick the main theme for your brand (mine is “building a powerful personal brand with style”) and then create an “opt-in” box on your website that expresses your brand message through your newsletter so that people can sign up for it. You will need to use a contact management program such as Constant Contact or 1 Shopping Cart to manage your database and broadcasts. Ask your clients on a regular basis what they are struggling with or what are their greatest challenges; you will never be at a loss for content ideas.

4 Join the Blogosphere – Blogs (web logs) are an excellent platform from which you can promote your personal brand online and build both visibility and credibility. By creating an informative, engaging blog that is related to your area of expertise, you position yourself as a thought leader and stand out in a crowded marketplace – especially when used with these other components of a powerful marketing mix. You can also encourage an interactive community by inviting comments from visitors – all strong brands solicit feedback and conversations from their target market. Blogging will also improve your search engine rankings, as the engines love new content. In other words, the more frequently you post, the higher your search engine rankings will be.

5 Get Social – Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ryze or a combination of many social media sites, this is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to get out there in a big way. The point is not to overtly sell your product or service, but to connect, engage and converse. Offer tips, ideas and links that you think people will find helpful. Social media is not the forum for self-promotion; it’s about sharing information – be it funny, enlightening, newsworthy, helpful or just plain random. You can stay on-brand and still engage and be of value to people.

To establish yourself as a thought leader and build a solid brand reputation, you must be clear and consistent. You can’t be all things to all people. It’s imperative to build you personal brand around who you are, what you stand for and what makes you relevant to those people who need to know about you most. Creating a customized marketing mix will allow you to communicate your brand message consistently, establish yourself as an authority in your industry and ultimately attract more clients – online and off.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

Content is King (or Queen)

As you learned in a previous SheBuzz feature article, the rules of marketing have changed. Marketing is moving online at a rapid pace and there has never been a better time for us to reach our target market directly. Google provides three-quarters of a billion search results a day – the perfect platform for useful content. The Web allows smart marketers to deliver compelling content that people actually want to consume.

What potential clients really want is valuable content that will improve their lives. We now have the opportunity to create useful content that not only positions us as authorities in our industries, but is one of the greatest client attraction secrets.

Content marketing is about getting clients to invite you to interact with them. It’s about engaging in a conversation, building trust and providing something of value. The secret to writing great content is to put yourself in your potential client’s shoes and look for opportunities to help make her life a lot easier. It’s understanding exactly what your target audience needs to know and delivering it to them time and time again.

In our rapidly changing business environment, the entrepreneurs who are going to thrive are the ones who engage their clients and build long-term relationships. Here are five reasons why you want to start writing now:

1. Helpful articles and information position you as an expert – Have you “Googled” yourself lately? Do you know how you are perceived online? One way to assure that you are listed high in the search rankings is to send articles to article submission sites on a regular basis. The search engines love new content. A few of the top submission sites include: ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, article-host.com, ehow.com and ideamarketers.com. You can get your name out there fast and improve your ranking in a matter of weeks.

2. Great content is a huge client attraction tool – Delivering valuable information and resources to your potential clients builds the “know, like and trust” factor. Create an engaging conversation and you will become a client magnet.

3. Your content can be developed into bigger projects down the line – Whether you decide to write a book, create a proprietary system or develop a workshop, if you have already been writing for while and have an archive of information and research to draw from, it might be much easier to create your bigger projects when you are ready.

4. Don’t reinvent the wheel – This is probably my favorite part of writing articles. I repurpose the same content for my newsletter, blog, article submission, speaking engagements and workshops. In other words, do the work once and then use it for multiple purposes. Sure, you may have to tweak depending on the reader/viewer, but you aren’t starting from scratch.

5. Writing gives your brand personality – It’s an opportunity to exercise your authentic voice. It’s also a great way for your target audience to get to know you better and develop trust in you and your brand.

I hear grumblings from busy female entrepreneurs that they just don’t have the time to write. If you want to build your buzz, position yourself as an expert and attract more clients, writing articles is one of the most cost-effective ways to market yourself in the online marketplace.

Put aside a window of time each week to write – schedule it in your calendar as you would any other important meeting and commit to it. I have a block of time every Monday afternoon that is scheduled exclusively for writing. I actually leave my office and have a quiet place at home where I can write undisturbed for a couple of hours. It’s the only way it gets done.

For most people, writing is a muscle. The more you use it, the easier and better it gets.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

Tweet This Post

Next Page »