1. Do great work. 2. Share it publicly. 3. Cold email people 2 steps ahead of you. 4. Talk about your work and trade ideas. 5. Host events and meet in-person. 6. Become friends. 7. Rise together.
Authenticity > Authority
Probably an unpopular opinion but I think in the day and age of social media/personal branding...too often founders focus on being celebrated & not enough time being heads down & scaling some revolutionary shit. We're hopping on panels, doing interviews, etc before real success.
Personal brands solely built on depreciating assets (i.e. looks, current popular trend) are destined to fail. Gotta diversify, become versatile and be three steps ahead. Them checks won’t always be there.
I get asked about personal branding a lot, and I warn people...if you really want to build a personal brand then you should probably be comfortable working for yourself. The majority of companies will not be supportive and can make finding a job difficult/could cause job loss.
A lot of entrepreneurs ask me about building personal brands and there’s two things I tell them. 1. Make sure there’s return on investment that benefits your company. 2. Don’t lose the faith of your employees while building a personal brand. They must know you’re locked in.
Personal branding today is the art of finesse > reality
the most successful people I know don't have personal brands.
Here's my 1 hour a week hack to building a personal brand inside any Big Company™️. Now that I'm never-gonna-be-employed-again, you can steal this.
A thread on building a personal brand that you turn into a real business . . . a.k.a. grab your tea 🍵.
The world is so big that calling yourself an expert in anything would almost always turn out to be false (if someone were to actually do a proper scan for experts in your area). Stay humble. Keep learning.
Analogies help your ideas pop off the page. One way to write an analogy: • Make a comparison (red) • Explain the comparison (green) • Delight readers with the significance of it (blue) pic.twitter.com/FwqsPLTaMi
How to grow a podcast: • Be YouTube-first; do video interviews • Split eps into 8-25min YouTube clips with SEO’d titles • Get guests that are searched for on YouTube • Swap eps into other shows' feeds • People come for content and stay for rapport, authenticity, charisma
How to grow a YouTube channel: • Pitch the video's value in the first five seconds • Ask a question you don't resolve until the last five seconds • With YT algo, 1 amazing video > 10 good videos • Quick cuts don't give people time to ask if they're bored —Mr. Beast
One way to measure the value of an audience: Audience value = Size * Affinity * Goal fit • Affinity: How much attention they pay to you • Goal fit: Their ability to act on your goals, such as: • Buy from you • Vote for you • Share your ideas • Take social action
A question to ask when building an audience: Are they following you for your mind or your labor? • Labor: You're COLLECTING good content for them • Mind: You're CRAFTING original content Mind-followers are extra loyal. They're with you no matter what you do in the future.
One audience building approach: • YouTube/Twitter for viral distribution • Blogging for SEO distribution • Newsletter for maintaining relationships • Podcasts for deepening them Twitter gets the word out. Newsletters keep people around. Podcasts help them better know you.
How do you quickly grow an online audience? Here's how I've helped folks do it. A mix of writing, marketing, and startups:
How to improve newsletter growth: 1. Offer something for free to capture emails 2. Use newsletter plug swaps to cross-promote yours with others 3. Link from your Twitter bio and at the end of tweets Once you're big: 4. Referral incentives 5. Paid ads → CPM sponsorship funnel
Newsletter tip: Instead of just giving newsletter subscribers the option to fully unsubscribe, you can also offer to reduce email frequency. For example, let them click a link to go from weekly to monthly. Now they might stick around.
How to grow a personal blog: • Publish when you have something to say. Novelty > volume. Be known for signal over noise. • Distribute posts via your newsletter and your friends'. • Post to Hacker News and reddit. • Learn the basics of SEO.
How to grow a Twitter audience: Maximize retweets. Retweets put you in front of non-followers. A percentage of them then follow. What people retweet: • Ideological alignment • Referenceable advice • Clever humor • Elegant articulations of how the world works
A simple Twitter growth tactic: Be quick to respond to viral tweets with insightful and actionable advice of your own—add a complementary perspective. People will see your thoughtful responses and follow you too. Happens all the time.
People often use Twitter bios to describe their identity. But, most people don't care if you’re a "2x founder" or "Ex-Google." To increase follow rate, you can rewrite your bio to explain WHY ppl should follow: which topics you cover and from what perspective. My bio: @julian
The different forms of capital: - Social capital (reputation) - Attention (IG/Twitter followers) - Trust (do I trust this person?) - Financial ($/BTC) - Intellectual (smarts) - Spiritual (🙏) - Material How you accumulate and spend capital is an art What else am I missing?
How to make impact on the internet 1. Pick a worthwhile topic. Nicher the better 2. Write clearly. More clear than anyone else 3. Write regularly. Every single day 4. Collaborate with other writers like you. Help them 5. Open your Twitter DMs. Notice it's gold Become a teacher.