There were a couple of responses to my call for your most burning questions that point to an important part of marketing and personal branding: you.
The questions were about name recognition, writing a bio, and how to write an About page for your website. Each requires talking about yourself in a way that engages your audience.
Unless you’ve gone through the process a few times, writing a bio or About page for your website can be stupidly intimidating. You’re not sure exactly what you should write. You want to impress people. You want to sound smart and talented and likeable, or smart and talented and edgy, or smart and talented and sophisticated.
Which might be exactly the wrong approach.
Recently I saw some catalogue copy written by an artist. The work in question was described as “distinctively unique.”
If that didn’t make you do a double take, go look up “distinctive” in a thesaurus.
You got it. “Distinctively distinctive.” Or if you prefer, “Uniquely unique.”
Not good.
Do you ever have those days? You know, the kind where you feel like your head will implode if you utter another word about business?
Okay, maybe it’s just me.
We’re not talking much about marketing today. There’s a moral to the story that follows, so if you only have time for that, skip to the end. But you’ll miss the entertainment, which mostly involves laughing at the misadventures of yours truly.
I read two blog posts today that got me thinking about dresses and shoes. That got me thinking about how easy it can be to find your unique selling proposition: do it by accident.
If you’re not familiar with the jargon, a unique selling proposition (USP) is what makes you different from other people in your field, and preferably what makes you more valuable than the other guy in the eyes of your ideal buyer.
I once attended a marketing workshop where the mere mention of finding your USP made everyone look like they were about to undergo root canal. It can be a tough thing to come up with, especially if you overthink it.
How do you tell a good story? Here’s a great creative writing tip: don’t tell me—show me.
If that sounds like vague instruction, here’s an example. We’ll revisit our friend James Dyson, the ĂĽber-cool vacuum cleaner guy. I talked about his story in my last post.
Now let’s put you on TV. You have your own series as a superstar trial lawyer. You’re giving your final argument to the jury, and you need to impress the hell out of them. Your client is Mr. Dyson, and you’re task is to convince a dozen of his peers he’s the real deal.
How would the TV lawyer do it?
