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15000-Word Ultimate Guide that will help you ideate, brand yourself, and craft great products.
Ultimate Guide that helps you generate high-signal ideas and create work that is unique.
> Crafting Your Niche
> Finding Your Unique Mechanism
> Standing Out
> Distribution
> Lifestyle & Mindset
Read time: 12 min
Hey there, Arjun here
Today's topic: You are the brand (MasterClass)
Goals/Outcome → Brand
Problems → Content
Solution → Product
Benefits → Marketing/Transformation
Your goals, and what you want to achieve will become your brand.
Your brand is where you are leading people to.
Your problems will become the content you write or talk about.
Your Solution will become the product. How did you solve your problems? Turn that into a product, into a book, a course, or a membership program.
The impact it had on your life (the benefits) will become the marketing and the transformation you offer the lead.
Everyone wants their slice of the pie (the Internet).
The ability to carve their own empire on the Internet is the first step for creators.
It’s no longer about finding your niche, it’s about crafting your own niche.
How?
When someone gives you advice on finding your niche, it goes something like this:
“Find your interests + Intersect them + Add your own thoughts, opinions and experiences” and that’s it
This also used to be my advice until I realised this one thing.
A lot of people think that your niche should be about yourself. Yes, it’s about your interests, your thoughts, your opinions and your experiences.
This is a mistake I'm seeing a lot lately. In content and in landing pages, people are increasingly talking about themselves instead of focusing on what their customer can get.
But that doesn’t mean it’s about you.
It still is about your audience. By adding your thoughts, interests, and experiences, you are essentially attracting people like yourself.
And by attracting similar people, you are attracting people who had similar problems.
Frame your content to make it seem like the temporary painkiller and your product as the permanent solution.
So how do you frame it in that way? That’s your niche.
Your niche is your unique solution to the problems you have faced.
So yes, the original advice of “Find your interests + Intersect them + Add your own thoughts, opinions and experiences” is still correct and I encourage you all to do it.
But frame it so that it still is about providing value to your audience and make your content around your own unique solution (a.k.a your niche).
We already touched a bit about finding your Unique Selling Point (USP) and Unique Mechanism (UM) but let’s dive deeper now.
Understand that your USP and UM is your unique solution. Which becomes your content. And later becomes your product.
It’s the foundation of which everything is built on.
Simply put, your USP is what your competitors don’t have.
It’s the thing that makes people come to you. It makes you stand out.
Think about it. If you are not different (in any way) in your field, why would people come to you? And why should they? They’ll just go to the industry leader instead.
But if you are able to stand out and create a name for yourself, you will be noticed.
There are a few things that could be considered your USP/UM.
This is what you talk about in your content, products and whatever you have in your brand.
Clearly define what your content pillars are. For you to be unique, you can either talk about things other don’t/can’t or have your own unique take on something.
The aim is to turn an idea into a novel perspective. You can learn more about idea generation (the creative way) here.
The Inversion
One other method is to figure out what you don’t want to talk about.
This is a pattern that we can notice in our lives as well. We generally know what we don’t want to do before we know what we want to do.
Your content adopts the same guiding principle.
Figure out what your anti-pillars and anti-vision are.
Most of the time, the outcome you help people to achieve is the same fundamentally. It falls into these 3 categories:
But they are framed differently.
For example, for me, it is to help people like you create great work (ideate, build a brand, and craft great products). But creating great work, helps you to be fulfilled and earn financial independence.
Notice that fulfillment and financial independence fall under the mind and wealth.
But my way of helping people achieve that is different to other people.
Find out what that is for you.
Once you have a rough idea of what your unique mechanism is, go all on it. But do remember that your USP/UM will develop over time as you figure out what resonates with people and by understanding yourself more.
That takes time.
Your brand is what sets you apart from others and helps you build credibility and trust with your target audience.
Choose a brand name, logo, and tagline that accurately reflects your skills and target market. Make sure your brand is consistent across all of your marketing materials.
Okay, I'll be honest.
Your brand name, logo, and tagline don't mean much in terms of credibility as long as you meet these requirements:
Here's what that actually matters:
This is undoubtedly the most important. The way you speak, and the way you write should evoke authority and credibility. In terms of the way you write, write in proper English. Poor English will reduce trust.
Developing your own voice in writing takes time. Months to years.
It’s a matter of having a consistent style that your audience are able to know who wrote it without seeing the name or your profile pic.
The best way I’ve found is to consistently write. Write. Write. Write.
The act of writing over a long period of time will help hone the skill + helps you develop your own style.
I am also trying to develop my own and am in the process of doing so.
1 - Shift from “How to” to “How I” whenever possible
There are times when How to sounds better as a post title. When you use “How to” posts, try to incorporate your personal experiences as well.
2 - Reading books of interest
Read books which your interest lies in. This will help you to make connections that you otherwise don’t. And writing about the intersection of multiple interests/expertise helps to create your own niche + your own style of writing.
Reading a wide array of authors also exposes you to different writing voices. Analyze their techniques, tone, and choice of words. Then form your own.
3 - Embrace Imperfection:
Perfectionism can stifle your voice. Allow yourself to make mistakes and experiment freely.
Visuals are very important in recognizing your brand on social media, your products, and anything else.
Here are 2 things to maintain a consistent visual style:
One more thing to note is not to change up your brand colors too often. But don't be afraid of rebranding. Even big companies do them from time to time. Only rebrand if you really think it will point your business in the right direction and put it in a better situation.
There’s a lot to cover about visual design. But that’s a topic for another time.
Whatever people used to buy 5 years ago, is now given to them for free. And people expect that from you.
You can blame the pioneers for that.
But, it’s a good thing. All you have to do is change your perspective.
Many people either think two things.
For the first one, if you have a few years of experience in your field, you definitely have the knowledge to share. In fact, you join a few like-minded communities and check what people are struggling with. If you can solve what they’re struggling with, you’re good to go.
For the second one, this will only apply to you if you stop learning. But, to grow, you shouldn’t and can’t stop learning. Giving away what you know will not make you fall behind.
Share value. In a unique way
Distribution = Traffic = Paid + Organic Traffic
In essence, that’s the distribution formula.
As Jack Butcher says, build distribution first. Then build whatever you want.
But how do you actually build that distribution?
By building a brand.
Building a brand gets you access to a lot of organic traffic. It aids paid traffic but organic traffic will be the priority.
You might have heard people telling you organic traffic is better than paid. Yes. Organic will 100% be better in the long run.
But, when you start out, you can also run paid ads to speed up the initial stages to bring more eyes onto your content.
In the past, big platforms like Facebook and Instagram brought users in before monetizing them.
And that allowed them to make billions. Users first.
Now, you need users too. And the way you get those users is by sharing valuable content.
And by building a brand around yourself, and your interests.
This allows you to stand out.
But you also have to grow on those platforms. Sharing valuable content will help convert those profile visits into followers but doesn’t actually help to bring in that profile visits.
(Initially) To bring in those profile visits, you can use paid ads or by engaging with other accounts.
I personally chose paid traffic. Because it’s faster and didn’t require my time. But this was also because I was already making money from my products.
In essence, you need 4 things:
→ A way to bring people to your profile
→ A way to convert those profile visits into followers
→ A way to convert followers into fans
→ A way to convert fans into customers
I also wanted to briefly cover this aspect of a one-person business. The reason why spirituality, philosophy, and mindset are so important is that your business is reliant on you.
You need to think long-term. Think 10 years. Not 1 month. Not 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year.
Just because it didn’t work at the start, it won’t work out in the future.
You have to be consistent even through the lows.
Much like our lives, personal brand growth also rolls out in phases.
You can't skip these phases. You can only reduce or increase the time spent in each one.
The choice is in your hands.
What you are experiencing now is one phase. And each phase will pass on. Whether you like it or not.
The next phase you’ll face (it rhymes) might be better or worse. But, that’s the beauty of being in a business.
It’s not monotonous, like how a job can be.
And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this edition of The DZ Letter.
Send me a quick message - I reply to every email!
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Have a wonderful rest of your day and see you in the next letter, my friends.
Cheers,
Arjun, DisplayZen
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