WP alone, 56 Million blog posts are published each month … 56 MILLION
A 2011 Nielsen study showed that 27 Million pieces of content are shared EVERY day
To find that content – Let’s talk about a little search engine that could – maybe you’ve heard of it – Google?
Who knows how many queries do they process per month? 100 BILLION or an average of 40K per second
How many of those are “never been asked before?” 15%
Discouraged yet? Don’t be – because while those numbers are huge, they don’t matter for you to become Known.
I’ll prove it to you … I’ve been “known” in 2 different industries – the Funeral Industry and the Music Industry. Now, I’m working on becoming known in the digital space & social media.
Tell MY story
Being KNOWN is awesome, because it can be done on ANY level ANYWHERE and ANYONE can do it.
Being Famous is only done on one stage: Global, maybe 2 – National and International
EXAMPLES – Play KNOWN or Famous with slides
Being KNOWN, you get to choose if you are known on the community, niche, local, regional, national or international level and in the social sphere – which is your primary space?
Being Known does not require anyone outside of your niche, industry or community to know who you are. It has NOTHING to do with how many people you have as followers or friends or even engagement on your social channels. It about how you are set up to be known as the expert in whatever you want to be an expert in. It is the manifestation of your WHY.
Being famous means everyone out there at least knows your name or recognizes your face. It means you have over a gazillion followers and “friends” maybe even some engagement – and you probably will get paid a crap-ton of money to do small things. Many are famous and yet they don’t ever leverage that platform to do good and they don’t ever manifest their WHY.
INSERT EXAMPLES (SM story introductions)
I’m going to outline the process for you, in my words. There are 4 things you must do to become Known. Define your WHY, Be Active, Be Helpful, Be Consistent. These are my golden rules for success – in anything. They are universal law.
My friend Pamela is a life coach and is awesome. She, like me, is making a name for herself, becoming
KNOWN, in a crowded field. She was Known in other industries, she was the point person on a successful IPO at the age of 24, she was known as the “wife of” (like I was known as “the
daughter/granddaughter of”), and now she’s truly on her way to becoming KNOWN for HERSELF.
She, like some, or most of, you guys, had little to no budget for PR, marketing or even production of her
content. And she was entering into an industry that is already overcrowded, super competitive of many
other purveyors of love and light. So let’s see how she’s putting the formula for known into practice.
What was it? Define Your WHY, Be Active, Be Helpful, Be Consistent.
OK so what did she have? She had a lot of competition. She had little or no budget. She had a big idea.
Basically, she had a dollar and a dream. By the way, she wrote a book in 2 weeks, launched her website
while President of a major corporation and her book was #1 HOT New Release in Mental & Spiritual
Healing on Amazon. Would you like to know how she did it? Because you can do it too – I’m giving you
the formula, I hope you are taking notes!
Let’s go back to the formula:
Define Your WHY: Pamela’s WHY is all about living authentically, trusting and respecting ourselves and trusting and respecting life. Knowing that inner peace is the key to our greatest achievement and what our world so desperately needs. When
you meet her, you can NOT help but have a brighter day. I’m not kidding – I love her! She set her WHY:
helping bring peace and empowerment, one person at a time.
I want to tell you a little bit about my friend Jeanne Marrin. How many of you have social profiles that are not utilized? You are still succeeding, though, correct? Success means different things to different people. Jeanne is a very successful HR person in her field. More importantly, she’s just like me and many of you.
Jeanne founded a company, HR on the Move (HRoM) in 2006 after 20 years of working as a HR generalist. She knows how to assess, organize and optimize any company from the leadership down – she can help your company become the best it can be putting the right people in the right positions; strengthening your weaknesses and making sure your company is compliant with the myriad of HR laws – especially in New York; because that’s where she is headquartered.
Notice that I said Jeanne has 20 years of HR generalist experience – NOT business owner experience. This is important – remember this – she didn’t have business owner experience.
Jeanne has a personal FB page, a LinkedIn Personal Profile and a LinkedIn Company profile. None are particularly consistent in posting or in creating content, etc. So does she follow the plan to become KNOWN in her industry? Yes. She may not be consistent online – she is consistent. So let’s review her path:
What is the Path to Known? Remember? Define WHY, Be Active, Be Helpful, Be Consistent – right.
Jeanne started a business and had no real business owner experience. Should she have done this?
I say Hell Yes. You don’t need experience to become Known. You don’t need experience to start a business – you do have to have a plan of some sort. Some of the best business owners (or I should say most successful business owners) never had experience in the businesses they started.
Jeff Bezos: No knowledge of warehousing and delivering products online; he just believed he could do it better.
Darren Hardy: No real estate experience: Owned 2 Real Estate Franchises, No publication/Editing experience: Founded and published SUCCESS Magazine for 7 years
Let’s get back to Jeanne:
Jeanne’s WHY – She’s a problem solver – a lover of puzzles. She can take any organization, small, medium or large, find your inefficiencies and mix it all up and provide you with a focus and empowerment to grow your team or your business. She’s done this in every position at various levels she’s ever had – she solves puzzles and problems.
Be Active: She’s not active on social – though she has profiles. No problem – mine aren’t the best either and I teach this stuff! She IS active in the HR realm. Jeanne currently serves as the Director of the New York State Society for Human Resource Management (NYS SHRM). She is a recent Past President of the Human Resources Association of New York (HR/NY), the largest human resources chapter in the world and the New York tri-state area’s largest association of human resources practitioners. Jeanne is a member of the Business Advisory Council of the College of Mount Saint Vincent and sits on the advisory board of St. Joseph’s College School of Business.
Be Helpful: Jeanne is my friend through a mastermind group. When HR questions are posed, Jeanne reaches right out and answers them. She just finished running a SHRM workshop/conference in Albany this past week – and SHRM is a volunteer organization; I know because I have friends who sit on our local board in Rochester. It’s in her WHY. She has an engaging process when a business contacts her for help – and she qualifies them if both they and HRoM are a good fit for each other – if not; she advises them and sends them on their way.
Be Consistent: While my other friend Pamela is super active online and offline; Jeanne is not so active online – consistently – she IS consistent offline. Being the Director of NYS SHRM and Past President for HR/NY, you have to consistently deliver value to those organization in a myriad of roles. People come to her for advice; and she’s so busy being outside and in person; her online life suffers a little – however, as you can see, it’s not detrimental. She doesn’t have large followings on any of her social sites – no problem.
What does she have? A Consistent, Active, Helpful story wrapped around her WHY and that is how she is becoming KNOWN in the HR field in the tri-state area. She’s full of knowledge, she’s ready to help, she’s active in several organizations and in her community and she loves to help you solve your HR puzzle. Is she KNOWN now? I can’t say for sure – because I’m not in that HR circle. I DO KNOW she will be if she’s not. She is sought after – so she’s definitely on her way; and her being known has nothing to do with her business savvy, business success or social numbers.
The people who NEED TO KNOW her – Know her. If you want to find out more about my friend Jeanne and see if she can help you – I invite you to visit her website: hronthemove.com
We’ve all heard this phrase, “Follow your passion.” Many times, for many of us, it doesn’t really lead anywhere, when we have defined our passion as WHAT we do not WHY we do it.
Defining and starting with your WHY is how you become KNOWN – this is also called creating a “sustainable interest” in Mark Schaefer’s book, KNOWN. WHY is sustainable; What changes often.
INSERT STORY HERE: (this is where I introduce my first story of who is becoming known)
The one step many business owners skip is the most essential. Research.
Research your ideal clients; and your less than ideal clients – what do THEY want to talk about? What is already being said? Do you have something to add?
Many times, what we, as business owners think our clients want or need – is NOT what they actually want. Your job as a business owner is to meet your clients where they are and then bring them to you and your services. Keywords/phrases/long tail – all the good SEO juice – look for what is NOT being used yet describes your solution perfectly and write around that; thinking conversation because it was projected that by the year, 2020, 50% of search queries would be voice queries – we are already there – and I think it’s actually like 53% or better. We got there 3 years early.
Make your content easy to share. Put the share buttons at the top and bottom and in this morning’s presentation, Christine Varra gave us some awesome plugins to use to do this. Remember too, the sharing buttons are for your user’s platforms ;not yours.
