Not Understanding This One Thing Could Be Fatal To Your Personal Brand

Have you struggled trying to find which you to market to the world?  I have.  Am I going to be in the business of helping people with their writing, blogging, personal growth, or parenting?  This has been the hardest question for me to answer as an entrepreneur.  I almost wish I wasn't good at so many things.  If I was simply good at doing one thing, then the decision to commit wouldn't be so difficult.

To be successful, Internet entrepreneurs must first ascertain which niche they want to enter.  It's not as easy as it sounds.  Again, it's because most people can be an expert in more than one space.  But focus you must.  Now here is where it gets even more confusing.  Say you are a wine connoisseur and want to be the authority on everything wine.  You decide to be an affiliate marketer and make your money selling wine to a growing email list.  Great.  Because you're the wine guru, you believe your focus should be on knowing everything about the industry.  There's a problem with this.

Is McDonald's in the burger business?  Many people would say, of course!  Is Starbucks in the coffee business?  Same answer most likely, "yes!"  But...

Neither answer is correct.  Both McDonald's and Starbucks are in the same business.  Distribution.  Without thousands of locations, McDonald's couldn't distribute their tasty fast food and Starbucks wouldn't be able to please their coffee junkies with their awesome java.  One may think from this that distribution has to do with real estate.  It does partly.  Having the best location to distribute your product is a competitive advantage.




As an Internet entrepreneur, you won't be needing to worry about competing with the likes of McDonald's or Starbucks for brick and mortar distribution.  But you will need to compete with everyone else for the type of distribution that matters most to people like you: virtual distribution.  If you don't by now realize that your social media channels also happen to be your primary distribution centers, you're in deep shit.

Think about it like this.  Say you have an email list of 10,000, but only 500 Twitter followers.  Your distribution is 10,500.  Someone who has a list consisting of 10,000 emails and 10,000 Twitter followers has you beat.  All of your social media accounts are part of your distribution business, which is what you're really in as an Internet entrepreneur.  What you actually sell is secondary.

This means of course that you will have to put in more of an effort to growing your distribution business.  You will have to mind your numbers, tell a great personal story, engage more with people who like your posts or Tweets, and pay to advertise.  That's one of the biggest mistakes I made (not advertising).  Amateurs try to grow their distribution business organically.  They write blog posts that few people read and maybe get one or two subscribers a week.  Meanwhile, the pros know that their bread and butter consists of expanding their distribution as much as possible, so they pay for it!

You will have to decide how much you want to invest to growing your social media.  Whatever you do, don't buy followers.  Random people who come to you by way of a paid service won't stay.  Eventually they stop following you.  You need to do targeted ads that reach your specific audience.  Facebook is great for this.  If you can create a great ad (this too is a skill) you can expand your tribe and sell product at the same time.

Never forget...we're all in the distribution business.  Disregard this fact and your personal brand will not be alive very long.  Thanks for reading.  If you liked this post, and want to automate getting more like them, subscribe before you leave.  No spam, just great content.

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