Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Every hour you spend on social media, you're renting attention, the algorithm changes and your audience is gone. And I think most people know this, but they still don't do anything about it because building sounds slow and expensive. In this episode of Data Beats Opinion, I'm talking with Benis Lenovicius of avm. He does SEO and AI search. Visibility for people, not companies.
His take kind of surprised me. For a personal brand, the owned asset is almost free. Right. A simple site set up once, left alone for two years, it actually does more than most people expect.
So we kind of COVID what actually moves the needle and what to ignore and why Most founders are too scattered to rank anything. Right.
Let's start the show.
Venice. So glad to have you on. This is exciting.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Thank you.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Yeah, of course, of course. So for people who don't know. So you have gone kind of from the SEO side into the personal SEO side, if we can call it that. You are the founder of Avium.
How did you get into this? Like, what is your.
Tell me a little bit about your story.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, I've been. My main expertise and the thing that I've been known for as a freelancer is search engine optimization, SEO. That's what I've been doing for the longest time. But at some point, I wanted to kind of move forward. I wanted to kind of do something bigger than just offer one service. Obviously, sort of agency creation was on my mind about that, but I didn't want to be an SEO agency for me, for somehow it didn't feel right. Like, too niche, too.
Like, half of the people I talk to don't even know what SEO is. So it's.
I wanted to kind of work on something that is much more interesting for me and much more trending, much more that people would actually love to buy.
And because of that, because of many different things, because I found eventually the client type that I wanted to work with, I then eventually found other services that I would love to offer. And somehow I kind of connected it all to personal branding. And then, I mean, I. I noticed that I've also started doing that before I even created the agency. I actually started building my own personal brand because I saw that in this AI age, it feels that it's probably going to be one of the more important things going forward.
Now that it's so easy to create content, who are people going to follow somebody that has a strong personal presence online? So people will always follow people.
It doesn't matter sort of what's gonna happen, like we need that connection. So in my mind, personal branding seems to be on the rise and seems to be become sort of, it seems to be more and more important as time goes on. So since I was building my personal brand, I really believe that it kind of naturally clicked that it's also the agency that I should be building as well.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I agree. I think the personal brand was always important. Right. Like you look at even larger companies that have, like Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, you have, you have, I mean, love him or hate him, Elon Musk as Tesla, like there's always been this idea of the personality as someone you can connect to for the brand.
But I think I 100% agree that with AI creating infinite content, it's really the taste makers and it's the personalities, it's the things that you really can't just throw into an AI and create that's going to make the differentiator going forward.
And one of the a question I have is that do you see this personal brand working only for person first companies or do you see it being something that like Ford could come out and make a, and make a personal brand out of their founder, out of a character or something like that? Like, do you see this working not just for people first, but also for brands to create that, that founder and that personality?
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I've seen it go well both ways actually. So I think it can be be done from the company's perspective, but also from the sort of, you know, founder's perspective as well. So I think it works both ways. And I've seen definitely examples of both, like probably a personal brand when the company is already established, might be more difficult to get started with that because there is like a lot of underlying things of how like if you already have a very strong brand as a company, it then might be very difficult to then bring out people. But now it seems that there is also this trend where probably more towards sort of smaller companies where people are building personal brands for their employees as well. So it's not only that, it's just the founder that he's the main and the only person that you kind of know. But now the trend is, I mean it's still on a smaller scale, but I do see examples where people are now especially like top operators at specific agencies or companies are now also becoming part of that. Like they're also developing their personal brand so that the actual company can benefit from it. So it seems to be spreading which then naturally Feels that companies, bigger companies already have strong brands of themselves, can probably build employee personal brands that might help the companies as well.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: So what do you, when we're talking about SEO, I think that especially people listening to this podcast, they know kind of the bread and butter of what SEO for a company looks like, right? Like you got to get your pages that mention, hey, hey, you're in these different cities or like whatever your core marketing keywords are, you're building for that. But I feel like SEO and kind of the personality based promotion in this is very different. How do you see that it's different? And what are some of the tactics that you would use in personal based SEO or personality based SEO versus a company based SEO?
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah, one major thing that really became very, very important is when AI search became more prominent.
Now that people are using AI to basically find people in any niches, any kind of things, it's actually even more important to have a very strong SEO and AI search presence for people as well. The thing that I notice that a lot of people are lacking, especially the ones that are thinking about personal branding, is that they don't have a website. And, and a lot of people might hear this and say, like, wait, like, isn't a website, like outdated? I have Instagram, I have LinkedIn, like, who actually needs a website these days? I can get like a link tree with all of my links and that's it.
However, the biggest thing that for example, you can do as a benefit when you're creating a personal website for your own is actually this is the way that AI is going to know exactly all of the things that you do.
Like websites are now becoming sort of a personal hubs for all of the Google and AI crawlers to actually understand you. It's very expensive for AI or Google to crawl everything about you unless you're sort of a bigger name, unless you're very important that they mark as important, then yes, they will crawl everything. All of your LinkedIn's, Instagrams and all of that stuff. If you're not that known to actually go inside Instagram, LinkedIn, social media, YouTube and understand who you are as a person, it's very, very exp for these crawlers. And Google and AI companies are now actually trying to save as much money as possible to invest in AI and not to invest in the actual crawling. So to make their life easier, we want to have a central hub, which the easiest way to do is just have your personal website, which then you can link all of your social medias, all of Your things, you can actually insert all of the paragraphs so you can actually craft a story about you on a website. And that is what's on, going, going to be referenced on AI search and all of our platforms. So having this central hub would be. It's basically the best possible way to help build your personal brand because everything basically feeds off that.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that, I mean, there's so much we. We know that AI is lazy, Right. And there's so much effort to go into, like you said, scraping all of Instagram, scraping all of Reddit, scraping all of this to look for, for the keyword Keith Perhack or whoever, and finding that. And AI is lazy. And so if you have a website that's keithperhack.com or whatever that is, and it goes instantly there and it's like, oh, there's all the information it's going to read off of that more than it's going to read off of kind of pieced together stuff.
I was telling a story a little bit ago, I was looking for some.
A service or software, I can't remember which it was to help find influencers and stuff. And I asked AI, I was like, do some research on this. And it recommended the site to me and I was like, okay, that looks good. And as I was reading the site, like, customer names were misspelled and there were typos and was really like, just like, there were broken links and it was like, really weird. It was like, really bad. And I was like, it looked great, but it was bad. And I was like. I asked the AI, why did you recommend this site to me? It's obviously not good.
And it was like, well, it ticks all the boxes that AI looks for. Right. I look for these things. It has done all of the aeo, all the SEO for AI, and so I just thought it was the best one. And I'm like, dear Lord, the bar is so low just to have a website that AI can easily read and understand and promote from. Like.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the way AI acts right now, it feels like Google in 2014 or 2015.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: So it's much. Yeah, it's much more basic. It still like, relies on some of the more basic signals. It's actually like, to be honest, like, a lot of how AI crawls itself is just like if you rank on Google in the top 10 results, it's gonna crawl you first. And then so basically, the better your SEO is, the better AI searches because, like, it copies that. It doesn't have any Internal. I mean it's sort of trying to get there, but for now it feels more basic. Like one of the things that we saw working well is that if you just have more mentions than your competitor, you're more likely to appear on AI search just by sheer number of mentions or backlinks from various different websites, which is again, not the best way to rank or recommend someone. But at least in this, you know, AI is definitely, definitely going to get better on that. But for now it feels like old Google where just by having a website, just by having some mentions and some links, you can actually rank on it. So yeah, yeah.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: And like you said, it does feel like Google in 2014 where listicles are now powerful again and it's like all this stuff because. Exactly, they're going to, I think AI is going to get better at some point, but the problem is that they have other things that they're focused on. They're focusing on image gen, they're on focusing, focusing on content gen, they're focusing on code gen.
So how much of their effort Google focused 100% on search to get rid of like low quality, low effort things.
I don't think AI is doing that in the next five years, to be honest.
But yeah, definitely not in the next year.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: So yeah, it feels that AI search itself, I mean, two years ago if you would have asked me and if you would have asked AI companies, they might have, would have said that it's going to be become more important. But as we see, people are not actually really using AI search as much as we thought they would like. The data shows that Google is still king on all of the traditional searches and stuff like that. People are using AI but for some specific terms, specific questions. And overall the percentage of people that actually go and use AI search is still relatively low.
And I feel that AI companies are not prioritizing a search as one of their things that they're building. They that it's not high in their priority list. Which then means that all of the things to make AI search better might actually be delayed.
So yeah, it's probably the more people are going to be using AI search, maybe it's going to get better. But at least what we have right now, we're going to work with what we have right now. So it is a very actually good time to optimize like create our personal brand, create all the keywords, just have some mentions and basically just stand out in AI searches. Even, even it's just a small percentage overall worldwide it's still like thousands of people searching every day. So yeah, it's still worth being on those lists.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: And this brings up an interesting question that I always wrestle with, which is the whole build versus rent, right? And so what that means is when you're building, you're building a website. It's something you completely own, you completely control. When you rent, you are posting on Twitter or posting on Instagram, you are essentially land sharing on someone else's platform to create your own content.
SEO has always been about building more than renting because that's where search engines found you.
But there is also that time benefit where SEO is slower, renting is faster.
How do you, especially when it comes to a personal SEO and personal branding and then with AI coming in, how do you see the difference in time and that time cost between building and renting?
[00:14:36] Speaker B: So for personal brands, I don't think it's a huge cost. Like nowadays you can even like make a very simple personal website using AI itself. So I feel that the time invested in, and honestly, like I don't think people need to actually invest their time in building a SEO or AI search specifically just having a clean personal website, just having it optimized, it doesn't like for personal brands, I don't think there is a big time or effort investment to basically make this happen.
It's actually, I think on the very lower end. But just by having a domain and having an active website, honestly if you just leave it there for at least few years, that that is actually already helpful. Because if in two years time you are then gonna decide to build something more than like invest more in SEO search, then it makes, then it's really good that you had this website up and running because you just gathered probably some natural backlinks. The domain has aged well. So there is a lot of benefits just by having that website, just even if it's just sitting there. So in that sense, for personal brands, I feel it's worth doing it once and like set and forget type of thing. And then you focus on your Instagrams, on your Linkedins, on whatever else sort of platform is working. And the only thing that you need to do with your website is just update the videos, embed relevant blog posts, if you're writing, have some links from your podcast or interviews. So it's like treated more as sort of a database of things that you keep rather than building it out. So I mean, if we're talking about companies that I would probably have a completely different recommendation. But for personal brand specifically, it feels such an easy lift for Quite a big upside, you know, if you just invest a couple of hours building your website.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think so. I think one of the differences, especially as we're talking about AI that comes in, is that, you know, traditionally when we're thinking about a company SEO, we're always thinking about keywords, right. Where for us we're thinking about the word analytics and for Data Sources and ConvertKit and Click Funnels and all this kind of stuff, we're always looking for the keywords. Is that different when we're looking at personal brands? Because we're not really.
You're not going to search for me because of a keyword, right? Is it more topical how?
I understand if someone's searching for Keith Perhack, then they're going to instantly find, through AI or through whatever, they're instantly going to find my site and that's a benefit. But what about the things I want to be known for? How am I bringing those forward in a way that is more SEO driven? And how is that different than doing it for a company?
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, for personal brands. So at avm, we mainly work with keynote speakers, book offers and company founders, meaning that all of these people have their own incentive for what they want to be known. For keynote speakers, they want to be found by event planners whenever somebody searches their topic, like leadership keynote speaker culture keynote speaker and so and so forth. So those specific keywords are very important for keynote speakers themselves, which means we basically want to rank their personal website on these specific keywords. So create specific landing pages, we create specific content, we interlink, we basically do all of the SEO NAI search optimization so that they can be found for these specific terms. For company founders, they usually have again, their own icp, their ideal customer Persona that they're targeting because they have a company. So if they're a E commerce business that wants to get specific types of people or investors or anything like that, we basically decide what is the most important people you want to attract to and then we build that website surrounding those specific keywords. So essentially it's quite similar the work that we do with the work that I used to do for companies, but for personal brands specifically, yes, the target is mainly about one key specific person that you're sort of attracting and sort of what is your main service or product that you're selling.
Sometimes it's not direct. For keynote speakers, it can be like event planners searching for leadership keynote speakers. That's very obvious for company founders, they might have a bit of a different goal rather than just attracting customers. So they're not using SEO to attract customers. They're probably.
They usually have some other goals in mind in terms of maybe bringing their own credibility up front. They want to be known for certain things. So strategy does vary in that for those people quite a bit, depending on their personal goals.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Interesting. Do you find that. I know founders in general and personalities in general are very kind of all over the place. Right. They always want to do different things. Do you find that there's a lot of scattered thoughts and things that they want to rank for? It's like, oh, I want to be known for this and known for this and known for this and want to do this, and I want this. Like, how do you. How do you identify when people are getting too scattered? Because you need a lot of con. You need a breadth of content, but you don't want to be scattered. And how do you kind of rein people in with that?
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah, honestly, that's the first thing that we, that we kind of have the biggest conversation around.
It's like, it's always, it's. I mean, not always, but like, it's usually the case that they want to be. They.
Unless they've done like one company, one thing for the past, like at least six, seven years and their own baby, then it's much, much easier. But yeah, usually company founders, they might want to be known for, especially if they're already achieved a lot of success with their company already. They then have a lot of ways they want to become major investors. They want to sort of move into other direction, maybe create some other businesses. They had an agency, agency, now they want a product. So that does create issues, the way we build personal brands. Because then if you're too scattered, it's very difficult to market. You like to have what is a strong personal brand? A strong personal brand is when people know you for something specific.
Like you're either a very successful, like, you know, you're an entrepreneur, you're a comedian, you're an actor. Like, this is the, the most strongest way to. I mean, you can do other things as well, but like, it's much, much easier to build something around one specific category. So.
So the first thing that we do is we actually try to talk to the founder and understand. Exactly. Okay, so what, let's kind of break it down. What are your actual goals? Like, what is the thing? Like, why you want to build personal brand? That's actually one of the key questions as well. Like, people usually come to us, they say, I want to build a personal brand. That's Great.
Why? What is the. Is it trending? Do you have a reason for it? Is there a goal behind it? Is like a revenue goal? Is it. Is it a credibility goal? Is it just your.
You maybe just want to be more like. And that's also okay. Like be more famous. It actually, like attract more attention to. Towards that. So this is all, again, we need to understand why. Once we understand the why, then we try to.
We try to craft the specific sort of category that we are going to start with. Once we get there and achieve certain milestones, we can branch out. Because the bigger you are, the easier it is actually to branch out. Like, if we're thinking people about, like Alex Hormozy, once you're as big as that, it's then very, very easy to be known for a lot of different things. But when you're smaller, it's much easier to have a specific category.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think this is a similar thing, I think with both business and with branding, which is that it is so much easier to be known for one thing and then branch out than it is to be known as a jack of all trades. Because there's nothing for people, people like to latch on. And, you know, in business especially, people are always like, oh, I don't want to niche down because I want to serve everyone. It's like you can still serve everyone, but you have to be known for something. And the. Usually the smaller, or I would say the more targeted the niche, the more effective that is.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, that's. That's exactly. That's why we always start with that one category. We try to talk to founders to help them make a choice in which direction they want to take their personal brand, at least to start with. And then we can see sort of how we can branch out. We can have usually at least few other pillars that they also post content about. But still being known for you should be one thing. And we can have additional aspects attached as a side thing, but not as a main thing. That is like their headline.
Tag. Headline.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's what you did with your agency moving into the personal SEO. That's what we did at our agency before we did Psychometrics, which was focusing on funnel conversion rate optimization. When we first started, we were like, we can do everything. And it's a horrible sales pitch.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Like, clients would come to us and they're like, what can you do for us? I was like, anything.
And it's like, nothing. Right. Crickets. And when you say you get traffic to the site and we're going to optimize the crap out of it and you'll get money at the end. Like, we are focused on this, then it's a very easy sales pitch and we can still do the other stuff, but we're known for something, and that was really important for us.
So one thing that I want to kind of dip into here is that, okay, so we have the personal SEO, we have the aeo, we have getting known.
But just because you're known, like, the instant someone finds you, they're not going to be like, yes, I'm going to work with this person, I'm going to work with this coach, or I'm going to sign up for this business.
There's an amount of time that needs to happen between learning about someone, there's following, there's consuming the content, and people don't generally watch all the content at once and then buy.
It's a process. So how do you kind of follow that?
Is there a journey? Is there something you're tracking? How are you starting to see that the SEO and the, the benefits that you're getting from that marketing are turning into the goal at the end of the day, if that's revenue or clients or whatever.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So this really depends on the. From. From one person to. To another. I mean, personal branding has, you know, in its name, it's personal. So it means like, depending on your goals, depending on exactly what you want to achieve, that is going to be very custom from one person to another. But like, if we take one of our clients as an example, keynote speakers, like one category, then the main thing that they care about is getting discovered by event planners and getting paid bookings via this personal brand stuff. So this is the main thing that we track, this is the main thing that we want to provide them. And basically the whole strategy built around podcasts, LinkedIn and their SEO and their website is built around that. So everything feeds towards that specific goal.
There is also this idea in personal branding that.
Not personal branding, but in. In generally the way that content works. There was a study done, it's now an old study, but I think it still holds true to this day that people need to consume around like 7 hours of content before they buy from. And so again, we also take, not specific, not specifically seven hours, but we take this concept to the way sort of we approach and the way we do personal branding as well. So we know that somebody needs to follow us for a certain amount of time. They need to see certain amount of posts, videos, listen to podcasts. So Again, this kind of helps us track our timeline better. So if we see an increase, let's say, in number of followers in this month, we know that those followers in one way or another might convert only like three to four months. So we basically know that this kind of allows us to map out better of what's happening today and what we can expect to happen in, like, four months for, like keynote speakers. I mean, it's much easier since we are tracking sort of paid gigs that they receive via the website, LinkedIn and podcasting sort of feeds, SEO and AI search. So for keynote speakers specifically, their website is kind of the main thing that we do or not like the more important aspect of their business, LinkedIn and podcasting feeds, and helps us rank better on SEO and AI search. But they might not directly have people converting from podcasts and LinkedIn. So for them, ranking high on SEO, having high searches. Whenever event planners go to ChatGPT and ask for a specific list of keynote speakers, then their name pops up there.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Interesting, interesting. And then so let's say that someone pops up for the first time for the keynote speaker, and then the. So they're on. They're on the short list essentially of maybe 50, 100 people, whatever. And then from there they're going and looking at the website, at the social, etc. Where you're. Where you're building that brand on the. Not just owned, but also the rented platforms. Is that correct?
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's correct. And this is. So this is a very difficult part with personal branding because it's very difficult to measure. But as you just said, like, when you're on a short list, people then go and evaluate you. So, okay, this is a keynote speaker that talks about leadership. Okay. Then I go to his LinkedIn, I go to like, as an event planner, go to his YouTube. Like, I check out this person to understand if it's even worth sending them a message. And this is a very unfortunate part of, like, us as an agency working on personal branding, because we cannot really measure the impact that we're having on this specific side because what we only see is then a message comes through from the event planner. Hey, checked out your stuff. Looks great. Let's chat. We have an event in like six months. We want to sort of book you.
But one more like the important part for also building the podcasting, having podcasts, having YouTube, having LinkedIn.
All of these things basically form an impression about who you are as a keynote speaker, as a person, like, even just likes on LinkedIn comments and just your overall Engagement shows. If you are an active keynote speaker, does your message resonate with more people? Do people reshare, comment, talk to you? So all of this stuff is important whenever it's more of a force, it's more like a conversion optimization aspect for keynote speakers rather than pure content. So although LinkedIn and podcasting does help us for SEO and AI search, the best thing that it does is actually convert event planners to actually send you a message when they find you on Google by just researching like leadership keynote speakers and looking up random lists of people.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so this is interesting because one of the things, again, talking about the build versus Rent, one of the traditional, hey, you have to do this things is to have an email list. Right. And do you still find that works for.
I think if you're building a personal brand and you are the brand and you're selling something, yes, 100% you need an email list. But if you're. So we're talking about like keynote speakers or founders, do you still feel like the email list is an important part of that personal SEO and that personal branding, or is that something that's less important if you're not trying to sell your own brand?
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Yeah, personally I believe the email is very important. I believe everybody should have an email list and have something going on. I mean, again, I am a big believer of owning your own stuff. That's why I got into SEO. Owning your domain, owning your website, an email list is just basically the, I think probably one of the last, like owning a website and an email that like these two things are the last things that we can own. Everything else is basically on a rent and platform. So yes, I'm a big believer of having a good strong email list is very key these days.
However, at Avium, like we don't do that specifically because it doesn't really impact our visibility engine that we kind of created with LinkedIn, podcast and SEO. So because it's very hidden, it's very, very important for personal brands to have. But we don't really offer that or work with that today because it doesn't really fit into our sort of engine. And again, we can't do everything. So right now we choose not to do that. Even though this is highly. I highly suggest that whenever we actually talk to clients and we build them to personal brands to get into the email, have something there, it's usually really, really useful to have.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to shift a little bit to the tactical side of things.
I think at this point people are understanding, okay, here's the value here's what we want to do. But how do people get started with this? I think that a lot of us, I know that I do a lot of content and stuff like that. It's just like, okay, I'm just going to create a bunch of content, see what sticks. Like I'm, I'm tweeting into the void. And I think this is one of the big things that people get discouraged with when they're starting to build their own personal SEO, which is like I'm just posting into the void and I don't feel like I see maybe followers ticking up, but it feels like I'm producing a lot of stuff with no back feedback, no effort. How do you help people not get a get through that, but also build a schedule or a calendar that makes it so that people are able to create content in the cadence that they need, in that process that they need that is effective. So it's just not like my cat threw up on my books today kind of stuff, right?
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
Actually the one thing that I suggest a of lot, a lot of people is that one of the issues is people think when they think about personal branding and when you start that they think that they need to be now on every platform, everywhere. I honestly think that's a mistake that basically makes you spend less time on each individual platform and then create content that basically fits every everything. Like then you trying, okay, let me create a video that I can upload to YouTube, then maybe I can convert it to the same video to YouTube shorts, then Instagram Reels and then upload it to TikTok. So what you're doing doing is basically you're trying to make, make something that fits everywhere. Which again not doesn't really work because each platform has its own individual culture, its own editing things.
Even you know, having natively edited videos with Instagram app is much better than for example having that video posted on, on TikTok. So basically people think that they need to be everywhere. That is what makes them sort of of overwork themselves because they now try to create too many content pieces. But then it's distributed across like five newsletters, like free social media platforms. Like, you know, you have a substack, then you have your own personal newsletter, then you have something else. So it creates problems.
So my suggestion is only pick maximum, maybe two or three platforms that you really want to grow on. Like based on again, what is your goals, why or want to, why do you want to like do personal branding?
Do you want to become an influencer? Do you want to be like is YouTube like or video skills are more. Do you have an advantage in. Because you know, you know how to use camera or talk in front of a camera. Maybe you're a writer, then you might want to go in substack or email. So you need to choose based on exactly what are your goals, why personal branding is important to you and your skills and natural abilities. You need to choose the platforms that best suit you. Once you've done that. First of all that's amazing because not a lot of people do that. They feel the FOMO that they need to be everywhere. If I created this video, might as well share it on TikTok because I have it on Instagram and I feel that's a mistake because one additional platform to track, to see, to view, to open, to check views, to check likes. It creates so much unnecessary load on you that you don't even realize. So again, choose several platforms and then it. I mean everything becomes easier. Create specific strategy, posting calendar, posting cadence and try to grow there. I mean how to grow that really depends on specific platforms. But as long as you're consistent, that is definitely one of the more important things that also people don't really follow through. Somebody can keep consistency for a month, but then it drops. And I mean if we look at how many people are consistent for like six to 12 months, that's barely like a percentage of people that actually keep going after that that time.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Yeah, and I know that the. The algorithms, especially on things like LinkedIn and Twitter and stuff, they reward you after a certain number of months because they want people who are consistent. They don't want someone to come in, start, start using it, get instant success and then leave. They want people who are start posting consistently week after week, month after month.
And then they reward. The algorithm apparently rewards that one thing that.
Where did I want to take that? I had a question about the.
Oh, the.
I think it is important.
You were talking about the content, the type of content that the person likes to create.
And I think that's super important because I think that a lot of us feel, oh, I need to have a blog. Oh, I need to have images. Oh, I need to have video. Oh, I need to have this. And we end up sitting at the computer just looking at a screen because we don't want to create that type of content.
Different people like different types of creating different types of content. They like interacting with people in different ways.
What do you do with someone who doesn't like being on social media at all? Like I'm Sure. Within the personal brand people, there are a lot of people who are like, I love getting up on stage, I love talking to in live things, I love doing workshops. But man, social media just drains me. Like, are there.
Do you.
What. What type of advice do you have for people who don't want to create that type of content but need to create that type of content? If that makes sense.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah. First of all, yeah, it's difficult because, like, this is something. I mean, personal branding is kind of based on you creating content online. So it is tough. However, in my experience, what that usually means when people say that is that they don't like the content that they see online and they feel that they need to create similar type of content. So usually what it means is not that I don't like creating content, especially if you like workshops, if you like being in front of the stage, if you know how to be sort of good offline. So what is stopping you to be online? In my experience, it's usually people are very reluctant to start posting online because they feel that they need to post something that is not in line with their own voice.
Usually they see people like the biggest names, Alec Hormozis and, you know, all of the biggest influencers, how they create content, how like, I mean, nowadays people see a lot of AI content as well, like all the listicles and general content. And because they see that, they feel that this is the only way to create content. And basically I need to do the same thing thing which it's not aligned with their voice, with their values, with the way they speak, the way they sort of the opinions that they have. And that's very discouraging for people. That's what I found, is probably the number one reason why people don't like the idea of creating content for their personal brand, which then my advice is very simple. Like you don't create the content that you don't like. You create something that you want to share with the world. So we forget every template, everything that you've seen online, which is difficult, but we basically try to strip it back to the bare bones and see, okay, do you like to be in front of a camera? Do you like to write text? Are you better talking on podcasts? What is the thing that makes you light up, up? What is the thing? Like, what type of content is best suited for you to create? And not only that, this is because this is only the format. But then once we find the format is okay. But how do you want. Do you. Do you want it short? Do you Want it long. Nowadays, I think we have, like, we. A lot of people create, like nowadays on online, it's good. And you are able to create different types of content because right now the market is very mature and basically there is a need for every type of content out there. If we take back like five, six years ago, it was more streamlined, where if you post something outside of the boundaries, the algorithm is not going to pick you up. And basically, you know, there was only like one or two ways of building the personal brand. Nowadays, it's much more. More freely available because people crave.
Actually people crave different types of opinions, different types of content. And actually, if you create something unique to yourself, that's actually an advantage.
So my advice is that you probably don't like.
It's not that you don't like creating content online, it's probably you don't like to create content that you see online and because it's not aligned with your voice or your values.
Oh, man.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally see that. I see a lot of people who I talk to who are starting with trying to do content stuff. They're like, oh, I'm going to do it just like Alex Hormozi, or I'm going to do it just like Ramit Sethi, or I'm going to do it just like, so and so. And it's like, it's interesting. And I think that there is a.
I think that there's a challenge there because I think the things that people want to talk about sometimes are not necessarily the things that they think are going to move towards their goals. So they have a product, they have a company, they have a thing they want to be known for, but the things that they want to talk about are not the things that they think are going to lead them towards that. And so what you're talking about there is like, okay, how do you find the way you want to talk about that goal?
And how do you create content that gets you towards that goal that you still enjoy creating? Is that. Am I summing that up correctly or is that.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's. That. That's part of it. Like, people also don't, like, they feel that they need to really directly talk about their product, their service, what they do.
And personal branding is much more personal. You can actually weave in a lot of the personal stories into making your content more unique. And people feel that sometimes people don't understand that it's possible to talk about stuff they want to talk about while still achieving the goals that they have. Not every single Post has to be an advertisement for their services. Like just talking about your personal experience might even be more valuable to connect you with the right people. And then you might share something that is more directly. You know, sharing things about the services or products that you sell.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that there is. I mean, people talk about a lot about the necessity of talking of being human, essentially. So it's not just product, product, product, product, but it's about, it's about forming a social relationship or a parasocial relationship with, with the people who are following you and are listening to you. And I think that's what helps ingenuate. I think that's the word that people to you is to understand you as a human being and a person beyond just the, the brand and what you put out there.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I, I totally agree that this is sort of.
Nowadays it's even more important because of AI.
People want that human connection, human content. So human stories, like, basically, like when, now, when you create content, ask yourself, would AI be able to create this? If the answer is no, because it's your personal story about, I don't know, your wedding or the time or difficult times you went through, or the photo that you took five years ago of your desk or work or mountain that you've climbed. Like, like this is the content that AI cannot create these days. And people now really love and enjoy this type of content. So, yeah, yeah, like, being more human is now one of the best strategies that works very, very well.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Really? I think it's. Yeah. Although I was called AI on LinkedIn through my video, they were like, what AI agent did you use to create your video? I'm like, me, like, do I have to, like, do this before each, before each video? It's like, hey, it's me.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Yeah. That's an unfortunate side effect of AI is that now a lot of people also believe that some of the real things are also AI. So, yeah, that is unfortunate. Although I don't think it's still a big issue. But yeah, we're definitely going there where even if you post a real photo, people are like, nah, that's fake.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Ole Miss. This has been absolutely amazing. I've loved talking with you about this. Is there anything that, like, any point advice that you think people should take away from this as far as, like, what they should do to understand what a personal brand is and how to get that in front of people?
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like people need to view personal brand as just being.
Imagine as you network and you communicate with people and you share stories Offline just by going to conferences, going to events, meeting people on the street.
People, like, need to treat personal branding in the same way. I feel like if you can like, understand that, hey, what is a personal. Personal brand is just you talking about your life, your achievements, your products, your services in a human way and then sharing it to more than just your inner circle. That's what personal brand is. And then you basically connect with strange. I mean, the same way you connect on strangers by just having a chat outside and then, you know, exchanging numbers and then having a coffee afterwards or something like that. It's kind of very similar online. People stumble upon you, we maybe interact in comments, you follow each other, and then suddenly you've been. You've known that person, you know, for like three, four months because you follow their content.
So treat personal branding as an online thing for the offline stuff that you already do.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that at the end of the day, I think a lot of us forget about that, which is that it really is supposed to be like going to the coffee shop, like going to the co working space and interacting with people in person. And I think we have a tendency as a culture and as a group and as a business and a whatever to see it as a numbers game. And we're reducing people, the other accounts, the followers, et cetera, to numbers. And it's like, oh, followers are going up. Not. I'm now talking to more people and I have a chance to connect with more people. And I think that that creates a barrier maybe to how people interact with social. And I think I'm putting a lot of myself into this conversation.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, that's fine. This is a. I mean, the best podcasts are the ones that are field as an actual conversation. So I mean, I really enjoy your input here as well.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Well, yeah, definitely. Ben, where can people find you online?
[00:48:37] Speaker B: Benasleo.com that's my website, my personal website, where everything else is linked. So from there you'll find everything from my agency to my LinkedIn, my YouTube, whatever else is necessary.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Sounds good. And we'll put all the links in the, in the show notes in the description. And thank you so much for taking the time on this. This has been super fun.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that was very fun. Thank you so much, guys. Keith.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: All right, cheers.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Bye bye.
