🌟 The ABCs Of Personal Branding To Attract Your Ideal Prospects 👥
In a highly competitive world, your greatest asset is your unique self. That is why personal branding comes with great rewards, especially as you attract your ideal prospects. What better way to showcase that than through a live video? In this episode, Helen Martin breaks down the ABCs of personal branding and how you can use live video as the catalyst to help you build one. Helen’s gone from being a General Manager in the Corporate World to building multiple streams of income from home. Mentoring hundreds of online marketing students around the globe, she has harnessed the power of live video to get people to know, like, and trust you. She gives tips on how to do it right and still grab attention even in a world where there is a lack of focus and a lower attention span. Plus, Helen speaks about overcoming perfectionism, the importance of consistency, and why you need to define your personal brand. Tune in for a masterclass on amplifying your presence and influence in a crowded digital landscape.
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I am here with the one and only Helen Martin. She resides in a small coaster town in Southern Australia with her husband Paul and two teenage boys. She has accounting qualifications, a Bachelor of Business, a Major in Marketing, and she has even studied law. She has gone from being a general manager in the corporate world to building multiple streams of income from home in the online world. Lately, it's social media marketing that's captured her attention.
Over the last few years, Helen has become a multiple six-figure earner. She has mentored hundreds of online marketing students around the globe and has built a network marketing organization of over 4,500 people, team members and customers alike. She has founded her online crew brand and coaching community. She has become a number one bestselling author for her book Journey To Success. In this episode, she'll be talking to us about the power of personal branding and the role that video can play in creating that brand for you. Welcome, Helen. I am excited to dive deep into personal branding with you.
I'm excited to be here. Thank you for that beautiful introduction. It's exciting to talk to you about this topic.
Before we dive into all the good stuff, for those in the audience who perhaps are meeting you for the first time, can you tell us a little bit about your story? How is it that you found yourself in this place of being an expert on personal branding, and video marketing? How did that come to happen?
My story is not quite the same as a lot of people and how they fell into this industry. To give you the short version, I live in Australia. I am in a small country town in Australia. Here, I got into the corporate world and worked my way up the ladder, studied, and ended up as a general manager. That was my life. That was my world. That's all I knew. I'm not sure if anyone can relate to this in the corporate world, but once you get a title, it becomes a big part of who you are. My identity was tied up in being a general manager and I was in that executive world for a long time.
A family member of ours passed away very suddenly, playing tennis, dropped and didn't survive it. It’s a real shock to the family. I’ll spare the details, but basically what that meant is we had to pick up our life and move to the country to take care of a whole lot of family affairs. It was like, “What do I do? Do I commute for an extra 1.5 to 2 hours a day, either side of the day?” My boys were very young at the time and life was crazy living in the city. I was like, “I can't do that to my boys. I can't do it to my husband. I certainly can't do it to myself.”
I reluctantly resigned. There I was, being very comfortable with a high six-figure income security, everything was known, and everything was predictable to nothing. No income, country town, no job opportunities like I'd had. I was like, “What the hell am I going to do here?” I've never felt so uncomfortable in my life.
How nerve-wracking? I would be a rack because all of this happened very suddenly. You had no advanced notice whatsoever and here's your new reality.
They say all good things come from. I am a big believer that things happen for a reason, but I found myself out of that because my identity was tied up in being a general manager. I didn't know who I was, what I wanted to do, how I could help people, or what I wanted to do as a career without the title. Take the title away and I was completely lost. I'd never not worked. My boys are only fourteen months apart and I didn't take maternity leave. I'm not sure what they call it over there. They didn't replace me. I was breastfeeding in the office, pumping, and doing all the things that women do. I'd never not been working. Getting into an environment where you're suddenly not working is like, “Who am I? What am I going to do?”
Not only were you not working, you were a city girl suddenly living in the country. That's a big change too. On top of all the grief and everything going on in your family.
It’s a huge change all around. This little thing called network marketing came and found me. I wasn't oblivious to it. I had dabbled in it before. I was open to entrepreneurialism and all that stuff, but I was never into it. It wasn't something I wanted to do. You know the stigma that goes with it. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with that. It's like, “I don't know what I want to do with that,” but I thought, “I do have the time.”
Once I'd allowed myself to relax for about a few months, it's like, “I don't want to go back to that. I want to go and pick up my kids from school and drop them off.” I did reading in the classroom for the first time. It was cool. It was like I was one of those moms that could be there for their kids. I'm like, “That's what I want.” I delved in and I was awful. I went back to a lot of my corporate friends and that was hard because a lot of them are like, “Why would you do something like that? What's wrong with you? What's happened to you? That network marketing thing is awful.”
I did have some success with the people in the country town, but they weren't the kind of entrepreneurial people that takes to build this, “Be successful,” if you know what I mean. I’m not trying to put anybody down but I'm like, “I'm going to do this differently.” I started looking online. I'm like, “There's got to be another way. I've wanted to get away from my corporate friends. I want to get away from these small country townspeople.” No offense. I studied and invested heavily.
I went to America four years in a row before COVID hit for mentorship and training. I delved in and made the sacrifices that a lot of us have to make to get where we are today. That set me on a journey of learning online marketing, not having a clue about it. I might have a different perspective when people say, “You have to find your passion. If you're not passionate about it, it won't work.” I didn't have a passion for online marketing, attraction marketing, and social media. I knew nothing. It wasn't something I was ever looking to do, but I've grown a passion.
I am a believer that if you're interested and keen, you know what your goals and dreams are, and you find a vehicle that you can stand behind and grow with, you can find a passion. You don't necessarily have to have the passion in the first place. I've grown a passion. The one thing that I started with quite early, I had no idea what I was doing, was I got told, “You probably should do a live video.”
I was like, “What do I talk about? I'm a nobody. I haven't recruited anybody online. I don't know anything about social media attraction marketing. How am I going to do that?” Literally, here's a personal development book. There are thirteen chapters in this book that I start quoting from. I read and regurgitate it. That's all I did initially. Things have come and gone. I've done blogging. I've come out of blogging. I've done different things and come out of it, but live video is the one thing that I've done consistently and there is no faster way for people to get to know, like, and trust you than when you turn up and talk.
Specifically, you used video as the catalyst to help you build a very strong personal brand.
It's the one system. I'm not the best at creative writing or email marketing. I mean I do it all now and I've learned those skills. As long as you get over the initial fear, you can turn a camera on. You can look at the camera and talk. Anybody can do it. You just have to get over those initial fears, which I do appreciate people have. It's the fastest way for people to get to know, like, and trust us as a person, build a personal brand, and stand behind it. I do believe having the success that I've had in a relatively short period of time is through live video. I had to lighten up on myself because I was hard on myself when I first came online.
It's like, “Why am I not more successful? Why am I not recruiting more people? Why am I not making more money?” It's like, “You studied for years to get into the corporate world and be the general manager. It's a career. It's a lifetime that you get to the big ranks in corporate, and we're here on social media for five minutes and we all want success like that.” What has sped it up is showing my face and being genuine and authentic. It did take a while to let those walls down. I still had the suit on. Not literally, maybe. I still had the corporate hat on when I first did live video and it didn't work.
I remember crying to my husband one day saying, “I know I'm not stupid, but it's taking me 2 hours to get through a 5-minute video.” I'm researching, writing, and memorizing it, and then I'm delivering the live because you can't have notes. That would be a sign of weakness. I have notes all the time now. The things that we think are important are not important. I wasn't connecting with anyone on social media because I was the corporate Helen.
You were the untouchable perfect general manager Helen. Not the vulnerable real human Helen.
This taught me a valuable lesson that still sticks with me today. I was putting some photos up on a website, my social media, and stuff like that. I had two photos. I had one with one of my corporate red jackets on, the corporate look. I have a cupboard still full of suits.
Very polished and put together. There could be a photo of you in some directory somewhere.
That was my identity. That was who I knew Helen to be. I had that photo, and then I had some casual photos in a black top. They're still around on my social media with the necklace. It's a little bit more casual. I put it out to my community that I'd started to build. I'm like, “Which one do you like for my socials and stuff like that?” I thought it was going to be the red jacket, “They're going to love the red jacket.” They were like, “We don't know who that is. That's not the Helen I know. That Helen is not relatable. That Helen looks untouchable.” I'm like, “What?”
“That Helen looks intimidating. That Helen looks like she might fire me if I don't do a good job.”
That blew me away, but it was like, “It's time to let go. It is time to let the walls down. It's time to just be Helen.” Now they get that I mix up my words. They get Helen now on live. That's how you make connections on social media. People underestimate how much people want genuine human connection, even through a camera. People are still looking for that genuineness and that authenticity. We're on other sides of the world. Most of my community is not in Australia. I have a huge US, UK, and Canadian following, but there are people who follow me that I have their back and they have mine.
It's like we're family but we've never ever met now. Live video is what has created that. Otherwise, how else would they get to know me, my husband's name, my kid's name, my dog, and all that stuff? It's through meeting people through the camera. Live video is super powerful. I think if people avoid it, they're missing opportunities to speed up the results.
Not only live video but being yourself, a little raw, real, unscripted, unpolished, and not perfect. For you, that was the key. The moment of sharing those pictures with your community, was that the moment that it clicked? From that moment on as you were making videos, did you find that you started having more and more success when you stopped trying to be polished?
Absolutely, because the human connection came. People started to connect with me more. When people connect with you, they comment more. You get more engagement. When you get more engagement and more comments, the algorithm goes, “People like this person. We'll send this content out to more people.” The flow of effect from having that connection with people, and I do care about my community, probably too much. They're like my family. We call them the online crew. They know how much I care about them, but they only know that because of the way that I speak and the way that I come across on live video. You can't tell that from a written post.
Even this training here, for those of you in the audience, how many of you feel like you at least know Helen and me a little bit? It’s like we're not total strangers to you and you could be like, “I know these women. They're cool.” How many of you have been putting this label of perfection on yourself? “I can't do video unless my hair and makeup are perfect, unless I'm wearing that red blazer, or everything is put together.” We're giving you permission right now to throw all that stuff in the trash. You don't need it.
I’m a recovering perfectionist here. That story proves that. Here's an interesting point when people think about this. Think how popular reality TV is. Everybody has their shows that they don't want people to know that they watch. Whether it's The Bachelor, Survivor, Married At First Sight, Love Island, or whatever it is, people love reality TV. You have to ask yourself, “What's the reason behind that?” It's not scripted. It's not perfected. You never know what's coming. It's real. People are craving real and they love reality TV. It's that realness.
I can't tell you how many times, even with celebrities that are on social media sharing various things where there's a celebrity being a regular person. They're not done up. They're doing something funny. They're even making fun of themselves and being normal. Every comment underneath is like, “I always knew I liked you. You're down to Earth. You're a regular person. You're my favorite. You're not like all those fake celebrities.” They're the ones who are loved the most because they get that.
A fantastic example of that is you would know who Mel Robbins is, the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, do it anyway, and the High-5 habit. She is the first person to do a live video from bed, waking up first thing in the morning. You think somebody who teaches people how to be a better version of themselves would be a little bit skeptical about showing the flaws and the bad stuff, but she does that every single day. I think that's why people respect her so much because she is so real.
I keep telling my audience, “You'll never do enough personal development training that everything is going to be perfect. Stuff is going to go wrong in our lives. Life is going to get in the way, but it's how quickly you bounce back.” That's a lot of a message like, “This happened and I didn't handle it well, but this is my lesson from that.” Be messy. Everyone is messy. That's reality. Something I tell my community a lot is that people resonate with your mess more than they resonate with perfection. It's something important to remember because people don't connect with perfection. No one is perfect. Anybody is striving to be perfect. That's not real. If people turn up doing a live video in their pajamas or something went horribly wrong and they go live and share it, they're like, “If they can do that, maybe I might be able to do that.” It gives people more hope.
I've heard it stated, “Your mess is your message and your struggle is your story.” That's what people want. They want realness. I want to circle back to something that you first talked about when you were telling us your story when you were like, “I have to get on video. What the heck am I supposed to say?” Someone gave you advice like, “Read this book and share with people what you're learning from the book.” I've heard of that strategy before. I've heard it described as learning out loud and sharing whatever it is that you're learning with something.
Even though you were this general manager and you were an expert in Corporate America, you were brand new to online business. You were like, “I don't know what I'm doing.” You were willing to learn out loud and share what you were learning with your audience. Do you have any other tips for people who are watching this and realizing, “This is hitting me just right. I know that this is the thing I need to action right now, but how do I get started if I don't know what to talk about?”
A couple of things around that is if somebody doesn't know what to talk about and they don't have a personal brand yet, they're trying to work out how they want to stand online and what they want to be known for, and all that stuff, that's still fairly new. I always fall back on personal development-type topics like a good book, an inspirational book, or something like that. Ninety-nine percent of the planet is walking around worrying way too much about what people think about them, holding themselves back, and letting fear be bigger than their dreams.
There are many things that you can say and share genuinely from your journey that other people are going to relate to you as a human being. We are not looking to anybody to be an expert in something that they're not. You're looking initially to get the human connection with other people that go, “That's a good point. That's inspiring. That's empowering. She's talking to me,” him or whatever it is with the message.
You share it from your perspective like, “I'm growing and I'm learning. This helps anybody out there. I want to share this because this is important to me. I'm trying to be the best version of myself. This is something I read the other day and I thought I'd share this with you because if it's one person, it helps you be a better version of yourself, then I'll be happy.” That's all you need to do. Start with sharing things that most human beings are going to relate to.
Here's the other kicker that is so important. Don't talk at people. Talk with people. What I mean by that is I see a lot of people that start with live video and turn into a robot. They have a sheet of paper with five tips, “Here are five tips to be a better version of yourself. Tp one. Tip two.” They forget to be a human being. That's talking at people. That's not talking with. The quicker that somebody can look at that camera and treat it like there's somebody sitting in your lounge room and have a conversation even if no one is there. Just say, “This is what I'm going through. What do you think about that?” There may be a big fat zero of somebody watching live, but somebody on a replay doesn't know that.
You can have a conversation with no one watching. No one watching the replay will know that. That's when people feel included and connected. It is when you're having a conversation. It's a weird concept because it's like, “No one is there. I'm talking to a dot.” It might be weird in the beginning, but if you think about it like the dot is somebody in your lounge room and have somebody's face in mind and talk to your customer avatar, like those marketing-type terms, if you know what they are, like talk to one person. Don't talk to everybody and say words like, “What are your thoughts around that? I'd love to know.” Talk to that one person.
Make it conversational, not like you're reading a script.
Make it conversational and talk with people on the video, not at people because a lot of people turn up and try to teach. Information is all around us. If we want to learn something, we'll go to Google and go, “How do I blah, blah, blah.” People can be taught stuff all the time. Having an actual genuine conversation with somebody lands completely differently. Those are a couple of tips around that.
The more seasoned entrepreneurs who maybe they're well versed with video and they're totally comfortable with it. They're more than happy to get on video, but I’m noticing a shift. I'm noticing this shift in the market. I don't know if you are, but I'd love to pick your brain about it. I'm seeing a shift where the whole world is changing. It has been changing rapidly for the last few years. That's no surprise to anyone, but I'm seeing a shift culturally where attention spans are getting shorter and focus is disappearing.
People have a hard time focusing on one thing. I can't tell you how often I'm talking to people and they're like, “I signed up for five challenges last week and three programs and I haven't done anything with any of them. It's like, “Whoa.” What are your top tips on how to still grab attention in this world where there's a lack of focus and attention span out there?
A couple of things around that. 1) If you don't already have an established audience, don't talk too long on video because they're going to tune out. If you have been around for a while and you're watching this training, you can get away with it because you have a captive audience if you have an audience. I'll talk for 20 to 30 minutes on every one of my live videos. Every time I'm like, “Have I gone that long again? What the hell?” I read all the comments and I’m like, “I've talked too long. I have to get off because I'm mindful.”
I am extremely grateful for someone to spend half an hour with me, and I try to shorten them. One tip is it depends on how well-known you are on social media. If you're not very well known, talk less because that’s exactly what you're talking about. Try to do longer than probably a minute or two. You don't want to get on and go, “Blah blah blah,” and get off because the algorithm can't do anything with that. That's going nowhere. You haven't even given anyone the opportunity to jump on with you.
It’s somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes. There is that. Gauge the level of audience that you have as to how long you talk. The other thing is not related to the actual live video, but it's a very important skill. It's the description of what you put on your live, particularly for the replay viewer. The one thing you don't want to do when you do live video is go live without a description. If you go live on Facebook, there are two spots. There's a title and a description. Fill out both because some people fill out the title, which is what people see after the fact. When somebody is scanning somebody's videos, they'll see the title.
Personal Branding: One thing you don't want to do when you do a live video is go live without a description.
If you don't fill out a description, the video appears with no wording. Some people will put the title and go, “I'll put a title,” but the title is what appears underneath the video after the fact. There's no description. You have to fill out both. People are busy. We have about six seconds to grab someone's attention. It's not what you're talking about. It's the description that will stop the scroll. 1) If you don't write anything at all, why would they watch you? There's no reason to. It's a face. If you're going like that or something like that, they might watch that. This not going to happen off the bat, but if you can learn the skill quicker rather than later.
It's putting something with a bit of curiosity on the title like, “This is absolutely something that's going to change your business. This is the biggest piece of advice I ever got.” You don't allude necessarily to what you're talking about. You leave some curiosity so people will go, “What's she or he talking about? I better catch that.” You give people a reason to watch is basically what I'm saying. You need to give people a reason to watch because there are too many other pieces of content and information.
We wake up in the morning, we open our phone and our email, and have the radio on, or whatever. It's information overload. We have to learn to stand out from the crowd. That will come a lot from how you are doing that. It’s the description and a bit of copywriting. If you say, “Five tips to be a better version of yourself,” is that going to be attractive for somebody to watch? Learn that skill early with a bit of copywriting skills and curiosity.
Humans are curious by nature, especially if you have a title and a description that begs curiosity, “The tip that I thought was total BS, but it changed my life.” It would be like, “First of all, what made you think it was BS? How did it change your life?”
What I like to teach people to do or make them more aware of is when you're consuming social media, reading your emails, and looking at content all around, you look at it with a marketing hat, as well as a consumer's hat. Everybody scrolls and gets emails every day. When you see something that’s like, “I wonder what that is,” what were the words that made you think that? Write them down. Have a high level of awareness of what attracts your attention because that might be a clue as to a headline or how something was written that you can use in your social media headlines, descriptions, and stuff like that moving forward. Have a high level of awareness of what grabs your attention and stops your scroll because that might give you some clues as to how you could use that for yourself.
That's smart. As you're building out this powerful personal brand and it starts accumulating, it's almost like an online reputation. It doesn't disappear. It takes a long time to build, but then it can also last the test of time. What percentage of the content that you're putting out is video versus other types of content? Do you have an ideal mix that you found that people enjoy?
I'll give you a little bit of a backstory to that. I started with two live videos a week when I was learning. That's what I was told. I'm coachable. I'm like, “I'll do it. I don't like it. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'll do it,” then when I got some people watching, and I'll backtrack for a second. Two live videos a week. One was on personal development because it was easy. One was starting to develop my brand like attraction marketing, social media, and things like that. I was more comfortable talking about personal development. It must have shown and come through on my videos because guess what audience I was starting to attract?
I'll never forget in my small country town here, I went to a 40th, and this is a few years ago. One of the moms from school was like, “I love your videos. I watch all your videos. I've learned much from you about being a better person,” and whatever. I'm like, “I'm attracting the wrong audience.” These people are never going to opt into what I was offering with attraction marketing. I had to shift that a little bit. Now I still talk about personal development once a week, but I'm always relating it back to the reason that helps us build a business online. I'm always relating back to what I'm doing for a living type of thing. 1) It's the positioning of it, so the videos that you do and what you are focusing on. I did two a week.
Even though I stuck with two a week for a while, I changed my language around that one and always related it back to business, not just personal development for the sake of personal development. When I started to get some viewers, a few, not many, I thought, “I'm going to up my game and do three.” I did three live videos a week. I started to get some traction and then I did five. I was doing five live videos a week for about two years.
Clearly, it helped you build this downline of over 4,000 people.
It brought me the following. I have over 17,000 people following me on my business page. It helped. Do I think we need to do that to be successful? I don't. Where it started to impact me, I have a couple of teenage boys and in my time zone in Australia, I don't go live on a Monday because it's Sunday in the US and Canada. I leave people alone on the weekends. I go live in Australia from Tuesday to Saturday. Saturday is Saturday morning sport and the time I was going live was when my son was playing football.
He's probably thinking like, “Pay attention to me. This is family time.”
What still hurts me is I've been going to my son's football game every week for at least a year and a half. I stopped going live five times a week. He still asked me, the season's finished, “Are you coming to my game today?” It's not a given that I would go. Even though I've been going regularly and I'm like, “Why do you even need to ask? I go to your games every week.” I'm not saying that to him literally, but what he is remembering is that I wasn't there a lot of the time, or I was there but I would sit in the car and disappear and go live, and then go back out to the ground, but I missed pretty much.
Even that period of time that you missed stood out in his mind. You know what's interesting? Whatever hits people emotionally, sticks with him the longest. That can work in your favor or against you. Here's the interesting thing I noticed when I was building a personal brand online, I was consistently putting out content. I was being my true and authentic self. I was doing my thing. It took a long time, but I built up a brand and a reputation.
I went through this phase of my life where I was moving. It was chaotic. Things were going on. I was testing all these different things in my business and social media. I said, “I'm not going to post anything for three months. I'm going to basically let the algorithm go cold and build it back up to show people that the fundamental things will always work.” I purposely do nothing. It was interesting because I saw someone about 2.5 months into that 3-month silence and they were like, “I love your stuff. I see it all the time. You're always positive. I look forward to it all the time. I wanted to say thank you.”
I hadn't posted anything, but because the stuff I had been posting before hit them emotionally, even though I had gone dark, they felt like I was still there. I'm seeing the flip side of that with your son. You missed a few little pieces of a few games because it hit him emotionally, eighteen months later, he's still asking, “Are you going to come to my game?”
It hits hard. This is the one thing I do love about social media. A lot of us will talk about, consistency, authenticity, and all the rest of it. Life does get in the way sometimes. Some people freak out like, “I can't do this.” Have some grace with yourself and whatever is going on in your life because social media can be very forgiving. Most of us will always say, “Make sure you're consistent because if you disappear, they'll start following somebody else.”
They may be but if you did a good job when you were doing it in the first place and you're connected with human connection, they'll come back. Social media is forgiving like what you’ve experienced, but we'll always harp on consistency. People who are more consistent like I was get the results. After that, I was like, “No more.” I dropped Saturdays and then I started doing Clubhouse regularly on a Wednesday in my time zone. I'm like, “I don't expect people to listen to me for an hour on Clubhouse and then an hour and a half later, listen to me. That's a bit much.”
I dropped Wednesdays because I concentrate on Clubhouse. I'm back to three times a week. I am religious like that. Some people say about live, “I can't find the right time. I'm inconsistent.” I pick a time and make that a commitment. I don't make appointments at that time of the day because that's when I go live. That's my commitment to my audience because my business is important too.
You honor that time, protect that time, and take it seriously.
If someone is like, “I should get started. How many should I do?” or anything like that, what I would say to that person is to get started and get consistent with just one. Start and do one, but what I would recommend with that one, it's like people's favorite TV show. They know what night it's on and what time it's on. Do live that way and label it. Call it Monday Motivation, Tuesday Tip, Wednesday Wisdom, or Thursday Thought, and do it at the same time on the same day every week. Make it into your show.
When we turn up more regularly and more consistently, then people will turn up more regularly with us. That's exactly what happened when I decided to up my game and choose the same time. It doesn't work for a lot of people. My UK people are asleep when I go live because of the way our time zones are. I know they catch the replay and I acknowledge them. I'm like, “For my UK viewers, I'm sorry. You don't get to catch.” I know they're there.
If you do a good job, people will catch the replay anyway. You can't keep everybody happy when you have a global audience. That's your starting point for someone. Pick a day and a time, and do your absolute best to be consistent with that. Call or label it something so people get to know, “It's Adrienne's Monday Motivation or something she said this week.” It helps you grow that audience. When you are more consistent, your audience will show up more consistently.
Do you go live through the social media app or do you like using any scheduling or automation tools? I know there are some platforms that will allow you to go live to multiple places at once and all kinds of fancy stuff is out there. What's your favorite?
I think when anyone starts, you go directly through the platform. I started going live when I first started getting a little bit smarter. I wanted to show people's comments on the screen. This isn't any endorsement for any pieces of software. I don't get paid for any of that. I'm just sharing my experience. I started using Be.Live TV, then StreamYard came out. I use StreamYard every live because it enables me to schedule them in advance so people know what I'm talking about and when I'm going live. It enables me to show comments on the screen and people love being acknowledged.
It enables me to put banners down the bottom and play my little video intro. As you grow, you grow into those things, but why I love StreamYard is most people can get away with the free version. It's a free piece of software. It makes you a little bit more professional and pulling somebody's screen. Acknowledging your audience is huge. People love to be heard. To be able to put somebody's comment up on the screen for a little free piece of software. If you have a logo, logo is unimportant on social media, but if you have one, you can put it up. I do recommend StreamYard because it's user-friendly.
I've used it and I agree. I love it for all the same reasons. It's a very powerful tool and it's pretty darn easy to use.
People say, “I don't know how to use it.” It's like when somebody does a reel for the first time, “I don’t know what to do.” It's like riding a bike. You have to learn the skill. It's okay.
The minute you learn, it feels like no big deal.
I have the paid version of StreamYard now. When I go live, I go live on my business page, my free group, and YouTube at the same time. I have my phone next to me. I go live on Instagram at the same time as well. It's not ideal because you are looking away a bit, but I acknowledge it. It's like, “For those watching on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube here.” I'm acknowledging it. I'm waiting for the day when Instagram will allow third-party platforms to integrate like that. They don't play ball with StreamYard or Be.Live TV. I'm not sure what their problem is, but I'm looking forward to the day when Instagram will be connected to streaming so I don’t have to do that anymore.
I'm sure there are some people who love catching you on Instagram because it's a little bit more raw. Maybe that makes it more fun for them. That's a smart tip. Why not have the phone up right next to where you're going live?
Personal Branding: When you get the branding piece sorted out and you're going live regularly, what comes from there is content.
I have a little swing thing where I put my phone in there and I'm looking up a little bit. If somebody pops in and says hello, I can see the comments and I'll acknowledge them.
I love that tip. Can you give us some examples of clients you've worked with that you've helped them get started with building their personal brand using video? What types of results are possible? What have you witnessed with your own clients? What can happen when you truly leverage the power of a personal brand?
Students get results when they are defined in their personal brand.
It's amazing. Something I'm passionate about, as well as video, is personal branding. I have a whole separate course. I'm currently running my 29th round of that course. It transforms people. When people know who they're serving, what they stand for, and how they can help people, and they show up online and incorporate live video with that, the content flows, the personality grows, the audience attracts, and influence builds. Once you get an audience, then you get results. The live video helps to grow your personal brand. It can help speed it up.
I see people transform. I've done it for four years now. I do free video challenges. I am about to start another one. People are freaking out about live video and like, “I don't know if I can do it.” It's like, “You can. It's fear. It's your ego. You're worried about what people are going to think about you. Think about how you can serve people. Think about, ‘Who can I help today?’ Change your mindset around that.” Three days in, they're like, “What was I freaking out about? This is fun.” Fifteen days later, they're like, “I love this. I have all this good engagement. I have all this feedback.”
That propels them to get more focused on a personal brand. One can feed the other. They don't necessarily come in a particular order. I see them grow a following and build a team because they're attracting people to them. Sometimes that grows into multiple streams of income because once you have an audience, you can expand and do different things. I have eleven different streams of income. Most of them are related to what I do, but you see it on people's faces. You see it in the audience that grows, the influence that grows, the confidence that grows.
When people have confidence, that's all the difference. They'll have conversations that they wouldn't have had before. They'll sell something that they were too nervous to sell before. They'll offer out something they were too nervous to offer out before. Growing teams in network marketing, growing multiple income streams if somebody wants to grow into that, all of that flows from building that presence online. My motto is “You have to be a human before a marketer.” In other industries, when you've created the thing, you own the thing, it's your brand, and it's your thing. Go and sell because you're the only one that has it in the world. In this industry of home-based, direct selling, and social selling, we don't own the thing.
We're all selling the same thing. We have to stand out.
That's where the personal brand comes in. You have to have your own thing. You have to learn to stand out from the crowd. You have to have your own personality behind that. You have to find your own voice. A personal brand is finding that voice, but you put live video with that as well. Now you're finding your voice because you are sharing your thoughts, the education, and the value. Everyone knows we need to lead with value. Building a personal brand enables you to build on that value and build that confidence you can build an audience so then you have the know, like, and trust factor up here. That's when people won't be afraid to reach out to you and send you a message. I get this all the time, “I've been following you for months,” and I have no idea who they are because they've done it quietly.
They've been silently watching.
By building a personal brand, you're giving some people something to focus on. Some people are here, there, and everywhere. They don't have a brand to stand behind. If you are here, there, and everywhere, so are your audience and your results. For anyone who is a little bit over the place, I would encourage you to maybe think about your personal brand and whether that's defined enough. If that brand does not live the life of your dreams, that's not a brand. Especially in money-making opportunities and network marketing, a lot of people spruce that like, “I need freedom. I have freedom.” That's not a brand. It's not defined enough. People don't know who you're talking to, what you're teaching, and what value you can bring to them.
Those things are where you learn about personal branding. It's like, “Who am I talking to? Who is my target market? What do I stand for? What problems can I solve for people?” That's where you develop the brand and that's when the results come. That's when I see students get results. It is when they get defined in their personal brand. They know what they stand for. They find their own voice. Bring in live video, show up, and share good valuable information that's related to that brand. Here's something to answer your question. When people say, “I have no idea what to talk about on live video,” my comeback to that is I don't think you know what your personal brand is.
If you knew what your brand was, you'd have tons of ideas. You'd know exactly who you are, who you help, and how you help them. If you know those three things, you'll have loads of ideas. What you've observed, and I think this is interesting and hopefully encouraging for the audience, especially if they haven't been using video yet, that consistently person after person, you see that after they are consistently going live for only two weeks. They're seeing more engagement, their following increase, their belief increase, and they're starting to get clarity on what they think their brand is. They're starting to dig into those levels where it's clicking for them in as little as two weeks.
It blows me away. I spoke on stage in Vegas back in July and someone came up to me and said, “You have no idea how you've changed my life.” It's almost embarrassing. It’s through a free fourteen-day video challenge because he was like, “I never had the confidence to do it before. You gave me the technical skills. You gave me the content guidelines. You made it easy. People showed up, they watched me, and I got engagements. That gave me confidence. Now I have to find my brand. You have changed my life.” I'm like, “No, I'm not. You changed your life.”
“I just gave you a couple of tools, but you did the work.”
I see that all the time, maybe not to that extent, but I see versions of that every single time I do these video challenges. It's fourteen days. Some people get it over three days. They're like, “This is fun. People are showing up and telling me, ‘I love watching you live.’” That is enough for somebody to go, “That's pretty cool. I'm not too bad at this.”
“I'm going to keep doing it.” Consistency is what gets them the return on the results.
You can't help but grow your skills in branding, copywriting, and all the rest of it when you keep on doing it because you get better at what you're doing then you get more focused and intentional on what you're talking about.
It starts to feel fun.
I'm a big believer in that. In all my video challenges, I say to people, “If you're not having fun, something is wrong. My one condition here is that you have to have fun.” You'll wake up one morning and say, “I don't want to go live.” There will be days when you don't feel like it. Have fun with it, and tell people, “I'm in a live video challenge. I didn't want to do the live today. I don't feel like it. I have a headache.”
Share it. Be real.
If you're not having fun, something's wrong.
For those in the audience who are ready to build a powerful personal brand and they're realizing, “I do want to get started with video, but I want to do it right from the very beginning.” I know you have a free gift that can help them to venture down that pathway. Would you like to tell us a little bit about it?
I've created a guide by doing over four years of video challenges over and over again. You get to see patterns of where people make the most common mistakes. I've put together a guide with the fifteen most common mistakes that I see people make with live video. I've mapped them all out so somebody can get all of that out of the way and the things not to do. It's little things. I'll give you one example. When you go live on Facebook, when it's directly through the platform, especially if they're a friend of yours, not 100% of the time but Facebook sometimes tells you who's watching.
“So and so popped on.”
“Rachel is watching now.” Rachel hasn't made a comment, but Facebook has said, “Rachel's watching.” Rachel is somebody that you went to school with who's intrigued about what you're doing in network marketing, but they don't want you to know that they're watching. The person goes, “Rachel, I haven't seen you for ages. It's good to see you watching.” Rachel didn't know that you knew that she was watching. It freaked her out and she left. The exact same thing happened to me. I jumped on this guy's video that I did not like. He'd pissed and ripped me off. I told him a different story. I jumped on, “What's he talking about?” He went, “Hi, Helen.” I went, “Turn it off.” I was out of there in a second and I've never watched a live video of his. I know what it's like on the receiving end. It's such an innocent thing for somebody to do on live video.
They don't realize it's a mistake. They're trying to engage with their audience.
They're not all as dramatic as that, but my guide is full of the fifteen most common mistakes that I see people make in live videos. Let's get those out of the way. Let’s get the mistakes out of the way and give you the best headstart. That's what that guide is all about.
I love that like. Let's skip all of those potential pitfalls and go right to the good stuff so people can be great right out of the gates.
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About Helen Martin
Helen resides in a small coastal town in South Australia with her Husband Paul and 2 teenage boys. Helen’s gone from being a General Manager in the Corporate World to building multiple streams of income from home.
Helen has Accounting qualifications, a Bachelor of Business majoring in Marketing and went on to study Law. However, although Helen has worked most of her life in the Corporate World, these days it’s the online world and social media marketing that’s captured her attention.
Over the last few years, Helen has become a multiple six figure earner, has mentored hundreds of online marketing students around the globe, has built a Network Marketing Organisation of over 4,500 Team Members and Customers and founded her Online Crew Brand and Coaching Community. She also recently became a Number 1 Best Selling Author for her book ‘Journey to Success’.
