What does it take to create a magnetic monster brand in 2020?
That’s the same question I asked myself before starting down the path of discovering how to become an influencer. Every monster brand has monster influence by showcasing their true inherent value to the world. It becomes a good obsession because it leads you down the path of self-awareness.
But there’s a lot more to it than just hitting a record button. Or even putting filters on a picture with hashtags. It’s actually a deeply personal journey and should be treated with the utmost diligence. You won’t see results if you do not start with a deep foundational knowledge of these 10 success essentials.
It’s time to stop wondering and get the 411. I’ve outlined a very simple staircase formula for you to be able to go from 0 to 10. This will get you to take the leap into being the influencer you dream of being. It’s not rocket science, but I have to warn you, it’s a lot of hard work.
1) Define your leadership
Conveniently, if you desire to be an influencer and create, you already have a vision to work with. Vision is the single most important thing to bring any abstract idea into existence. But to commit yourself daily to this vision, you need a mission. And to have the force of mission, you need a purpose.
A purpose will give you the centered place within yourself to make sense of what your leadership style is. It will ground what you do and inform your mission.
A mission will keep you committed to conquering the path that leads you to your vision. Every influencer needs a mission that guides their actions towards this dream and into the future.
You need to know what you’re committed to if you want to step into becoming an influencer.
To even begin this process of what you would commit to, look at what you’re willing to do. Are you willing to work nights and weekends to get there? How about sharing your experiences that will be valuable to others? Can you push past the pain from negative judgment you might get? How far do you want to go to reach your influencer heights? Think about what it would really take from you to reach this big picture vision in your mind.
But if you’re stuck with how to define your mission to become an influencer, try this. Think about your values. What are they? What do they even mean to you? Have they stuck with you through the test of time? The answers to these questions will give you a grounded basis for your mission to shine out from you.
2) Understand your business
I always say that a business is just what keeps you busy. And if you’re a busy person, then you most likely have a thriving business. And if you don’t officially have one registered with your state, you can still operate with growth in mind.
But only if you learn how to manipulate time.
This is one of the most important things to do if you want to be productive and produce more. Influencers are out there in the world producing in a strategic way to attain new heights.
If you want to produce more, start with a time audit. Look at where your time is going and how that’s impacting your productivity. Are you wasting time with things that are neither important nor urgent? Do you find yourself in constant react mode and doing only urgent tasks? Be careful of falling into this trap.
You might find yourself busy for no good reason at all. All the while exposing yourself to either burning out or zapping your time. Reclaim your time by scheduling time to do things that are less urgent but highly important. These can be things like resting and dreaming or envisioning the bigger picture. It also could be working on that new book you’ve always wanted to write. Or a series of videos that you’ve wanted to share.
Whatever is the most important thing is, put a deadline on it. If you don’t, it can stay on the back burner. I bet it’s already full of one-shot wonder ideas that never amounted to anything. Keep a healthy balance of things on your plate that inspire you. But aim to get them done as soon as possible. This will not only improve your output in becoming an influencer. It will give you immense growth as an individual. An individual who has mastered their time.
3) Know your audience
What is the single most important thing if you want to speak to anyone and influence them?
It’s knowing who you are talking to.
The last thing you want is to be talking to no one because you’re trying to talk to everyone. And you can clearly run into this messy category if you don’t seek out who your audience truly is. They are the single most important thing when it comes to being a true influencer. They are the validator of your mission and the output of your message.
So how do you find them?
If you’re a new influencer, the best way to get a pulse of your audience is by starting with your own network. Who do you already talk to that you provide value for? What kind of value do you provide to them? Is it irresistible enough for them to subscribe, opt-in, or buy? If the answer is no, you really have to work on your offer and how it relieves your audience’s pain. Does it increase the amount they gain as they walk down their journey? It not only has to save them but must give them value as well.
Your audience is on their own journey and looking to take that next step. But it’s up to you to help them with the first step. In order to grab your audience and hook them, you need to call them and their pain out.
You’ll need to provide a valuable solution to what they are searching for or didn’t even know they needed. Being in a constant conversation with identifying and anticipating your audience’s wants and needs is what will make you a very successful influencer.
4) Build your brand
This is where you really put a lot of effort into knowing what makes a brand “big”. You can definitely be big in your own way. But you have to know what kind of experiences you want to give.
Learning how to give the best experience is what makes a brand valuable and memorable. Better experiences produce more of what we want to manifest. Building a magnetic monster brand always attracts more of what we want.
What’s the way to start to begin by building our brand?
Take stock of what a 5-star experience would be if you delivered one. If you’ve worked on your mission and business so far and really crystalized your value to your audience, then this will naturally unfold for you. Taking that 5-star standard and placing it on every audience touchpoint is a necessary exercise to do at this stage. But you won’t know what these are until you go through the first three stages.
Once you know what experience you want to give to your audience, then it’s time to look at your personality. Is your personality the kind that would produce even more returns for you? You might have thought that your personality was the first thing when it comes to becoming an influencer. It’s actually the fourth. If you don’t have steps one to three down pat, you’ll notice a rate of diminishing returns. And subsequently, a halt in growing your brand and influence.
5) Work your sales
If you’ve ever heard of the “come up,” it’s a term that’s used for those who know how to work momentum into their process. And the only way to build momentum is by playing the numbers game while serving 5 star experiences. If you’ve ever heard of this, you’ll know the magic this creates.
By repeatedly doing something that works, you start to see results over time. But where it’s different than the compound effect of investing is in its practices. Once you’ve built the foundation from steps one to four, you already have an interrelated understanding of your own internal communications. But here is where you actually put it all to practice.
No one is good at sales from the get-go. But they can flourish if they know what the goal is with the actions they repetitively take. Know who you are reaching out to and why. They should relate to your mission and have something to do with your audience. This is what creates a strategic alliance and partnership. And it’s meant to validate and support all the hard work you’ve done so far.
It’s best to create a list of all the things you need to create to support your sales journey.
You’ll need more content around what it is you want to talk about. You’ll want to participate and engage with people who are in the same sphere as you are. And they’ll want to connect with you as well.
If you work this magic, you will have successfully built momentum for yourself. You can definitely stop here and ride the wave of what you created. Many other influencers who came before you have done this. But if you want to be a part of the 21st century branded influencers, you’ll want to know these last 5 essentials.
6) Envision the digital landscape
Most influencers don’t know this before they start their journey. But it’s important to think about it to crystallize your influencer needs. Look at the last 10-20 years. You will see that there have been massive amounts of growth and societal change due to the Internet. So to keep up with the way the landscape is changing, you will want to look at creating a home for yourself on the Internet.
A home on the Internet is basically your website.
If you think it through, you will start to understand how you want people to come to your website. And also how they leave it. Think about creating a website to host your content so people can find a reason to go there. How will you keep in touch with your visitors? By creating an email subscriber list, you can reach out to your audience and supporters from time to time with important updates.
Now it’s important to understand how directly related this step is to your first five steps.
You should know by now what incentives people will want. If you give them the right incentives to come to your website, it will make them stay longer. Not everyone will stay and that’s a good thing. If you’ve niched down properly at this point, the next step is a self-hosted content website.
Being able to manage your thoughts into content assets is a 3rd-century concept. Building them digitally where you can attract people to convert and subscribe is a 21st-century possibility. This is the unique and amazing time we live in. And we need to realize that we must take advantage to build out our ideas at scale. But only if we implement the right steps.
7) Scope out the competition
This step is often left out of the mix. But the process of identifying competitors is one of the most important things to do in order to push past your limitations. By knowing who they are, your competitors will lead you to not only getting better but also positioning yourself properly.
Most influencers won’t even acknowledge who they are in competition with. They’re even more afraid of looking at their own strengths and weaknesses. No one is perfect. And now is a perfect time to realize why you’re special and stick out in the valuable way you do.
Identify your own strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats that lay ahead of you. By doing this exercise, you can begin to see how you’re in a far better position than the one you thought you previously had. If you’re noticing some gaps, you can begin to fill them by seeing how your opportunities can mitigate your weaknesses.
Do not forget to do this with your competitors. Look at them closely. Can you see a common denominator?
The goal here is to acclimate yourself to looking at the big picture. You do not have to compare yourself to death where you see nothing but your limitations. If you do this step right, you will see the gaps that others leave and you can fill.
This process will help you to begin to see yourself as significantly different in the market. It not only reestablishes your mission but solidifies your niche. This clarification gives you that much more leverage when it comes to speaking.
8) Clarify your message
Maybe one of the most important components to becoming an influencer is making sure their message is crystal clear. Unclear messages can lead to confused audiences, and confused audiences leave. To keep your audience engaged, know what you’re going to tell them. Leverage your differentiator and talk about why it’s important to know this.
It’s always a good idea to know your keywords that will become the cornerstone of your content. If you don’t know your keywords, think about what your idea consists of. What are the main parts of it? Can you say more about each keyword? You most likely can.
Engaging in this process helps to siphon any unnecessary ideas in your head that won’t relate to your audience or your direct message to them.
And the best way to hold their attention after you’ve got it?
It’s by placing yourself dead in the middle of a tense subject matter. Look at the most extreme things being taught on the subject and ask yourself if you can place yourself in the middle of it. If you can, then you’ve successfully found a way through the woods where a majority of people will follow. Most people do not want to sign on to one extreme and will want to rest comfortably between two polarities.
9) Refine your content game
How do you best express yourself? Is it through writing, photography, video, audio, art, or some combination? If you can define your medium, you can then begin to work on getting better at your craft.
Every message needs an outlet to get to the people, and large brands use a variety of omnichannel approaches. But for the budding influencer, it’s going to be very important that you define what that content type is. It’s what you will become recognized for.
People love consistency.
They love knowing they can come back and see the same thing and rely on a person for their standards. Your standards are your brand’s 5-star experience and you will have already worked that out by now. So in order for you to win at becoming an influencer as you’re jumping into the game, it’s imperative you pick one and run with it.
Once you’ve mastered your craft, it’s time to add more things to your list one by one. This way, you can build a slow organic growth of sharing your message and your beliefs with your audience. And entertain them along the way.
Refining this process, though, takes time. And time is something you must set aside every day or every week to become a master at. People do not reward unmastered content creators unless they’re providing immense value. But more people sign on quickly once you put in a little investment and effort into making good stuff.
This becomes your bread and butter. And all of a sudden it becomes the style you are most known and loved for.
10) Raise your presentation standards
Before you think you’ve got everything squared away, it’s important you raise your standards.
What you previously thought was a good presentation is now a cliché. I know you’ve spent a lot of hard work going through the prior steps, but you need to continuously elevate.
Presentation is the packaging of your brand and value offering. Without you being able to improve upon yourself, you will definitely not be able to adapt to the times. We all run the risk of growing rusty as we develop in maturity. But this important essential to becoming an influencer is what keeps you in the game once you get into it.
To effectively raise your standards, know how you perceive your current standards now.
If you looked at all the work you’ve done from steps one through nine, you’ll see there are many accomplishments in conquering each step. But now look at the parts that you wish you could improve upon. Are there any areas that you can currently control to improve so that it makes your idea more valuable?
This mechanism creates an effect. One of active goal setting and self-improvement as you progress. Not only in getting your idea out there but making sure it makes sense to others.
The pitch is another way to put it. When you can pitch and catch people’s attention, you’re in a different ball game. You can then go from getting your idea out there to officially building it. And this means you’re bringing what was just a figment of your imagination into reality. This deserves applause, creator.
Take the leap
So if you’ve made it this far, you might be wondering, where do I start first?
I suggest you go in order and start at number one. Each step builds off the learning experience prior to it. And the reason for this is to help you build a solid foundation on which to grow your idea.
In order for you to get anywhere near to building, you must first get out there. Put in the practice and the reps that it takes to solidify your idea into reality. If you want to be an influencer and jump into the game, these essentials are what it takes.
When it comes to becoming an influencer, you must be willing to do this. You must not only share a part of yourself but improve your processes. Life is one big process. And if you can improve your understanding of yourself, your customers, and everything around you, you will have successfully stepped into the arena.
Need a hand?
Sometimes this kind of work requires a lot of time and energy and can zap your resources. If that’s the case for you, consider getting some guidance.
For those seeking to end their years of a foggy mind and get what they truly want can try this. Take a look at my exclusive 12-week program called The Monster Agenda. This program helps you get the coaching and consulting you need to decode your value, strategize your niche, and map out your influence.
I outline your path forward so you come out winning on top. And don’t worry. I’ll never leave you with a half-baked plan or a half-baked idea. If you think this is for you, check out The Monster Agenda (previously called 10 Strategy Calls).
