Can your audience separate you from the competition?
When you post content to your blog or social networks, are you easily identifiable?
Without a doubt, creating differentiation is tough. While success online has many factors, one thing is for sure. You must create a memorable brand.
I recently had the opportunity to join Robert Ryan and Carolyn Capern on “Blogging Warfare” to discuss the art of standing out in a sea of noise.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner, finding your voice online can feel overwhelming.
Below you will find a list of ten ways that will help you own your industry or niche and stand out online.
Tips to Help You Stand Out Online
1. Don’t Speak to Everyone
Want to know a secret? Not everyone is your perfect client.
Whether you’re a small business owner or online marketer, knowing your niche and speaking to it will save you time, money and a whole lot of headaches.
Why? Because speaking the language of your target audience means you tailor your message to a specific audience.
I challenge you to stop shouting to an audience of none and connect with an audience of one.
2. Identify Your Customers Problem Points
Do you know the challenges your potential clients face? What struggles are they dealing with on a daily basis?
Identify your customers pain points and what problems you can solve.
Get into the mind of your customer and understand how your product or service can make their life easier or better.
3. Know Your Market
Once you get to know your potential market, you can better craft your content. Take your knowledge, expertise, and experience and share it in a way that resonates with your target market.
Understand your community and also the platform. What you share on your blog might be different than what you share on Instagram.
4. Get Back to Basics
As the online world has evolved, so have marketing tactics. Every day there’s a new tool, application or strategy to implement.
Get off the roller coaster and get back to basics. Choose the top one hundred people that will dramatically impact your business. Now connect with them in a real and meaningful way.
From there, keep it simple. Stay in touch, get to know what they like, need and enjoy. Blogging and social media doesn’t have to be difficult. Keep it simple, focused and streamlined.
5. Create Meaningful Conversations
Want to know what really matters to your audience? Ask them and then listen (really listen) to their answers.
Creating a client for life is not about the collecting numbers or business cards. Likewise, building relationships online is not about gaming the system to generate numbers or results.
It’s about making meaningful connections. It’s about building relationships and giving without the expectation of receiving something in return.
The bottom line, when you focus on creating meaningful conversations, you connect with the right people.
6. Speak Your Customers Language
While you might enjoy using industry jargon, your audience doesn’t want to hear it. In fact, using jargon-laden terms and phrases can actually turn your readers off.
Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire’s Vice President of Social Media, contends that jargon isn’t just boring, it’s risky. Not only do you immediately lack credibility, but also appear anti-social. So, stop it.
Strike the jargon from your vocabulary and talk from your heart. Say what you mean and stop relying on boring, overused words that do nothing more than put your audience to sleep.
7. Don’t Use Fancy Fonts
Integrating visuals into your marketing creates brand consistency. It also connects your offline and online marketing creating a seamless look and feel.
If you haven’t determined your brand message and voice, ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you fun and do you give off that vibe in your conversations and content or are you serious and professional at all times?
Now translate those qualities along with your mission, vision and values into a visual format.
While visuals can capture attention, they can also hurt your brand if they’re not done right. Don’t get crazy with the colors, pictures and fonts. My rule of thumb is to always keep it clean, concise and simple.
8. Monetize Your Blog
As a blogger, monetization is typically at the top of your to-do list.
If you’re eager to make a living from your blog, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
What steps should you begin to take immediately?
- Know on your market, keywords and topics.
- Have a clear call to action.
- Understand your marketing funnel. Your audience reads a blog or social media post, what’s the next step?
- Get social and determine what social networks will help you reach your target market.
- Build your list and take your list seriously.
- Take yourself seriously. If you don’t own your expertise, your audience definitely won’t.
9. Focus on Quality Over Quantity
There’s no hidden message behind this one. Focus on producing quality content and not on the quantity you can pump out.
Just as in business, you never want to over promise and under deliver. Know how much content you can commit to producing. Create a content calendar and plan accordingly.
Quality work stems from creativity and creativity stems from a prepared mind.
Know your audience, know your topics, know your posting strategy.
10. Don’t Lose Momentum
Ask yourself one question: what do you have more of – time or money? Now determine where your time is best spent on a daily basis.
If it’s not on creating content or images for your blog or social networks then give it away.
There are amazingly talented professionals that do content creation and graphic design.
Final Thoughts
Creating differentiation and standing out online takes commitment.
If you want to grow your reach and your presence, focus on the steps that will take you there. Tackle one at a time and keep kicking that ball forward.
What can you do today that will make a difference for your business tomorrow?
10 Strategies to Help You Stand Out Online – An infographic by the team at Robert Ryan
Number 9 is spot on! Quality over Quantity always wins.
I think adding your personality to everything you do helps you to stand out from the rest. After all, individuals are unique. People also want a personal interaction with you. This is why YouTube Gurus have made so much money and have went on to start multi-million dollar companies. You are your brand.
Only #5, 6 and 8 are strategies. The rest are best practices. My 2¢.
Hello; I followed you here from a post on Lorraine Reguly’s site where we were both mentioned. Thought I should stop by. You make several good points here especially about knowing what your resources are and using your time and money wisely. I am getting to that point where my time is squeezed so much that I am looking at hiring more of the work. thanks for sharing, max
Hi Rebekah
You gave some great tips here. I think the first one was particularly important because I think a lot of people have this urge to just try and reach and appeal to as many people as possible to up their chances of as many people ‘biting’ as possible. But this approach rarely works. The idea of targeting and really connecting with the people most likely to want what you are offering is definitely the more effective strategy.
Thanks for sharing this Rebekah! Awesome tips! LOVE the infographic at the end – a great comprehensive overview
I was nodding my head all along, then stopped at the ‘stop collecting people.’ Very well said. It’s not all sales and ROI; it’s about people, relationships, what we can contribute. If a tweet brightens someone’s day, that’s a win in my book.
Your example about screaming about the business; when I’m networking (online or off) I’ve started answering the ‘what do you do’ question w/ a personal joke about travel, food and wine, or what I’m watching on TV. It’s a good ice breaker, plus it’s how we’d act in normally, right. 🙂
I hit all these pretty regularly, though I still need to share more thoughts vs scheduling shares. I do make it a point to actually look at the feed, what others share, start or join a conversation. Need to do that more, reach out more, find my targets yet stay open to others. Always, it’s about the balance. FWIW.
Hi Rebekah,
Wow. In a post of golden nuggets I found perhaps the greatest one, and one I’d never seen at that; build a list of the top 100 pros in your niche and build bonds with them.
Hey, that’s what I do 😉 Excellent, spot on, dead on advice, and if there were 1 takeaway I would tell people to grasp, and to run with, it is this. I love it Rebekah because I literally build my day around this concept.
I meet folks on Triberr and through social media channels, but I’ve bookmarked about 70 or more pros like yourself and I check in daily or every few days to share their content and add value to their blogs through commenting.
This morning Chris Brogan tweeted my new eBook link. I was floored. I didn’t ask him to, but I stood out to him by engaging him through his newsletter emails and also, I commented on his blog religiously for many, many folks.
So since I stood out to him through caring about him, and helping him out, he helped me stand out. It’s not every day a NY Times best-selling author tweets out your stuff, right? 😉
Again Rebekah, what tremendous tips. Build that list of 100 pros and form bonds with them by promoting them, adding value to their posts and learn from them. Study them. You’ll stand out in no time.
Thanks so much.
Tweeting through Triberr.
Ryan
Why does it not surprise me that you’ve identified your Top 100? You are a fantastic networker.
I can see the relationships you’ve built and know how committed you are to giving to others, so it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Chris would share your eBook.
Congrats on all of your well deserved success!
Oh my gosh, it looks like I didn’t have to take notes after all…lol…Seriously though, while my notes are nowhere as neat and organized as your post, I noted down a lot of what you emphasized here in your post. It just tickles me! 🙂
That’s awesome Robin! Combine the two and it sounds like you have all the notes you need.
Great strategies Rebekah 🙂
I’m following some of the methods like creating quality content with good readability and identifying & solving the readers problem with content marketing. I’m not using fancy fonts and I’ve monetized my blog as you told. Creating useful conversation is the way that am missing to do, will try to make use of that way to stand out online.
Besides, will follow your other tips too, thanks for presenting this post for us. I’m learning something new at my every visit 🙂
Hi Nirmala! It sounds like you’re doing a great job and I know from seeing you everywhere that you’re very consistent.
Keep up the good work!