The Single Biggest Misconception About Building Your Own Brand

When I first launched the Radiate podcast last October, everyone kept telling me what a great idea it was without actually having any idea what I was doing.

They all bought into the "brand" myth. In other words, just because you're a name in your field - in my case, I anchor a morning program on Bloomberg Television -that's reason enough for the masses of people to come. That's part of the thinking behind influencer marketing - leverage a big name and the consumers will come in droves.

No they don't. And it's silly to think that's the case.

Building a brand takes a lot of time and effort. Leveraging it takes even more work. You have to build it constantly. Anyone who thinks he or she can just suddenly declare, "I'm a brand, please follow and buy from me" is going to be sorely disappointed. Even Beyonce, the queen of brands, knows that.

One of our guests on Radiate understands how to build a brand from the ground up. Watch How Jon Steinberg Reached His First $50K In Revenue At BuzzFeed below:

Just a couple of months ago, we surpassed our first 100,000 listens mark. That's tiny compared to the 46 million listeners who download podcasts a month but we're making some amazing headway. It's headway that's fairly easy to predict; when we don't "socialize" our content or make people aware of it, then our numbers stall. When we do, they accelerate. I wish I could just put out a podcast and sit there and watch the money roll in, but that's not how it works. Unless you are Queen Bey.

I talked about this recently with a fellow podcaster friend, Farnoosh Torabi, who's well surpassed 2 million downloads on her SoMoney show.

"I think I was misled into believing that with my brand and my visibility, I could just automatically put out a podcast with great guests like Tony Robbins whose got a billion followers and I will be able to monetize that within six weeks or I would just be crushing it in the iTunes store," Farnoosh said on Radiate. "I definitely thought that things would start to pick up momentum a lot sooner. It's one of those things where it takes time and this was a year ago when there weren't as many podcasts out as there are now. It took time and I think what I realized was that you just always had to be [nurturing] it."

That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to build your brand. Just be realistic about your goals and what effort it takes to grow it. If you're an expert in your field, or a well known figure, here are 3 things you can do to get started:

1. Get on social media: For someone like me who is a pretty private person (despite being on television) I've come to terms with being completely and utterly on social media. It's incredible the number of people who still have yet to get on the ball on Twitter and Facebook, or who rely on others to do the socializing for them. The moment I committed myself to it, I saw engagement rise. I watch how mavens like Gary Vaynerchuk engage on social media and realize, sigh, I have much to learn.
2. What's your story? Strong brands have a story to them. They all consistently focus on one thing. Think about the story around personal brands like Richard Branson (maverick entrepreneur) or Elon Musk (outrageous innovator). If you don't know it, ask your friends and associates to describe you. You'll be surprised at what consistent words come out of their mouths. That's your brand and story.
3. Find your tribe. If a brand falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? No, if the forest is the wrong one to begin with. Brands that sit on the wrong platforms don't go very far. Your job is to find where your audience is. I found that most of my readers were finding me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook - that was where a majority of people interested in business content were discovering me. So I doubled down on it. That doesn't mean I won't be on Snapchat soon, or Tumblr or any number of platforms, but focus on the few you know will win you an engaged audience first. Having that core is essential.

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