Hey guys, long time no see hustlers. I was talking with the CEO of YEC company, a Burmese man that have been making just over a $1million in his businesses at the age of 34. This is a very young age to be making this much money.

He shared with me his goal of one day owning a unicorn startup (1-billion-dollar evaluation company) in Myanmar. By the way, an achievement of this man’s caliber is rare because the country where is from is clouded by political instability, difficulty and civil war, read up Aung San Suu Kyi’s biography. The Burmese live a very tough life and it’s one thing to become a millionaire at a young age in a country like the United States, or a wealthy European country.

But to be a millionaire from a politically unstable third-world country such as Myanmar at a young age is a huge achievement.

Anyways, with this man, Derek, which I took him to a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant, I was asking him some tips of how he grew and run his over 16 companies and what are some tips I can apply to my own copywriting practice. He told me simply this.. “Personal branding is very important, how are you going to stand out if you are the same as everyone?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You need to have personal branding in what you do, if not you will not be able to stand out, people connect to brands they connect to and trust.”

It didn’t make quite sense then and there as he goes on to share with me Gary Vaynerchuk’s example of “document don’ create”, sharing daily things that are happening in your life rather than trying to create original content. By the way this guy has grown his Facebook page to over 800,000 followers through this strategy.

He also told me to post 3 times a day MINIMUM, which was what he did. The reason is because the social media space has become so competitive and so crowded that if you’re a small business, it’ll be very difficult for you to stand out. You need to become a prolific creator and you need to also be unique and someone that is releatable.

Why Content is Still King

Content is king. But have you ever wondered why is content king?

Content is king because content generates traffic and attention. Although content by itself will not be enough to convert people into active buyers. Content is the bread and butter of everything, which is why even though we are a copywriting business, I talk SO MUCH about the importance of content.

I believe every single copywriter must be a good content writer, but a content writer doesn’t necessarily need to be a copywriter.

You need to learn how to capture people’s attention through content. Think about it, here are the things you need content in order to do.

1. Building an email list – which I recommend everyone do, an email list is how someone monetizes their customers for repeat sales. But you need content in order to build your list.
2. Building your social media presence – Social media is one of the best places to find and generate traffic.
3. Building your SEO score with your website – you need content on your website for Google to rank your business.
4. Sales – Sales material is arguably content as well.
5. Client retention – you need content.

As you can see, content is the bread and butter of marketing. You need content to even begin to attract attention to your page. But what exactly do you create? Let me give you a list of 21 things you can base your content on:

• Insights, what have you learnt through your business.
• Authority, any content showing that you are a person of influence.
• Social proof, content that shows people using and talking about your product.
• Demo, any free trial, free sample of what you do.
• Trust post, content which goal is to build trust, so any content showing you doing any mundane things a human does, like eating food, playing with cats or hanging out with friends.
• Craziness, Craziness is a good content idea, basing your content on something that is “out there” related to your niche. Craziness generates virality.
• Product, content that showcases your product and talks about the benefits of it.
• Freedom, freedom is the basis of every human being. Content that shows your business promoting the concept of freedom. For example, traveling photos, going on trips, flying around the world.
• Status, content that shows you are someone that has status and that by associating with you, people can elevate their own status. Flaunting money is an example.
• Associations, show that your brand is someone associated with famous celebrities and people.
• Spirituality and philosophy, content that talks about your life/business philosophy.
• Aggregated content, repost existing content that has already done well and add your own spin on things.
• Story content, share a story about what’s going on in your business.
• Benefit/result driven content, share a tip or two on how someone can gain a result through your content. This is also known as expert content.
• Challenging known perspectives, content that has viral potential are those that challenge things that are known. This is why you see Bitcoin, AI, and conspiracy theories being the fad these days – they are new and things that go against the norm.
• The underdog story, how do people get inspired. People get inspired by seeing your imperfections and you overcoming them and becoming something better. Example of this is the fat loss journey, also the rags to riches stories.
• Funny content, make someone laugh and you will have a supporter for life.
• Talk about trending topics, things that are currently popular in the media.
• Have a content with a twist, I’m talking about Darth Vader’s “I’m your father” moment. When you can create content with twists, people will stick to you like watching a drama movie.
• Get people to take action, I’m talking about Nike’s Let’s do it slogan. Getting people pumped up.
• Share your unique perspective, this goes back to “Document don’t create”, you are sharing things about your life that are unique to you through your experience.

The Bottom Line of Personal Branding

All of the content ideas that I just shared with you will help you with personal branding. You need to add these content ideas onto your personal brand. Personal branding at the end of the day is to showcase and promote yourself. Your unique traits and attributes to the world. This could be yourself, your business or your people.

This is because each and every human being on this planet is unique with their own stories to share. No two human beings are the same, so everybody has their own unique personal branding story to tell. The things that personal branding are based on:

• Values
• Philosophy
• Vision
• Dreams
• Past life experience

These are things no one can copy and take from you.

Although I want to emphasize the importance of personal branding, I would like to also emphasize that a personal brand is not a substitute for a bad product or a product in the wrong market. You need to have your value proposition sorted first before we can even think about personal branding.

Yes, personal branding can do wonders for you, but it requires a solid product first.

What a personal brand can do however is to take an already half decent product and bring it to the top 1% to help you carve your own unique niche which no one can copy. I think that’s the goal of personal branding is to help you to find your Blue Ocean, a marketspace where your competition becomes irrelevant.

This is because what you are doing is so unique and so original, that no one can actually copy you. They can’t even replicate you. That’s the positioning you want to create for your brand. The content that you put out to build your personal brand, being so unique and original that no one can copy you even if they wanted to try.

I believe that personal branding is supposed to be polarizing meaning that if you are not pissing someone off, then you are doing something wrong. Throughout the 2 years running jeettancopywriting.com, I’ve had to turn down many clients and had lost many deals as well with people I could have potentially work with that would pay me well if I just said the “right words.”

But I went the other way and chose to say something that is true to the situation rather than what looks good, this has lost me many sales. But however, one of the things I value is truth, honesty and transparency. I do not like lying to people, even if it’ll make me a few thousand buck here and there.

I also don’t like to overpromise things or say something that I physically cannot do.

Another value I have is ambition, which is that I like to choose to work with brands that are result-oriented and want to make money. Therefore, I’m selective with the people I work with and want to see that they are success-oriented and hungry as I am, because copywriting can only do so much to a business if the business is not functioning properly.

These are things which I stand for my own values and my own personal brand, and have faced rejection from it. But again, now I’m in a very happy position where I get to choose the clients, I work with that meet my standards of work and I believe you should do the same as well. Have a standard, or value standard that your brand stands by and turn away the clients/customers that do not fit that mold.

This way, you are able to attract the people that will not only you WANT to work with, but the people you LOVE to work with. Personal branding will not get you ALL the clients, but it will get you the right clients that are a fit to your standards.

We hope this article helped, and if it did please share it with your colleagues and friends. Talk soon!