When Princess Diana died, chased by paparazzi into a tunnel in Paris in 1996, something extraordinary happened. People took to the streets. Candlelit vigils were held. Many thousands of pounds were spent on flowers and other tributes.
People cried openly, and embraced one another to provide comfort and unity.
Of course, a great many of these people – the vast majority, in fact – didn’t know Diana. They hadn’t even met her. Nevertheless, her passing caused powerful emotions to overtake the UK (and the world) for a long time. Even now, 22 years later, Diana’s death is still firmly embedded in the national psyche. Brits (and people from all over) may have ‘moved on’, but they have never forgotten Diana.
Is this a rational response to what – dispassionately – was the death of a stranger? Arguably not. But that’s the point. People are not rational. Not really. They are emotional.
Which is precisely why you must tap into the emotional as you build your personal brand online.
Let Me Entertain You
When you set yourself up as an online personality, your primary job is to entertain. Online media guru Hank Norman says this:
Be more emotional when you are being instructional.
You should look up Hank for more on this topic. But the key point here is that entertainers manipulate emotion highly successfully: you must do the same.
Yes, you might be providing information as well (golf swing tips, exercise advice, dating techniques). But unless you can also give people the emotional fix they crave then you are going nowhere fast.
When I wanted to learn more about blogging, for example, I looked up a variety of sources. As you can imagine, there are a whole bunch of people keen to share their experiences with creating successful blogs. There were two I particularly liked. One was Victor Pride of Bold & Determined, and the other was Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.
Over the years I’ve taken a bunch of great advice from both of these gentlemen.
Now Victor and Darren are very different. Victor is passionate and fiery, like a god of online business proclaiming his commandments from on high. Darren is quieter, more analytical and self-effacing – but he is also incredibly warm. When I listen to his podcast every week it’s like catching up with an old friend.
I also started following A. N. Other blogging guru (who will remain nameless) back in 2016, but I soon stopped. Why? Because this third guy had no emotion in his content. He was professional-sounding, but dry and humourless. I’m sure he knew his stuff as well as – maybe even better than – Victor and Darren. But he didn’t create that human connection with me that is necessary to turn me into a fan.
He didn’t make me feel anything.
It wasn’t – by the way – that I consciously sat there thinking ‘hmmm, this guy isn’t connecting with me on an emotional level’. Our response to a content creator is instinctual. I just though ‘Meh, not really feeling it’, and unsubscribed.
Huge Money
The good news is that all of us, even the most intelligent and discerning, are just longing to become fans of people. I consider myself relatively smart, and I also worked in media and brand strategy for many years before becoming self-employed. But when people hook me on an emotional level, I will consume and pay for their content forever. Nick Cave, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Marc Almond, Arctic Monkeys – I couldn’t tell you the huge money I’ve spent buying recordings, concert tickets and other merchandise from these and other artists that I love.
None of us is immune to the power of emotion.
Which is precisely why, if you want to set yourself free from the 9-5 grind by building a personal brand online, that you have to make people feel something. And how do you do that? By telling your story, and telling it honestly, warts and all.
I, for example, have a very particular story. I am in my forties. I have suffered from depression. I was an alcoholic and addict in my twenties, and then I hit bottom and went into recovery. I worked in nightclubs and bars. I have since worked in the corporate world for over fifteen years. I began writing about dating and having lots of adventures with that all over the world. I have travelled to many different places. In 2016 I dumped my girlfriend, sold my flat, and began working on my online business in earnest.
There are a lot of different components to that story, and I draw on all of them at different times depending on the content I’m creating. But the point is that my story is unique to me, and it colours the way I talk about things, the sorts of things I talk about and so on. Your story is likely very different, and that’s OK. In fact, that’s brilliant. It would be intolerable if all our stories were the same.
I am fortunate (or not, depending on how you look at it!) in that my story has a lot of ups and downs. Sadness and joy. And because I am open about everything with my readers, I can channel the emotion of things that have happened to me in a way that will hopefully touch them, and teach them something at the same time.
In building my online brand I have talked about things like my parents’ divorce, my alcoholism, my romantic failures, my heartbreak over certain girls, sex, my failures at work, my fascination with some of the seedier parts of city life (the strip clubs, the fetish parties, the swingers’ events). And so on.
Every piece of content that I release is designed to in some way pass on an emotional charge to the audience.
Freedom
Of course, not everyone will buy into me or what I have to say, and that’s OK. By now I have enough readers who buy my books and mentoring to have given up that corporate job to work for myself full-time. As a result I am free from having a boss, free to work on projects I love, and free to live anywhere in the world.
The price that I pay for that freedom is my willingness to be open and authentic and to relive real emotions with my audience. But really, that’s not such a big price to pay at all. It helps me as much as it helps them, and it gives me that human connection that I’ve always craved.
The good news if that you can do exactly the same thing. Just start telling yourstory to the world, warts and all, holding as little back as you can.
You’ve got to hit them emotionally. Once you’ve done that, then in no time you’ll have a tribe, and an income on which you can live for the rest of your life.
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