EWTS Certified Guide, Mindy Jones owns the Amy Jones Group, an all-female owned and operated residential real estate team in Arizona. She also founded Community on Purpose, a non-profit organization serving women and families through volunteerism and community giving.
She recently hosted one of the EWTS Critical Conversations Webinars entitled How To Build Your Personal Brand To Become a Locally Known Expert.
You might already have a presence and reputation in your community with your brand, or you might be looking to increase your reach, and your Critical Conversations are integral to this. Can you identify when these moments happen?
Once you identify these moments, you can stop counting conversations and start making them count.
Building Foundations In Community
Why is community so important?
Creating a community around your business goal will do a variety of things. It
- Fosters Customer Loyalty
- Encourages word of mouth
- Allows other people to do marketing on your behalf
- Drives innovation and facilitates market research
- Strengthens your brand identity
Ultimately, a community lets others create with you and contributes significantly to your business growth and development.
How much more loyalty do you have with a brand if you feel you are a part of their journey?
But how do you facilitate this? How can you find your community?
Building Your Community
Who your tribe is will depend on your goals and your personal brand.
First, you need to establish what services you provide and ask yourself what you want people to know you do and do well.
Mindy owns a real estate company and runs a non-profit organization. Her team is an an-all female squad; she loves to inspire women. Her goal is to serve women in her community.
She ensures that the projects she supports and the businesses she collaborates with share the same values.
People only do things for their reasons, not yours, so if you want to serve your community, then you need to establish what that community needs and wants.
Become A Locally Known Expert
How do you get clarity around who you are and why people should work with you?
You first need to establish what makes you unique.
There are five key areas that you need to understand:
- Authenticity and Personal Brand
- Community Engagement
- Consistent Content
- Strategic Partnerships
- Credibility and Exposure
This blog will focus on these five dynamic elements and how you can use them to build a strong local brand in your community successfully.
1
Authenticity and Personal Brand
How do you identify your strengths, values, and passions? And how do you encourage those you lead to do the same?
Could things that make your heart sing inspire others, too?
Are you projecting your uniqueness to the community around you?
When building a personal brand, you already have everything you need to succeed.
What Is Your Reason For Being?
Write a list of the things that you get out of bed for every day.
- What do you love?
- What are you good at?
- What can you get paid for?
- What does this world need?
Once you know and understand what’s driving your brand forward, you can use this as inspiration to pursue your dreams and build your personal brand.
Mindy’s Exercises
Once you identified what’s driving you, now is the time to be objective.
Ask yourself what’s missing from your brand. What is still needed?
Being objective might require a slight shift in your perspective, and using the EWTS Magic Words and phrases can help with that.
- How important is it that you build a personal brand that is authentic to you?
- Could it be possible that identifying who your ideal client is, based on your reason for being, could help you find more joy in your work?
- How would you feel if people were attracted to your business model because they could relate to you?
Asking yourself these questions is a good exercise to undertake, and once you have your answers, share them with people who matter to you and ask for their input.
Another exercise you can try is to ask people around you to describe you in 3-5 different ways.
You can use your answers to evaluate where your branding currently sits. Were the answers given things you want people to associate with you?
And if they’re not, how can you start to make changes to encourage others to view you how you want to be perceived?
2
Community Engagement
These are strategies for engaging with the local community, building strong relationships through local events, and leveraging network partners.
These strategies include volunteering, holding board positions, and being the go-to community connector.
Could they be an effective way to engage with your community? Just imagine if the rooms you created were full of people seeking your help because they understood you.
Ways To Create Your Community
- Host community events and activities
- Create Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp communities
- Leverage user-generated content for social media
- Partner with other brands or organizations
Ways To Engage With Your Community
- Start a referral program
- Create a loyalty program
- Use social media to tell your story
- Invest in your local community by friend-raising and fundraising
By using these techniques, you’re in control of the rooms you’re creating and can show up to them with intentionality.
What Are Your Aims?
Regardless of which engagement paths you choose or which ideas feel more authentic, you will need to identify your aims.
What are your community’s measures of success? Why are you trying to build credibility for yourself and your business?
- Are you trying to gain more exposure to a larger audience?
- Is it to create more opportunities and create new partnerships?
- Do you want to build more meaningful connections?
- Is it to tell people what you do and why you are unique?
- Are you trying to inspire others to take action?
It’s helpful to determine which ones you want to start with as you build your brand to become a locally known expert. You can then get laser-focused on the Critical Conversations that have the potential to move the needle for your business.
3
Consistent Contents
Showcase your experience, expertise, and values through educational posts, insights, and thought leadership on your social accounts.
What do people see when they look you up? What would you do without social media? What’s on your ‘do not post’ list?
Consistent content means you are showing up and enforcing the idea that you are a locally known expert.
What do you want your community to know about you? Share your information to build a visual story for your consumers and potential partners.
Most people’s goals are to build credibility, create meaningful connections, and inspire others.
Whatever your goals are, can you share content that is in line with your goals?
Credibility
To build credibility, you can share:
- Testimonials
- Success stories
- Certifications, continued education
- Challenges that you’ve faced
Meaningful Connections
To create meaningful connections:
- Be authentic – authenticity and integrity create clarity
- Seek collaboration – tag people and mention them in your stories
- Share your story
Inspiring People To Take Action
To inspire others:
- Share your story – what makes you, you
- Be open and honest
- Be consistent
4
Strategic Partnerships
Becoming a community partner can increase your exposure. You need to identify partners that will provide maximum exposure. You could work with anyone, but the key is to find companies with shared audiences and values.
How do you pick the best partners for where you are headed in your business?
Who do you know right now that has a similar audience to you?
Do you need to stick with your traditional partners, or is there potential for a non-traditional partnership?
For Mindy, her real estate traditional partners tend to be title reps, lender partners, and home warranty partners. But her non-traditional ones are dentists and non-profit organizations. Some of her non-traditional partnerships have proven incredibly successful for both parties.
Can you think outside the box and imagine partnering with non-traditional businesses and people? Could it be possible that this will increase your reach even further?
Vetting Your Partnerships
To vet your partnerships, you should ask:
- How open-minded are they?
- How open to collaboration are they?
- Are you able to leverage what they have?
- Is it mutually beneficial?
- Are they looking to be a connector?
- Do they have an abundance mindset?
Benefits Of Partnerships
- Gain access to new clients
- Opportunity to reach new markets
- Added value for previous customers
- Brand awareness
- Brand trust
Just One More Thing
Where are your potential partnerships? Ask yourself:
- Who are the people you need to be asking more questions of?
- Where do you have relationships that contain unrealized opportunities?
- Where do you have an opportunity to get a little more out of the relationship?
The overlap you can create through authenticity, integrity, and clarity creates business opportunities, sustainable business models, and a more joyful life.
5
Credibility And Exposure
How do you get more credibility and organic exposure?
Position yourself to be out there as much as possible. Try out podcasting, speaking, and teaching. Don’t sit around waiting for people to ask you; reach out to people and ask to be on their podcast or speak at their event.
When seeking out your platform, remember your goals and be intentional. Everything starts with you.
This blog was part of a series of EWTS Critical Conversations Webinars, and if you want to experience the full webinar experience, you should sign up to hear what is coming up in the series.
Critical Conversations 31-Day Challenge
