Here’s what we’ll cover
Personal branding is not just for the rich & famous. It’s not just for the Kardashians it’s for you and it’s for me. Today I’m chatting with Megan MacNeill from Relevant Megan an expert in personal branding and we are diving deep into why you need to pay more attention to your personal brand and how to make your personal brand more relevant.
In particular we are talking about;
How important is your personal brand & how you can lean into your personal brand.
What if you want to change your personal brand?
What is your digital footprint?
How to make the most of LinkedIn in developing your personal brand.
Links and Resources
- Checkout the Simply Smarter Numbers website HERE
- Checkout the Podcast HERE
- Checkout the Instagram page HERE
- Checkout Megan’s LinkedIn HERE
- Checkout Megan’s Instagram HERE
- Checkout Megan’s Website HERE
- Checkout Megan’s Free LinkedIn 5 Day Action Plan
Keep Listening!
Here’s the shownotes
Jen Waterson
Personal branding is not just for the rich and famous, it’s for you and it’s for me today. I’m chatting with Megan MacNeil from relevant Megan and she’s an expert in personal branding and we’re going to take a deep dive into why you need to pay more attention to your personal brand and how to make your personal brand more relevant? Let’s dive into it.
So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast. I’m really excited to have a conversation with you today around this topic that you are an expert in personal branding. So before we get stuck into it, tell us a little bit about where you’re from where this accent is from and your business. What did you do?
Megan MacNeil
So I’m a personal brand strategist, and I’m originally from Fort William in Scotland. That’s where this this awesome accent comes from. Which on Instagram seems to be the biggest interest of people. When I put out there in stories. Any questions? It’s always with the accent from so.
Jen Waterson
I don’t know how people can’t pick it ’cause it’s clearly a Scottish accent. It’s a gorgeous accent.
Megan MacNeil
I get Irish and Canadian all the time. But yeah, all sorts of things. So originally from Fort William, I’ve been in Perth, WA since 2012, which is a little bit warmer. As you can imagine and a lot drier.
Jen Waterson
Absolutely. Big difference, yes.
Megan MacNeil
So again, personal brand strategist. I suppose it’s actually only been since covid. I guess we go pre and post code with these days. I my started my business. My background is always been not for profits and if anyone’s listening is worked in the not for profit industry you will know that you’ve always got limited budgets, which is extremely hard when you’re trying to market or sell anything, so I think I accidentally started getting personal branding, probably about 10 years ago because I am building profiles for my chairs and my president, CEO’s, etc. Because I was just getting way more traction. If I was putting a face to something and building their profile and trying to get the message of the organization out, then I was if I was putting our logo in front of it or just doing a regular press release from the organization so I didn’t really know it was personal branding then it took for me to listen to a podcast where someone was talking about personal branding for me to go, that’s why.
Jen Waterson
To the penny drops, yeah, so you’re really humanizing what is potentially a corporate brand or a business brand? It’s just bringing the human element. There really isn’t a.
Megan MacNeil
100% on that. So it’s honestly the cheapest way of marketing I think because people just are so drawn to people and if they don’t like you, they’re not going to want to work with you or help you or put you in your their podcast or write about you or anything, and that’s fine because there’s so many people out there. Someone else will want to, but it’s just hooking into what makes people just get the message out there so much quicker and faster.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, and I guess today’s digital world is so saturated with so much noise and so much information, so much content that it probably is the best way to just try and connect. And you’re not going to try and connect with everybody you’re connecting with people that are going to resonate with your values and that sort of thing, so I guess that’s where it all comes. With isn’t it? It’s just sort of a bit of a cut through.
Megan MacNeil
Yeah, 100% and also I’m I think the big part of the strategy when I’m working with people is to stay totally forget about these people in the corner you’re trying to convert because there’s so many people over in this other corner that really needs and want to work with you. They just don’t know about you yet, so focus on them. The people that can be converted because a lot of people will try and build their strategy. Try and be someone because they’re trying to attract these people over here the people that are very hard to like convince to buy your product or your service or buy into your ideas? Well, why spend all that time and effort trying to convert someone when you’ve got a lot of more people over in this other corner they really do need what you want? And that’s another thing working from not for profit is that you know we always work so much harder on retention than new members because it’s so much easier to keep those new members happy and use them for word of mouth.
Now that I’m in business, it’s very much trying to look after my customers and when I do one on one coaching with people, it’s generally them having conversations with other people that are like them. They say, oh, you should go and chat to Megan because look what she’s done for me, look what we’ve worked on and that works well. So yeah, it’s just focusing on who actually wants to work with your needs. What you’ve got as opposed to worrying too much about this corner over here that are like, no, you’re not for me.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, and using that unique personality that you have so when it comes to personal branding we kind of oh know what it is, but put it in your words. What is it exactly from the business owners perspective? What is it?
Megan MacNeil
OK, so we all have a personal brand. It is basically what people think, feel and see about you when you’re not in the room, or sometimes if they’re brave enough. Maybe when you are in the room, and that’s fine, you’ve got that you can’t control what people think and feel about you because you can probably think of a host of people that you don’t particularly like or resonate with.
Likewise, will be people that just don’t like and resonate with you fine. Forget about them, but you do have influence over that narrative, and that’s what building your personal brand strategically is all about. Is making sure that you’re getting the right message out there. If your 11 year old daughter or niece are, you know some child, that’s eleven. You can’t explain to them what you do, it’s very hard for everyone else to know what you do because you have to drop the jargon, you have to stop talking to your peers and start talking to the people that might actually need you.
And that’s what building your personal brand strategically is all about. It’s not about being Internet famous, so personal branding gets a bad rap because we think are Kardashians and we think, oh, you just want to put me on Instagram and get a million likes. No, it’s not about being interested.
Jen Waterson
It’s actually really true. We do kind of think that way. We sort of look at people like whether it’s the Kardashians or other influences. Other people that we considered to be almost famous, even not even super famous but almost famous and you sort of think well, yeah, I guess that’s what the personal branding is all about. But we’re not all trying to achieve that so maybe that’s why some of us then start to disregard the impact that it can have for our own businesses.
Megan MacNeil
100% because you look at these slaves, you look at actors and you look at people who are pop stars etc and you think well, I can’t be like them. They’ve got personal brands. They’re famous. It’s not about being internet famous is about being industry famous, so you just need to be famous to the people that actually matter and then it will start to spread out from there, and the strategy doesn’t always involve going online. Going hard on Instagram like I would never have it actually say that that’s the most detrimental thing you can do is having to have Twitter. Having to have Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, and a website and you’ve got to have a podcast on. You’ve got like there’s a list of things you could do, but you have to find what works for you. Know if you’re in marketing and anyone who’s listening whose probably got their own business, you you know you’ve gotta have all the platforms.
It doesn’t mean you have to go hard in all the platforms. Having a presence is fine, but you have to find
where your audience is actually hanging out, were they comfortable? I’m a big fan of LinkedIn, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later on, because I just think that that’s the best platform at the moment for getting organic reach. And I also think that it’s got. It’s got the decision makers on there, so it’s your your money network. Facebook is still massive. It’s still got the most amount of people on there, but it’s a little bit like when you’re advertising somewhere you can advertise somewhere that has a widespread reach and it goes out to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Or you can actually go into publication that is just for your people. So maybe you. Maybe you make toy cars? Well then you would maybe advertised in a magazine that’s all about cars, whereas you’d go into the Australian if it was something very general, but your hit rate wouldn’t be as high, so it’s about being on the platform, not just offline. We’re talking bout print there, etc but online, where is it that your audience are actually hanging out, and where can you actually get in front of them?
Jen Waterson
Yeah, so when it comes to personal branding. What does it look like practically? Is it the way we’re dressing the way we’re speaking? Is it the way we communicate with us others? Is it the way we are at an event before we’ve had a couple of glasses of wine versus after a couple of glasses wine? Is it that kind of detail or is it?
Megan MacNeil
Is absolutely everything. Yeah, and those moments after a couple of glasses of wine that’s also your personal brand. Your and the way that you dress is important as well. There is lots of research around this where people so some people will have the mindset they’re like. Oh, I don’t want to have a fancy car. I don’t want to dress too fancy because people will think that I’ve got lots of money and then that I don’t need the business. OK, that’s one school, I thought, but the school of thought that you should actually be considering is that when you dress nice and you look clean and you look schmick and you know.
You’re driving a reasonable car saying everyone has to go out and get matrix or whatever, but you’re driving a decent car. You’re looking after yourself, you look successful. Well, I want to work with someone who successful because if you’re promising me success, I want to know that you’ve at least done it for yourself as well. So you attract what you put out. So it is absolutely everything from the way you dressed the way you hold yourself to the way you speak all of that stuff. Now you just have to be yourself, though. It’s not about recreating who you are, because that’s acting that’s and I don’t help people be actors. I can’t get you on TV. I can promise you that, but it’s about turning up as the most authentic version of you and coming across in a way that’s comfortable to you and you’ve got to remember you’re in business doing something that you’re an expert of, or something that you’re passionate about.
So there’s no reason why you can’t walk into a room and hold a conversation with someone about that, and the amount of people that, when I’m working with them, we have we have goals of maybe public speaking is this part of their strategy, and they’re like, oh, but Oh well, you know I can’t do it for a few weeks because I’ve got to write out my notes and I’ve got a research this I’m like, but why do you have to do that? Because you’ve just had a conversation with me about it.
You know your stuff, the thing that’s going to take a bit of time is making a couple of slides so that you’ve got something behind you, or you know, visual, but we don’t do death by PowerPoint either. But you know that you know your stuff. You’re an expert, So what are you going on stage to speak to? A lot of people or you’re walking into a room to network?
You’ve got experience, you’ve got knowledge. You should be comfortable in that and you should start leaning into that that you are an expert in your thing and not to worry too much about the noise outside of that. But you know it’s building your personal brand strategically is definitely deciding who it is that you actually want to attract. And whereas you’re going to find them and creating that backwards so that you actually turn up in the places where you’re going to be seen by them. But it’s also about having some big goals so. I’ve got some clients that have got big goals that they want to get. They want to be on Ted X. Ted X is a speaking gig that they want, so we’re reverse engineering that to try and get to that stage so that we have smaller speaking gigs and we perhaps get on some podcasts and we start building up that repertoire as a speaker to get on that big stage, I’ve got another client who has a massive like. He’s already got very successful business, but once this other business.
He needs to write investors and he needs the right support from the government and from industry to be able to make this happen. So we’re building his personal brand at the moment and it’s more about influence and success than it is about your ego. That’s definitely what personal branding in branding is about.
Jen Waterson
Start with the end in mind we’re looking at.
What it is I want to achieve in business or in life at a certain point in time and then working it backwards to try and create that without being fake clearly? But having a purpose around it, doing it with intention, yes.
Megan MacNeil
100% and once you’ve got that goal in place and I know lots of us have got goals, but we sometimes don’t think about rewinding backwards about how we might get and the people that we might need and the people that we want to surround ourselves with and the messaging that we want to put out because we think everyone can be domains, you know. You know spent like me when I’m the passenger in a car and I’m like why didn’t you turn right? Oh, ’cause you didn’t read my mind you don’t know I’m going that way. Yeah that’s the same way in the.
Like we, we have an assumption that people sometimes know what it is that we’re doing and where we’re going. But unless we tell them they won’t know and a lot of people are really offput by this because they’re like, oh, you know, I’ve I’m from the school of thought that you know you just get your head down and you just do the work. That’s fine. There’s lots of people who are happy to do that. They can and they want to have a back seat.
They’re quite happy to turn up to their nine, to five and go back home. If you’re running your own business, or if you’re trying to build your career and you want those top level jobs. You have to start sticking your head up a little bit. You have to get notice and it’s not about posting on lots of social media channels or you know getting yourself out there in a way that’s uncomfortable for you. It’s about getting in front of the right people and having those conversations and really knowing exactly what it is you want and what it is that you offer and also being a little bit aware that you know we’re living in a very fast paced world like it’s not like it was 100 years ago where you had a goal for five 10 years’ time and you could pretty much guarantee what was going to be happening, what technology you have around you, and what you have available.
Technology moves so quickly that you know something that you want to do in five years’ time. You might be able to do much quicker because now it’s more accessible to you or the thing that you wanted to do in five years’ time might not be worth doing because there’s so much more technology or there’s more.
Like people’s interest in those kind of areas are gone because something’s changed so big. I mean look at cool vids like that turn things upside down and nobody could ever have predicted that was that was happening so.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, so let’s talk about comfort then. So if we’re going to build our own personal brand and will have some sort of purpose in mind, some intention behind that and some strategy behind that, let’s talk about comfort. A lot of people are not comfortable being themselves and a lot of people are not comfortable. Like you say, standing in front of an audience, or perhaps doing the things that they know they need to do in order to create that. Personal brand is it sort of, and is it more difficult for the introvert versus the extrovert?
Megan MacNeil
Meaning no, I don’t think it really matters whether you’re in fear or extrovert. Because I’ve seen some people who are extremely shy like just love being at home and in their own space they will make themselves go out there and they will get it done. I think it depends on how much you want it. I could not public speak previously, so I’ll tell you this is a is a bit funny story. So in high school would be you got to do it as part of your English. You had to write aces and you had to do reading stuff, but you also had to do some public speaking. I would get up in front of the class and it would feel like 30 minutes, probably only about 30 seconds and would stand there. Could not say a word literally. Not a word came out, they would just make me sit back down because it was uncomfortable for everyone else.
Same thing happened in University. Didn’t like at all either and then I came over to Australia and I was WA Farmers Federation and I was running their annual conference and my president went AWOL. I think he was on the phone to someone and I needed him. He was the MC for the sort of panels that day so I needed him to introduce the next person. Now he had gone AWOL, I’m in charge of this event, so I had to jump up there and I had to introduce this person. Now I had to do I wanted to do it because it was my job and I was really trying to. I was like fresh off the boat. I’ve been here for like 9 months at this point.
Jen Waterson
So you’re not going to mess this one up.
Megan MacNeil
No, so I had to do it and I wanted to do it anyway. I got up there and I got heckled by some farmers. They asked for the subtitles and I know it was all in jest because farmers are a bit like that and they’re hilarious and but I like I was I was young and I was just that was me done so I didn’t speak in public for years after that and my career was progressing and I was getting asked to speak at things and I would do everything in my power to make sure that it was someone else that would speak. I could do you the best speech notes and I could tell you exactly what you should and shouldn’t say and how you should stand all of that stuff.
But if you asked me to go up and do it, I would not. I started my own business and I do it now. My mom can’t believe I do it like she’s like I can’t. I don’t even like I hear it because I record these things like it does. I just can’t believe you’re doing this because you’ve just been so anti and absolutely petrified of it.
Jen Waterson
But you’re right, it is. It’s about when you’ve got that different motivator. You know there’s something else there. There’s a real purpose at the end of it, and when you got that clarity around what that purpose is, you’re going to stand up and make things happen. I know myself I’m never comfortable.
Being in front of a video, talking in front of an audience, but I had to do it. I mean, I’ve always. I’ve never had stories like yours where I froze. I have hated it, hated doing it in the past, but I’ve always made it happen. But now I’m comfortable, you know, now it’s not something that stresses me out. It doesn’t make me nervous, it doesn’t.
You know I don’t have a sleepless night the night before. I have to do something live, whether it’s a presentation, a master class to somebody else’s group, whatever it is, it’s easier now, but it’s only because you sort of work your way through that uncomfortable start and your business needs you to do it. You’ve got no choice.
Megan MacNeil
It’s your business. It’s your baby. If you want people to know about it and here why it’s so great and why you’re so great and why you’re the person they should be working with. You have to stand up and you have to do it and that’s I’m not saying everyone has to go and do public speaking by any means, because that’s just a platform that some people just cannot handle, and that’s not even they can’t handle. They just don’t want to do it. And also, maybe your audience doesn’t go to vent, so who you standing up in front of? It’s very much about being in front of the people that actually matter and sometimes.
Building your personal brand because like I said, it’s all about building influence and success, not your ego. It’s about just being in the room with the right people, so you might not need to have such a wide audience, you might just need to be in the room with enough decision makers to get your message out.
Jen Waterson
It might just be that you’re at a networking event and you need to be comfortable enough to go and have conversations with people that you don’t know.
Megan MacNeil
Yes, 100% there is. There’s a book by a lady in the UK called on the room. It’s written specifically for women and it’s got some great analogies in it, but she’s basically starts by saying, you know, I’m not going to tell you the techniques of how you should stand, how you should breathe, and stuff like that because none of that matters if you don’t actually want to get up there and do it.
It’s a very good book.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, it’s a really good point. So if we’re going to have a personal brand, what about those people that perhaps do have one? Is it? But they don’t like it or it isn’t in taking them in the direction that they want to take it their business can they? Can you turn it around? Can you switch it around?
To change things up? Or is that like a really difficult long slow process?
Megan MacNeil
Oh look, building your brand as a long game, so it’s not something you switch on and off overnight, but it can be done. You just have to start being strategically strategic about it. So the people that know you for something else you just start having the conversation with them and like, Oh yeah, that’s what I used to do. But now I do this and you’ve got to remember that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with changing direction or changing job or changing what it is that you.
You know, do because you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting with experience because you’ve tried things that you didn’t like. You’ve tried things that you did like and you’ve taken bits and pieces from that. Or you might have come across something that you’re extremely passionate about, and this is now your time in life where you’re like. That’s what I’m going to go hard for. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s just about being vocal and telling people that that’s what you do.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, so moving them to the digital footprint. That was something else that you talk about a lot. The digital footprint your digital real estate? What is that? And that’s going to impact our personal branding. No end, I’m sure. But what is it? What should we be aware of and how does it impact our personal brand?
Megan MacNeil
So digital real estate is basically anything online that you ought, and so that would be your domain names like main would be www.meganmcneil.com. That kind of thing. It’s having your handles on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc and making sure that you’ve got your name on there and claiming it because if you don’t someone else will is precious real estate, because if anyone’s Googling you, it comes up, it’s going to pull from those names, whereas if you I’m full use LinkedIn for example because that’s obviously my favorite favorite platform.
You’ve got your own personalized URL there, and when you sign up, it’s more. I think mine was something like Megan, underscore, McNeil, 5473 or something like that.
I went and ate it so it’s just Megan McNeil. So that means that when people Google my name, that’s the profile that comes up first, whereas another mega meal doesn’t have access to that. If yours isn’t edited, sometimes you’re not the first person to come up. And it’s also about making sure that you have a bit of an audit of what’s online, so Google your name. And again, that’s not about your eagle. T
If you’re applying for a job, you can bet that the person that’s wanting to hire you is definitely going to Google you, because that’s the tool that’s available to us.
Say I’m going to Google Jen Waterson and I’m going to see what comes up and I’m probably going to look in the images as well, so it’s just worth having a look and seeing what is it they actually pulls from the Internet. And there are some pictures there that drunken nights when you were younger that you maybe just don’t want you know potential business people to see an it’s about finding the source of them so.
Perhaps there on your Facebook page, well, you can hide them or you make them private so they don’t appear anymore. Or you can delete them. Or maybe they’re on a friend’s Facebook page.
Will you just have to see him or do you mind just taking that down or hiding or whatever and just having a little bit of control over what it is that people actually see when they’re looking for you. Your digital footprint is so important now because people are like I said, they’re looking for you. So before you get to a meeting, people will maybe Google you. And while they’re waiting in the coffee shops.
Particularly if they’ve never met you before, so they want to see what you look like because there’s nothing worse than sitting there going on. Are you the person I’m waiting for.
So you want to make sure that what’s online is what they’re actually going to get in person as well. So just make sure it’s clean. Make sure you actually exist because people don’t really trust when they can’t find things online anymore. I don’t know if you thought about that when you just can’t, there’s no trace of someone.
Jen Waterson
I have, there’s been times where I’ve tried to look somebody up thinking that they had a great profile like somebody that I might want to work with or have a conversation with, but if you can’t find them online, it put throws a question mark in the back of your mind immediately.
Megan MacNeil
100% You’re validating them. That’s why you’ve gone on there looking for them. So your digital presence is very, very important, more so than ever right now. I mean, covert has shown that as well because the touch points that we’ve had with people they haven’t been the same as they have previously where you’ve gone to a networking event and you’ve handed over some business cards, or you’ve accidentally bumped into someone we’re not. We’ve got those opportunity users frequently plus a lot of these are working kind of virtually anyway, because what’s stopping you from having clients and the other side of the world?
My clients are absolutely everywhere. I have a LinkedIn course that people are doing in Seattle all the way to here in WA, so you I have to make sure that what people find online is credible and validates what it is that I’m saying that I do so that they’ll buy into that as well.
But it’s also when we’re looking at our career now as well. Our business when we’re trying to build something up doesn’t work like it used to, so we see people that would be 5060 in really good jobs. They don’t have LinkedIn, they have much of an online presence and we have people going. Oh well, they don’t. They don’t have it. What do I need it for? They didn’t need it. Well, there’s a completely different world. You don’t even need to go back 2030 years ago or 40 years ago when they started their career, you only have to go back 10 years ago.
And it’s a completely different world. The way that we get jobs like it’s always, always, always. You know what you know and who you know what you know.
It’s important because you need to have enough knowledge and skill to be able to do the job or to be able to run that business, but who you know is what actually takes you to the next level and it always has. But it’s not just who your dad knows and tells you know his old boss to give you the job. It’s now who knows you online as well. So you’re casting your net much wider and people want to validate that, like they literally, they go on to link then. Oh, so this person’s applied for the job. But this person’s just sent me a proposal to do my new website.
I’m going to look them up and then oh I’ve got a few friends in common with them so all of a sudden I trust them way more than I did 10 minutes ago when nobody knew them.
Jen Waterson
It does, yeah, you’re not even looking for that, but it does literally happen that way. If you can see that right there friends with Megan and I know Megan, so I’m happy now.
It makes a big difference, so we’ve got our personal branding. We want to be purposeful and intentional in this strategy that we put in place when we’re building our personal ending, we need to be careful about our digital footprint and what that looks like an what we’re doing with it. So taking care of that, and you’ve mentioned LinkedIn a few times, tell us about how we can then use LinkedIn to build that personal brand and is LinkedIn for all business owners.
Megan MacNeil
Yes, it’s 100% for all business owners. For anyone who’s working basically at an amazing platform at the moment, because the organic reach is fantastic. So if you are a business owner, if you want to put something on Facebook, you’ve generally now got to pay for the privilege of your audience being able to see it. Instagram is extremely saturated as a brilliant visual place after I still think there, especially if you’ve got your product based business you would want to be on Instagram.
Or a cafe. Jesus, if you’ve got food, food porn on Instagram is like next level, but you as a business owner you definitely need to be on LinkedIn. You should also be less looking at your LinkedIn not as a resume because it wasn’t HR tool. That’s what it was created as it was for recruitment. It isn’t anymore. It’s now like the largest and most reliable professional database that we have in the world like that’s pretty massive, and if you’re not on it then people are wondering where you are.
And because it’s such a high authority website, your website will never get that unless your Coca Cola or something. Your website is not going to rank that high so you’ve got more chance of being seen, especially if you’ve got the right keywords in there.
So once you start looking at it as a landing page you start thinking about it slightly differently so you know you should definitely have your profile picture in there, because that is basically your personal brand 24/7. Even when you’re sleeping, people can see you, they can just log on and see what it is that you look like and whether we like it or not. We were very judgmental. We just have a look and we decide whether we like that person or not. So having a nice Smiley friendly picture there is really important for building your personal brand because people are making a judgment on whether they like you straight away and they’ve never even met you.
The next thing is the underneath that you’ve got your headline, making sure that that actually says what you do for someone else, not what you are. So if you’re an owner, a CEO or president of something like your mom thinks, that’s brilliant. They’re like, Oh yeah, look at my daughters, a CEO. Nobody else cares. They’re like what’s in it for me. What do you do for me?
Jen Waterson
It’s a good point. You make that we need to stop thinking of it as a resume and more as a landing page. Now it’s a little mini website really for you and a lot of people are accessing it really quickly. They’re going there before they go into your personal website.
You need to have the right information there to keep them there and interested. How do you go with LinkedIn? Like I use LinkedIn, I’ve actually started using it a little bit less recently. I’ll say, I really loved it for quite some time, and then I’ve just started, uh, kind of started to stop using it as much just recently. How do you use it for content? You know what sort of things would you recommend people are putting up there?
Megan MacNeil
So anything that adds value or is insights into industry. Anything that kind of showcases what it is that you do from an end product point of view. So yeah, don’t tell people how you do it because people don’t really care if they did care, they would go and learn themselves and they do it themselves. They just want to have validation that you know what you’re talking about, but it’s also a great place to build your personal brand.
Like if you were attending events that are maybe not industry specific, so I don’t go to events are all about personal branding 24/7 because that’s not obviously where I’m going to meet people who might need my help. But I go to events are actually important to me, so I go to a lot of business news events because that interest me because the business landscape over here obviously impacts my business. I will go to events that are more cultural that interest me as well. So I tell people about them because that’s part of my personal brand and what interests me because we’re not flat. We’re not our jobs were not only our business, we have other interests as well. You should also be showcasing the people that you work and do work with. Or perhaps some of your clients and stuff like that as well, because that validates that you know you’re not a one man band and you’re kind of just working solo.
It also shows that someone else who’s going to maybe work with you that you’re 100% concentrating on what it is you do. But you have got other people running other bits of your business, so I find that the content that does the best is anything that’s sort of educational slash adding value. So if I put stuff out about Instagram features that will generally do quite well or articles or how to guides that kind of stuff which is helpful for people but also I attend any events and I’m tagging in people and I’m kind of giving them an update or an overview of that event. They do really well as well and it shows people that you’re out and about in your active and it keeps people thinking about you. You’re fresh. Your top of mind.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, that’s a good point. I think perhaps because we haven’t been attending a lot of in person events we’ve or I have stopped using it for that specific purpose. You know, it’s been it’s great to say yes, you’re at this event and you tag a few different people, but now that we’re not doing that, there’s probably no reason why we can’t keep doing it just because we’re doing it online doesn’t mean we can’t do exactly the same thing.
Megan MacNeil
Yeah, and it’s probably more important than ever to make sure that your LinkedIn is up to scratch and that you’re using it quite regularly because you haven’t got those touchpoints in real life at the moment.
And you know, perhaps going forwards I don’t know what new normal is actually going to be like, but perhaps we will be a lot more digitally based and there’s I don’t know. I mean, there’s a lot of actual events and I don’t know that they’re going to disappear overnight. I know that in WA because we’re basically back to normal we have we have in Paris and events here. They’ve been massive this year because people we had locked down for a little while and when everything opened up, people were just desperate to see other people and you’ll find that in Victoria soon as well. Once you start having in person events they will sell out like oh so quickly.
Which again comes back to why personal branding is so important. People just love people and we have to be surrounded by people. And I know that there’s a lot of people who are introverts or I think they’re called ambivert, so there’s all sorts of different variants out there now that have enjoyed lock down there like I actually really like. I like a lot of energy and I’ve done a lot in my business by being behind closed doors and having that downtime but still being able to do bits and pieces, but they still get some energy from meeting people like human connection is just so important and yeah, and you can’t replace that. But what LinkedIn does is it gives you a platform to continually be showing up.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, I love it. I’m sorry we’re going to get our personal brand sorted. We’re going to check out digital footprint and just see what does come up when we Google ourselves, including the images an we’re going to revisit our LinkedIn. And if you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, now is the time to go and get one set up I suppose.
Megan MacNeil
Definitely and clean your personal URL when you’re doing it.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, that’s a really good point I did. I’d have done that with mine, but I suspect there be a lot of people that don’t know that you can do that.
Megan MacNeil
Oh no, definitely not. I mean, it’s something that’s not a common.
Jen Waterson
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciated it and I’m sure our audience has as well. Where can people find you? What’s your website? Give us some details on where people can find you if they want to have a little bit of a closer look at what it is you’re doing.
Megan MacNeil
They’ll find me at relevant megan.com or on LinkedIn at under a Megan MacNeil, or on Instagram, at Relevant Megan and I actually, I’ll give you the link to ‘ve got a free download for its app.
Just your LinkedIn profile checklist, which might be handy for some of your listeners just to get started to see that they’ve got their checking every all the boxes on their new landing pages on LinkedIn.
Jen Waterson
That would be great. I’ll put all of those in the show notes if you are looking at Megan, the your last name is spelled MacNeil.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Megan and wherever you are listening in the world. Thanks so much for joining us and we shall talk again soon. Thanks, Megan.
Megan MacNeil
Thanks so much Jen
