Finding Your Voice in Your Marketing

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
If you've been holding back with your online persona and you don't want to be that person online, today's episode is all about how to share your POV, your unique point of view online on the Internet, becoming an authority in your space without starting Internet fights and without really over sharing in a way that makes you feel a little uncomfy. So we'll get into all of that and more in today's episode. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their Magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media.

Andréa Jones [00:00:55]:
So those vertical videos you see on TikTok, TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The links in the show notes and make sure to use my code Drea D R E A at checkout to get 15 off your membership. I love a good hot take moment.

Andréa Jones [00:01:21]:
And a lot of the hot takes that I post online aren't really so super hot. They're just a clear perspective on something that I stand for or stand against. And if you're starting to feel like your content is too polite, you know, it's. It's a too, like, nice, then this episode is for you. It's not about fighting. It's not about creating Internet unfiltered moments. It's not about sobbing into the camera and posting these I'm sorry videos online. But it's really about creating a sticky point of view that people remember and they kind of start to associate you with, with certain concepts.

Andréa Jones [00:01:56]:
And I love this because then your work can do the heavy lifting for you. And y' all know I am all about this. I'm recording this episode the day before it's supposed to go live. Which if you've been hanging out with me for a while this season of my life, that's just how it is. That's just how it looks. But the reason that I can do that is because I've developed a framework that makes it easy for me to talk about these concepts and easy to record while my toddler is watching her tablet in the other room, being a sweet little girl and not interrupting mommy while she's doing her podcast. Okay, that's where we are today. Now, the reason that people kind of follow leaders online typically isn't because they're nice or neutral.

Andréa Jones [00:02:34]:
They like to follow people who are confident in the way that they talk about what they do and that they make decisions that are aligned with either where you are now or where you want to be. Ideally, your marketing feels like a load off their shoulders. It feels like a relief when they find your content. They go, oh, there is an easier way. So an anecdotal story that I, like, share here is when I first started becoming the autocavo Girly. Okay, Autocavo girly. This is very millennial core. However, this is probably, like, 15 years ago now.

Andréa Jones [00:03:07]:
Avocado is becoming a thing. I would go to the store, buy my avocados, because I love them, but they were going bad really quickly. And I was like, how do you buy, like, you know, 10 avocados and then they don't go bad? I put them in the fridge white when I would get them, and they would be too hard, like, it. It was almost like they never got ripe, and then they'd all get ripe at once. And then I have a bunch of avocados. Anyways, it was. It was like one of those problems where I was like, hello, what am I. What am I doing here? I saw a video online of this person who, like, creates cooking videos that said, when you buy your avocados, wait till it's just slightly firm, then stick it in the fridge, and then it'll kind of like, freeze it or cool it at that point, and you'll have a much longer shelf life.

Andréa Jones [00:03:51]:
And it was like, oh, light bulb moment. Now, this is not unusual. It's not, like, a weird thing. It's not a weird piece of advice, but it's something that stuck with me. Fifteen years later, I'm still telling this story because someone created a video about it online. And that's the kind of relief that we want your people to have when it comes to sharing online. However, most people confuse perspective with controversy. Okay, so most people confuse perspective.

Andréa Jones [00:04:22]:
Like, I have a something to say about this with. I want to start an Internet beef with someone. And I think when I talk a lot about, like, sharing your unique perspective online, some people think, oh, we're. We're here for the drama. We're going to get canceled. We're going to have people in Our comments telling us that, oh, you're so yada, yada, yada, like. And I get that that happens and that may happen to you. It's part of being a leader is sometimes there is deeper conversations that need to be have.

Andréa Jones [00:04:48]:
But the real reason that this works is because it actually becomes a lighthouse to your people. Like, they become a moth to a flame. Like, they can't help but feel attracted to your message because it has a unique perspective. And it's not just nice, but that also means it's the reason why it feels risky too, right? When we create this lighthouse effect, when we come the flame for that moth, we are so terrified of excluding people. We're so terrified of accidentally triggering people, people that we tone down our language, we tone down our words, we actually bring in a lack of clarity. We. We muddy the water, so to speak, so that, oh, we're like a cute little people pleaser and we're trying not to upset anyone. And yes, I am talking to myself here.

Andréa Jones [00:05:40]:
Okay? Like, I absolutely struggle with this. I'm not saying I don't do this. I'm just saying I'm aware that this is something that we all grow through. And I think it's just always going to be one of those things that is a leadership development skill. Like, as a business owner, you're a leader, and if you're going to become a better leader, you have to be less and less afraid of upsetting people. You have to remove those blocks of, oh, I'm excluding a certain group of people and instead focus in on, who are you? Not including, who would look at your lighthouse and go, oh, that's not for me. So I had someone ask me this recently about my pronouns in my bio, and I have my pronouns in my email signature. They reached out to me and they said, oh, I noticed you have your pronouns and your email signature.

Andréa Jones [00:06:25]:
Are you one of those people? And I was like, honey, like, in my head, I was like, great, it's doing its job. And I did explain why I have my pronouns in my bio. For me, personally, if you are upset by the fact that I have my pronouns there, we're not going to work well together. I can already tell you that if you feel upset enough to say something about it, you and I are not going to be friends. And I feel like I have to put that in there to protect myself. And also it calls in a certain group of people. I have, for instance, a lot of clients who are part of the LGBTQ+ Rainbow Mafia community. I want them to feel Safe in my community space.

Andréa Jones [00:07:07]:
That is very, very important to me. Okay. I have a lot of people of color in my community space. I very intentionally put my face in front of everything that I do because I know my talking style doesn't immediately scream black person. Okay. I know that about myself. So I'm going to be a little bit more obvious about my skin color. I'm going to be a little bit more obvious about my sexual identity.

Andréa Jones [00:07:31]:
I'm going to be a little bit more obvious about putting my pronouns in my bio, in my signature, because it sends a social signal. Could it cause controversy? Yes. But I much rather call in the people who are right fit for my community than be worried about excluding someone who may feel a little feelings about my pronouns. Like, it's fine. Okay, so we talk about this a lot in the Mindful Marketing Lab and in our Mindful Marketing Framework, which we. I just taught this beautiful three hour workshop around the framework. And one of the elements of this is we develop your pov, your unique point of view. This becomes the foundation of your marketing.

Andréa Jones [00:08:13]:
And if we think about your marketing as a garden, which I love this analogy, if you are in my Do Less Market Better kit, which is a free course, grab it@onlinedre.com kit you'll see this analogy, right? It is a gardening analogy intentionally, because the foundation, the soil, the thing that allows the roots to grow, that allows the plant to be successful is pivotal. Okay? If you don't have a good foundation, if you don't have good soil, if you don't have the right nutrients, your garden can't grow appropriately. And the soil of the framework is your unique perspective. Your unique perspective comes from a few different things. It comes from your values. Okay, so what do you believe that you want to embed into your business, your business values that creates your pov. It comes from your lived experience as a founder. A lot of marketing relies on founder stories, and even the founder's stories becomes embedded in the ethos of a brand.

Andréa Jones [00:09:13]:
If we think about brands like Apple, for instance, the founder story is so embedded that Steve Jobs is Apple. Apple is Steve Jobs. Right? We also embed our community's values into our unique POV so that we are reflecting the things that they look for, that they expect to see in your brand. And we tie this all up and in how you solve the problem that you solve. How do you bring transformation to the work that you do. How do people feel before working with you and how do they feel after work with you? What is their life like before and after what is their job like before and after what are their relationships like before working with you? And after working with you, you can embed all of that into your POV statement, and it becomes this guiding light into how you see problems differently. It becomes a guiding light into how your clients want to feel when they experience your brand. And so there are three types of POVs that we can then use from that, so three types of messaging that you can use in your content, on your website, in your marketing to really attract the right people without starting Internet beef or starting fights or just big drama for dramatic sake.

Andréa Jones [00:10:26]:
Okay, so these are safe, but they're really strong and they're really intentional when you're building out your pov. So the first one is relief pov. This is my favorite kind of, because this is the kind that I use a lot in my marketing. So for my people, for example, I say a lot. Like, I do marketing for people who traditional marketing advice doesn't work. So if you are a working mom, hello, if you have a job, if you're going back to school, if you have aging parents, if you have chronic illness, if you have mental health differences, like physical differences, if you are traditionally and socially marginalized group, There are so many layers to, like, being human and existing in the world. And even now, you know, I find it challenging to just continue marketing when life things are happening, when what the heck is going on in the world things are happening. Right? And so the way that I teach marketing is let's find a way to, like, keep this train moving so our business keeps going without it feeling like a second job.

Andréa Jones [00:11:33]:
Okay. My goal with this is like, oh, my gosh, I want people to come to me and be like, I feel relieved. I feel so happy that I found you because I was tired, I was overwhelmed, I was done. I wanted to delete Instagram from my phone. And then I found Andrea, and I was like, oh, there's a better way, right? And so I want to show them that they're not the failure, but that they don't have the right support system surrounding them to make their marketing work. So that's like a relief point of view. And that's a lot of how I talk about marketing you'll see in this podcast, even in my social media post, is relief perspective. But you can also do this as a standards perspective.

Andréa Jones [00:12:10]:
And I see a lot of my clients doing this, especially if they have something to say. Okay. You feel confident and competent, and you're very clear in how you view the world. And it's almost like a no nonsense, it is what it is approach to this. And it works so well in marketing, right? And so I see this with a lot of my clients who have very strong boundaries around how they deliver their work. And so you basically set the tone for what you believe in your community. It's almost a little bit more in your face, right? It's like, this is what I stand for, this is what I stand against. And it almost calls in your people to have that positive contagion and want to build with you.

Andréa Jones [00:12:53]:
So that positive contagion draws people in and they go, oh, I want to cheerlead this, champion this initiative and I want to do this. And we see this a lot in nonprofits spaces as well, where, you know, the storytelling behind this unique point of view, this unique positioning, isn't necessarily a relief like mine is. Mine is like, oh, I can relax. It's more of like a call to action. It builds excitement. It's like, oh, now I'm ready to frickin go. You know? And so that works a lot for people, especially personality driven brands who have this really strong standard of statements that they can kind of reflect in their marketing and people feel drawn to it like that moth to a flame. The last POV strategy that I want to share here, so we talked about like relief perspective, standard perspective.

Andréa Jones [00:13:42]:
The other one is repeatable perspective. And I find that this kind of method or repeatable perspective works really well for almost every other type of business. You could be a coffee shop, you could be a dental office, you could be a therapist, you could be a lawyer. When you're considering consistently sharing your approach, your framework, your perspective in a way that just states the facts and you have a signature way of doing things at this point, we just need to embed that into people's brains in a way that's a map. Okay? It's a map that leads them to your offers. So for example, I see this in marketing companies a lot where they talk about how they, you know, they're focused on the numbers, they're focused on the metrics, they're not focused on something that's just pretty. They're focused on something that works. This is actually what we do at Uncommon Marketing Agency as well as we talk a lot about, you know, we're not building something that's just pretty to look at.

Andréa Jones [00:14:44]:
We build marketing systems that actually help drive your business forward. This isn't something that is necessarily a relief to people. It's not something that's necessarily encouraging people to like rise up and, and join the fight. But it's so repetitive, repeatable, that it starts to become something that we're associated with as a company. And it could go the other way as well. I've seen a lot of creative agencies talk about how they focus on creative and how they focus on the visual elements and how that can help their clients too. It's not necessarily there's a right or saying that there's a right or wrong answer. It's just being really clear about your perspective and how that's different from everyone else.

Andréa Jones [00:15:24]:
And so if you want to build your unique POV statement, I'm going to give you the framework that I give my people in the program. Okay? If you're in the mindful marketing lab, you have this framework. If you're not in the lab, this is like a sneak peek that I'm going to be reopening the lab during our LinkedIn challenge next month in February. Stay tuned to that. If you want all the details, make sure you're on my newsletter@onlinedray.com newsletter. You can sign up and get my weekly nudge. Okay, so here's a simple framework for your POV statement. You're going to start with I believe.

Andréa Jones [00:15:59]:
Okay, I believe. And you're going to fill that in with your stance, your perspective. So I believe, and usually that like, I believe that marketing should be simpler and smarter. Okay? So that's my little tagline. Simpler, smarter marketing for busy people. Okay, I believe that marketing should be simpler and smarter. And then you're going to add in your proof. And I talked last week about this proof, so you can just pop it in here.

Andréa Jones [00:16:21]:
I believe that marketing should be simpler, not smarter. Because. Okay, my because is generally speaking, a collection of stories from my clients. Like, you know, you're busy, you have a life, you've tried traditional marketing, and it just doesn't work for you. Okay, So I believe simpler marketing should be simpler and smarter because you're busy and you don't have time for traditional marketing. Okay? Which means. Now this. Which means part.

Andréa Jones [00:16:48]:
So it's I believe, which is your kind of stance because you're going to add in that proof and then. Which means. And you're going to talk about what you do differently. Right? So I believe that marketing can be simpler and smarter because you're busy and traditional marketing advice doesn't work for you, which means you have to do something different. You have to be fully supported in a way that works for your real life, not a fantasy. Okay? So that's what I Talk about a lot. That's how my difference is in how I talk about marketing. It's like we're not putting this on the vision board and going, here's our, here's our 12 month content calendar.

Andréa Jones [00:17:26]:
Okay, that we never look at again. We're doing this for real. Okay? So I believe your stance because you're proof, which means what you do differently. And then the last part of this POV statement is so that you can and then paint the future for them. What's the outcome? And for a lot of my people, it's like so that you can get back to doing your work, raising your kids and living your frickin life. Right? Like marketing shouldn't take over your entire life. It should be one element of the things that you do. Okay? So I believe marketing can be simple and smart because you're busy and traditional marketing advice doesn't work for you, which means you need a plan that you can stick with consistently so that you can go out and live your life.

Andréa Jones [00:18:11]:
And marketing doesn't take over your entire life. Okay, so that's the four part POV prompt. Fill in the blank, work on it. Your POV statement doesn't need to shame everyone else. It doesn't need to be like negative. It doesn't need to be, you know, towing on the lines of cancel culture. What it does need to be is name specifically what your people are going through and how you help them with that. Okay? So I want you to work on this POV statement and start layering it in to your post.

Andréa Jones [00:18:49]:
And if you want a quick little audit, go to your social media right now and see if you can surmise that from your bio and from your last nine posts. If it's not clear, we need to revisit the drawing board. Now a few things to think about when you're kind of building your POV statement. And these are guardrails that will help you not be so antagonistic. And I find that it's just human nature. Like I hate when you know what I mean? We don't necessarily need to be that unless that's your brand. But for most of us, we don't need to stir the pot. So guardrail number one is instead of talking about what you're against, talk about what you're for.

Andréa Jones [00:19:30]:
Okay, so for example, I could say a lot, I hate hustle culture, right? I could go on and on and on about how I hate hustle culture, right? I have a lot of lived experience from that and I still struggle with it to this day. I have weeks where, like, I go through work 80 hours a week, and then I'm burned out at the end of the week, and I'm like, why did I do that to myself? You know, it's part of my life. I could talk about that all the time, but instead what I do is I talk about the systems and the support that I have to be able to do things like recording this podcast, to be able to do things like post to social media. I'd much rather highlight what I'm for and what I'm doing than focus so much on what I'm not doing and what I'm against. So that's one of my guardrails that I use to keep things not so controversial. All right? Guardrail number two is I make my unique perspective very specific. I could start hating on other marketers and kind of their strategy, but instead I use what I call I feel seen content in my marketing. I use this on my website, in my newsletter, and in my social media posts and even in this podcast.

Andréa Jones [00:20:34]:
I really use storytelling as a way to share an example of why my work is so impactful. So I'll use my life a lot of the times because I am a working mom. I have two kids. They keep me very busy. They're adorable, and it's exhausting. So sometimes I don't have any creative juice left in the tank to do podcasts. So what do I do in that moment? And I use those specific stories to illustrate my point. Right? And I think there's so much stickier than starting a hate campaign or a smear campaign against the marketers that I don't like or against the strategies I don't like.

Andréa Jones [00:21:11]:
The third guardrail that I use is I use how I content versus how to content. And this is something that's really just shifting in marketing in general. How I content really shares a perspective that gives an option how to content almost implies that this is the only way that this is possible. Okay? The only way that you can get this result is by following these steps. And instead I share how I content. Here's what I've seen work. Here's what I've seen work for my clients. Here's what I teach.

Andréa Jones [00:21:43]:
And that really helps shift the language away from these universal declarations, like, this is the law and there's no other options towards a more welcoming conversation around potential solutions, which, frankly, is real life. Right. It's rarely that there's one solution to one problem. Life is a huge ass gray area. And I just like to help you sift through that to figure out what works for you. And then the last kind of guardrail that I use is that for me specifically, I. Any conversations that require nuance is I use my long form content, my signature content. Okay, so in my framework, I talk a lot about signature content.

Andréa Jones [00:22:25]:
That's because my signature content is where my unique perspective lives. And so when I create concepts like, even this particular podcast would be very challenging to post as a social media post. It's just too complex, it's too nuanced. Yes, I'm going to pull clips and I'm going to post things from it, but the entire concept as it stands lives in podcast format, which is why I also recommend a lot of people consider identifying what is your signature content piece. And then my other content kind of supports that signature content. And it makes it a lot easier for me to kind of steer away from being controversial and like being cancel culture and steer more towards like. Like let me help you find the solution to the problem that you're currently experiencing. Okay, so if this all makes you excited about sharing your unique perspective, I'm excited about you kind of layering this into your posts.

Andréa Jones [00:23:25]:
And if you want specific ways on how to do this again, stay tuned for my upcoming LinkedIn challenge. I'll be talking about that in my newsletter when it is alive very soon and you don't have to be someone that you're not online. I hope that that's the. The main takeaway from this is that you can have a stance, you can share something without it being some sort of hot take. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Mindful Marketing podcast. I'll be back at you with new podcast episodes soon. Stay tuned for that and make sure you give us a five star rating, which keeps us in the top 100 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We really appreciate your support.

Andréa Jones [00:24:01]:
I'll be back soon. Bye for now.