Have you read the blog post I wrote recently about substance over form in your marketing?
About the value of authenticity and ‘keeping it real’ rather than having an unhealthy preoccupation with your own ephemeral, surface image when promoting your brand or content? (Substance over form in your marketing-the value of authenticity and choosing cattle over hat).
There is a handful of individuals who I put into a bucket marked ‘real deal’ when it comes to marketing, business, learning, branding, and the type of stuff that any small ‘solo entrepreneur’ ought to be concerned with.
Conor Neill is one of those guys. He is from Ireland originally but is a lecturer in the IESE business school in Barcelona now.
He has a stunningly successful YouTube channel, one which he has grown over 5 years of vlogging. He now has 185,000 subscribers from all over the world and it is a YouTube channel that I would strongly recommend.
He published an excellent video this week entitled ‘How to use YouTube to Build Your Business and Personal Brand: 8 tips from 5 years of vlogging’. The 8 tips are well worth your time considering deeply and there is only one that I do not entirely agree with.
That’s for another day.
Rule number 2 touches upon my blog post about authenticity and ‘keeping it real’ because Conor tells us to
2. Be yourself and have an opinion; don’t be brochureware; blog as yourself, not your position or role: CEO, entrepreneur or professor.
I believe he is making the same point I made in my blog post, except in a slightly different, less forthright way.
But the tips he gives are exceedingly valuable and worth printing out and keeping in view at your work station or on your PC or phone.
I have written on more than one occasion about the value of blogging and making videos and having a YouTube channel.
It is no surprise to me that Conor Neill is a committed exponent of both these invaluable and powerful tools.
Because both of these activities force you to face your thoughts, assemble them, test them, stretch them, think them through and arrive at a reasonable conclusion (most of the time).
And that is of enormous value.
Especially nowadays when one of the biggest problems we all face is a rapidly narrowing attention span.
I remain puzzled, however, by how few people take out their phone and make a video and upload it to YouTube and embark on a powerful journey of self-discovery and learning.
Anyway, watch Conor’s video-it’s worth 15 minutes of your time.