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Twice weekly show providing social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, strategy session, industry guests, tutorials and more!
Happy Friday, and welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. I'm so excited to actually say those words. And you'll notice that behind me for fun on the kickoff of this episode, and maybe I'll keep it there for all the episodes, I have my mothership neon sign. Credit to my son and daughter-in-law who got this for me for Christmas, I want to say, almost, yeah, last Christmas. And because I wasn't solidly branded, and you know the podcast was socialized, and newsletter and etcetera, and we finally just consolidated everything into the mothership brand, I finally feel at one with hanging it and feeling like I am truly truly my own personal brand, fully through and through.
Helen:It is a big day, and so therefore the topic of the podcast is going to be in sync with it. But before I kick off today's episode, I wanna share my unsponsored buy, as promised on my Instagram story yesterday, where I got this soft like butter leather jacket. And the brand is Things Between. When I was in California, Julie took me to this remade industrial park type of area where a lot of smaller shops are. So it's not the big brand stores.
Helen:We're not talking about the mall with all the typical brands. This is smaller makers. And it was so cool to be there and to shop in these little shops. And I walked in and I saw this and I touched it and I thought, it's going to be like a $700 jacket because it just felt so rich because of the touch of it and the feel of it. And when I looked at the price tag, and I'm happy to tell you, it was $139 You can go on the website, see for yourself.
Helen:This is a size small, also for reference. I'm normally a medium and sometimes even a large if things are cut small like the Aloe brand. But this brand, this particular coat runs a bit big and so do their sweaters. So size down instead of up. What a treat to buy something with the tag that says small.
Helen:And it just feels so good. And it's lightweight so it's not going to be for warmth. It's more for style and to wear over a sweater. So if it's chilly outside, I always put a sweater under it, and then I'm feeling kinda fashionable. It kicks up your look.
Helen:I love it. Okay. So there you have it. My new special find, thanks to Julie. Now let's get to the topic for today.
Helen:Why branding matters in your personal brand. And so that's a double brand thing. But I think a lot of us don't think about what we put out there in social media as our brand. I know people talk about it, but they usually talk about it when it comes to a creator who has a large persona already, and then they become their brand. And one could say, obviously, mothership is my brand, cause I've been the mothership from the beginning.
Helen:But I wasn't wearing a sign. I wasn't selling merchandise. I've just that was just who I am. And my content was about me. So I just wanna be clear that branding is not necessarily about logos and colors and fonts.
Helen:Here is the big statement. Branding is the feeling that you give to people in your content. Think about that for a second. It's how you make people feel, and therefore everything that you do from there on out, you want to bring it back to, is this true to your brand? So that's the big takeaway from today.
Helen:I'm giving you the takeaway upfront because I wanna give you more details going forward. But it's always been on my mind, even when I wasn't thinking about myself as a brand and I was just thinking of myself as a creator, I was always like, Ugh, that's really off brand for me. Like, I can't make content where I'm complaining about an experience in a store because that's not what I'm about. I'm like, I go out and I dance with people and I like to just be joyful and 90% of the time, 8% of the time this is who I am, and occasionally I go to a store and I get treated like crap or something and I get annoyed. But is that what I'm going put on my social media when it's 2% of my experience in real life?
Helen:And then all of a sudden it's going be, because believe me, if I put it on social media, it will be 90% of what I am on social media. So branding is important because it's your message that you put out to the world. Okay. So we're going to start with that. And then I'm going to talk about what it means specifically for creators.
Helen:I made some notes because why not? Okay. Your brand is a combination of your personality, your content style, your voice, your tone, your mission, like what do you stand for, and what do you offer your audience. Okay? So those are all the things that encompass your brand.
Helen:And when I say those things, I'm actually thinking about my own brand. And I'm like, oh, yeah. My personality fits my brand. My content style is, you know, teaching and welcoming and caring and bringing joy. And then my voice and tone are calm and relaxing.
Helen:And a lot of people will say my my videos make them feel peaceful even though if they're never gonna do the trend, they still watch the whole video. That always makes me laugh. But I like it because sometimes all I hear is my Jersey accent and they think my voice is nice, which is great. Also the mission and what you stand for. So if I think about my think I've talked about this on another episode.
Helen:My North Star is really helping people feel seen. And if I'm gonna do that, my content needs to do that. It needs to embrace and help people feel that they can do what I'm doing too, and they can. Ever I mean, I don't hold back anything. I'm not, like, keeping a secret ingredient out or something to how to do a transition.
Helen:If anything, I'm, like, explaining it over and over again because I'm, please don't forget to mark the floor when you do the jump. Please don't forget to not move your phone. Like, I'm almost annoying to make to wanna make you do it better. Okay? So I'm the opposite of gatekeeping.
Helen:I'm, like, over delivering or I'm badgering you to death. But anyway, so in the short, it's the if you think about your brand, it's really the shorthand of what of what people would do to describe your content. And I don't have a brand statement yet. I was thinking about it, but I started to think about it, the social media teacher who makes transitions feel doable. But it's so much more than that.
Helen:So I can't say that that's just my brand. My brand is really encompassing. So I guess what I'm gonna do by next week is have like a little brand statement for myself. And I urge you to think of your own brand statement because it might help you have clarity on what you should be posting. And a lot of people, I will find that there's a couple of people in my studio group that I try and tell them, don't ask people to follow you.
Helen:Give them a reason to follow you because a lot of people like to make the content like, I wanna try and get to 10 k. But you're not giving people a reason to follow you other than just kind of begging for their affection. It's like, oh, please be my friend. No. Give them a reason to be your friend.
Helen:You're fun. You're you know, you enjoy doing going here and doing that. And so that's why a person would wanna be your friend. Not because you walk up to them and go, hi. Be my friend.
Helen:I mean, that's like a kindergartner might do that. Like, we're adults. Right? Okay. So I digress.
Helen:But anyway, on we go. So the other thing about branding is that the consistency in your brand will build trust in your audience. So think about if you are going along and all and one person did this to me, over the years when I was doing baking videos and then I did something else. And she said something like, oh, this is off brand for you. I'm like, what?
Helen:If there was nothing off brand about it. It was just that I got in, I moved into a different lane for one piece of content, and that was bothersome because they had known me for another thing. So consistency in showing up and making sure your brand is consistently out there the way you want it to be doesn't mean you have to stay in one lane. It means that all of the things that you do point towards your brand and support your brand, and they don't go against your brand. The other thing that's nice about branding is that it makes content creation easier because as I always encourage people, it's to look through your types of videos that you wanna do.
Helen:Look through what you're doing already and how many lanes are you in. Do do some of them fit under one category and a bunch of them fit under another category? And I'm trying to think about different creators, but if you have if you're somebody who's doing mostly cooking, but then sometimes you do shopping and then sometimes you do your lifestyle with your family. If if you're doing sometimes you're doing oh, let me do it this way. If sometimes you're doing cooking, sometimes you're doing baking, and sometimes you're doing gadgets or sales.
Helen:That could all fit under the umbrella of kitchen. And then your next one could be you're doing family, you're doing work behind the scenes, and you're doing a day in the life. That could all be under lifestyle or behind the scenes, however you want to categorize it. So just think of four top categories and how your videos are fitting into it. And if something is so out of and won't fit into a category, it's probably not a good thing to post because it's going to be something, maybe you post it, but it's not going to be in one of those lanes.
Helen:So when you're fitting into your brand and you're putting out content that's consistent with those things, it'll make you think of ideas easier because you'll say, all right, I want to rotate. You want to rotate through your content. We've talked about that on content strategy. Don't want to have like 10 family videos in a row and then 10 work videos in a row. You want to rotate, rotate, rotate.
Helen:So every four videos you're kind of going through that rotation. So it will make content creation easier if you know, oh, I have to fit in something lifestyle today because that's what I'm due for. It will at least prompt you to think, okay, what can I shoot that's a quick lifestyle video? Oh, I'm going to the grocery store and I'm using this cart. That's what I did today.
Helen:I'm going to show me using this silly little cart that I have to use when I go to the grocery store in the city when I know I'm going for a big bunch of items and it's going to be heavy. Okay? So branding, it acts as your filter and it keeps everything cohesive. So it's like you're filtering out things that don't fit, and it's giving you ideas to stay in those lanes that you're in. Oh my god, I feel like I'm making such good points.
Helen:I'm going on a tangent from my bullet points, but it's working. Okay, then the other thing that branding does, it attracts the right audience. So if people are saying, I ask people to follow me, Hey, I'm Gen X, where are my other Gen X people? That's just so blatant that you're not going to get people to follow you. But if you start talking about your, the things that you feel from living in that generation.
Helen:And there's comedians who have done this. She talks about drinking out of the hose, then there was a bunch of people that talked about that. So that was a very Gen X thing to talk about. It wasn't her saying, Hey, I'm Gen X. Everybody follow me.
Helen:No. She was like, Where are my people who know what it's like to drink out of a garden hose? Hello. And she'll just do stuff about that. So it helps you if you stay in your lane, in certain lanes of branding, if you stay in within your personal brand, it will help you find your people without having to ask for your people.
Helen:It helps people self select. She's my person, or this person's for me, or this person's not for me. It helps weed things out and then you naturally attract your audience versus having to chase them. Let them come to you instead of you chasing them. Oh, okay.
Helen:The other thing is that branding does boost business potentially. I wrote this down because it will help you if you're clear on your branding. It will help you to have other brands recognize that you are right for them. I mean, that's kind of we're going out a little further. But it does potentially boost business because companies prefer creators who are clear and consistent in their brand and that they can trust that aren't gonna go, today I'm posting Here's a great example.
Helen:Oh my God, I'm so glad I thought of this. So if you're posting and you're always doing content in your kitchen and you're doing household tips and you're doing gadget and whatever, you're that journey. And then you're doing family, so your overall brand is about your lifestyle and your experience maybe with your family, your town, etcetera. And then all of a sudden you post a very extreme, one way or the other, political statement on your page. Number one, companies are not going to trust that.
Helen:They're going to say, Oh man, we don't know what she's going do. She's a loose cannon. She's going to suddenly make a big bold statement about some issue or something. Now granted, a lot of people feel that creators should make statements and make stands on certain things, whether it be political or whether it be an issue let's just bring up another one like the Blake Lively thing. Oh, where do you weigh in on that or whatever?
Helen:We as creators do not have to speak to that. Okay? I'm not an expert in celebrity PR and whatever that is, like crisis management. I am not the person to speak to that. So I'm not going to answer, do I believe Whose side am I on?
Helen:Blake Lively, Justin Bout I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I do not have the expertise to speak to that. Some people might actually have the expertise to speak to that, and that's part of their brand. But it's not part of my brand. So my point is that a brand is less likely to work with you if they're scrolling your page, and then wing, you got something out of left field here and right field here and center field there and now you're at home base there.
Helen:They can't trust you. So they're not, because they have to protect their brand and they can't align with someone who all of a sudden has a viewpoint about some social issue that they don't agree with. So, oh my gosh, I really went on a mad old tangent on that one, but that one is a big one to consider. If you do want to get brand partnerships, if you are trying to do sales, I always say to people who are trying to do sales, be aware that you don't want to limit your audience by things you say on your other videos, by opinions you have about things. But if if Opinions is your brand, and now, by the way, there is a comedian that comes up on my page often.
Helen:I don't she she does stand up, she also talks about celebrity issues. Boom. She's throwing this one under the bus, that one. That is her brand. So that makes sense for her.
Helen:And certain brands are not gonna wanna work with her because maybe they don't agree with her point of views points of view. Got that great. Got that better. But the point is that that's her brand. So she's buying into that, and she doesn't wanna necessarily work with, you know, Vori, who's going be worried about what brand ambassadors say.
Helen:Okay? So, yikes. You get it? So if you have to just think about what's your thinking about who you want to work with, if that is something that you're thinking about. All right?
Helen:So I'll leave it at that. Then next thing, or maybe it's the last thing. I have a lot of notes here. My goodness. Okay, have two more notes.
Helen:No, three more notes. Oh my God. Ready? Is that your brand can evolve, and that's a good thing. And I will speak from my own experience.
Helen:I started what I thought was going to be my social media brand called Socialize, and then soon came to find that people were still calling me Mothership. And then even my studio members were in the studio that was was calling Socialize, and they were calling it the Mothership studio. And I'm like, let's let's listen let's read the room and let's listen to what's happening and let's fix it. So I started to make my way around to, you know what? It is it is all centered around my brand.
Helen:The newsletter is. The podcast is. My studio is. Let's just go in that direction. And I don't know if part of it was my own ego that was holding me back, that it was like, oh, I get mothership, everything, you know?
Helen:But because mothership is I consider that me almost like my name, you know? I'm saying you know a lot, but I do. I consider it part of me. So then I just I and also my innate modesty of not being, so ego driven. Like, it's all about me, everybody.
Helen:It's all about me. Even though I sometimes I do. I walk into a room, and I'm like, And I just it's it isn't at all about no. It's not all about me. But I I bring an energy that is something sometimes higher, and I don't like to then I just don't like to take away a spotlight from someone else.
Helen:And I'm very, very conscious of that. I feel like if I'm at Julie's event and, you know, sometimes when she's on stage doing stand up and she'll mention the mothership and the other day I actually stood up because I always thought it was funny. And somebody was like, go on stage. And I I would never do that to her, at least not unless she we agreed to it ahead of time. Because I don't wanna steal her thunder.
Helen:That's her thing. She's doing comedy, not me. And I can be funny, but put me on stage trying to be funny, I don't know what I would even say. So it's the same kind of respect. Like, I just because I respect other people's brand and I keep my own, I think I, my own ego is in check.
Helen:If anything, I'm like second guessing myself. Would people, are people gonna like this? More so than I'm the best thing ever, you know? So it's like an ego balance when you are a brand. And you have to somehow get over that hump and say, but that's what people are liking and that's who you are.
Helen:And you can lean into that brand. And that's what I'm doing today. Okay, so your brand can evolve. And the next is, other few points I made was how to strengthen your brand. Like, try to think of single prompts.
Helen:And I was saying like, what are words that I want people to associate me? What do I offer my audience? What kind of content feels most like me? So you can kind of analyze the things. Ask yourself these questions.
Helen:What do people normally comment or thank you for or compliment you for? Thinking about things that your audience is saying about you help you actually strengthen your brand because you would lean more into those things. And you would tend to make more content that responds to those things. So when people came into my comments in the beginning, when I got out of baking and got, when I was doing baking, were like, oh, this lady is so fun to watch. I want to make her recipes.
Helen:But when I was doing tutorials, it became, oh my gosh, I can understand her because she's going slow enough for me. And then other people were like, I love every time I come to your page because it makes me smile and blah blah. So I listen to those things and I'm like, that's where I want my brand to stay. So as it evolves into different things, into a creator studio, into having a podcast, into a newsletter, all the things, I still am true to myself and I wanna stay that way. And then so the last thing I'll close with is that it's just like a creator forward reminder.
Helen:So think about it like this. Branding isn't about being perfect. So you don't have to be the perfect statement of yourself every single day. But it's being intentional. So sometimes a trend might make you feel like you're off brand a little bit.
Helen:And in that case, you know, let yourself, I guess, check yourself and go, Do I want have lip sync with bad language? Does that fit for me? I'm going to just use that as a really good example because I got a strange comment on a video. Oh, I saved the comment. I'm going read it for you.
Helen:I didn't want to make a video about the comment. I wanted to save the comment so that I could remember to talk about it. So it's perfect timing. It's probably way at the top of my comments, so stay with me for a second. It's funny.
Helen:Okay. This is the comment. Not going to say the creator. Girl, how old are you? Is that the example we're supposed to be setting for children and teenagers and young girls?
Helen:I bet your mama's real proud. Now, I'm gonna make you laugh. I saved that comment and I thought and I went to that person's page quickly to say, well, who's leaving this comment? They clearly don't understand the trend. Because it was when I did the thing like, hey, hey, hey, and I say, you know, what's going on that one?
Helen:And then you flip around, and I did like a jump spin, and then I was like, bitches they shit and they ain't seen nothing. Okay. So that's the video that I'm talking about, in case you didn't get it from my previous description. When I posted it, she left that comment. I went to her page and she had a video that was not really it was three videos and it was very minor.
Helen:No big deal. But I was like, You know what? I'm not even going to call her out. This is so not worth it at all. Like, I'm not even going to even respond.
Helen:I didn't like the comment. I didn't respond to the comment. I literally ignored the comment. I wanted her to think it was not even ever seen. Okay.
Helen:Cut to I must have made a tutorial recently showing favorites. And when I flipped through it, was like, then you can make comments a favorite and you can that comment is at the top. And I'm like, oh, boy. Well, I wasn't gonna delete the comment because I wanted to keep it in my favorites. Whatever.
Helen:I just kept going with the tutorial, but I I was very aware that that comment was at the top of the tutorial. I was laughing. And so, of course, the comment's gone. It was taken down. Now I don't know if the woman saw it in that tutorial or had second thoughts when she saw another one of my videos and said, ugh, that was a rude comment.
Helen:I shouldn't have left that. I don't know what she rethought because I didn't even respond to it. I didn't even like it. She didn't even know I had seen it. Except perhaps she would have seen it on this tutorial where it was at the top of my saved comments.
Helen:That was a major digression. But I guess it's I guess the point is even as a commenter, when you're commenting on other videos, that's a reflection on your personal brand. Okay? That's that was a long road to get there. But your brand is not just the videos you put out.
Helen:It's your overall social media behavior, and it's your overall behavior in life. Period. The end. I truly believe that it's all one lane. And I know a lot of people would disagree with that.
Helen:They have their social media persona. They have their real life persona. I don't know. I don't have a dividing line. I am just this is how I am in real life, this is how I am on social media, and welcome to the mothership, creator strategy.
Helen:See you next week. Thanks for being here. Yay.