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Thoughtful Edge, Episode 2: Interview with Anton Voroniuk. Power of Personal Branding.
46 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, I talk to a digital marketing expert, the founder of a WebPromo Agency, and the author of bestselling courses at Udemy Anton Voronyuk about the Power of Personal Branding. We are uncovering the potential that personal branding has for career growth and exposure to a wider variety of opportunities. Anton's Udemy courses: https://www.udemy.com/user/woronyuk/And youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1kdhXKdtkrL5uNDRtUt9Uw My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmytro-savchenko/And FB: https://www.facebook.com/ #leadership #management #careerdevelopment #thoughtfuledge
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Transcript
Introduction to Thoughtful Age Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Thoughtful Age podcast. This is episode number two. I'm Dimitro Savchenko, and today I'd like to talk about the power of personal branding for leaders and professionals.
00:00:12
Speaker
My guest is a digital marketing expert, the founder of a web promo agency and the author of best-selling courses at Udemy, Anton Varinuk. As we are in the same ad tech industry, like both of us, we are working in marketing in the advertisements, but on the different sides. We both understand the potential the personal branding has for career development.
00:00:39
Speaker
It gives better exposure to the market, hence to a wider variety of opportunity.
Anton Varinuk's Career Journey
00:00:47
Speaker
Anton, please tell us about yourself, your business, and how you got there. Hi, Edmatron. Really, thank you for having me today with you.
00:00:56
Speaker
I'm in digital marketing for 15 years. We have with partners, few businesses in digital marketing field. As you mentioned, the biggest one is Web Prom Agency. Web Prom Agency is a leading digital marketing agency in Ukraine. We are Google Premier Partner marketing, Facebook marketing partner, TikTok partner.
00:01:13
Speaker
We are working with global enterprise clients, helping them to grow their sales online. Ten years ago, we launched Digital Marketing Academy web remasters, which became the leading digital marketing academy in Ukraine. And this was the part of Ukrainian business. Just two years ago, we decided that we need to go global because our knowledge was really good and we wanted to share our expertise worldwide.
00:01:37
Speaker
and we launched our first courses on Udemy. Right now we have one Udemy 24 courses in digital marketing field. They are
00:01:45
Speaker
on all topics of digital marketing, such as social media, PPC, SEO, et cetera. And if you talk about our audience, we have 400,000 students. It's over 1 million enrolls from 200 countries. So it's about our digital approach. We have strong expertise in all fields of digital marketing. And I will be really happy to share with you some small tips and insights about personal branding.
00:02:11
Speaker
Nice, nice. Thank you for the introduction.
The Crucial Role of Personal Branding in Career Development
00:02:13
Speaker
So my first question is definitely about the personal branding and why do you think it is important for leaders and professionals, especially in the ad tech? And what is the personal branding in general? What is personal branding? It's the thing that makes you different.
00:02:33
Speaker
When you try to buy something or to buy something from somebody, you are always seeing what is the reason. We need to talk a little bit about the difference between B2C and B2B marketing. If we talk about ad tech, enterprise, etc., it's all about B2B marketing and in this niche, personal branding plays a really great role.
00:02:54
Speaker
If you talk about the main criteria as why personal branding is so vital in digital marketing and in ad tech, it's only one big thing. People don't believe companies, people believe to people. So if you want to sell, if you want to grow, if you want to grow your carrier, grow your sales, etc, you need to build personal brand.
00:03:18
Speaker
If you talk about the basic concept of personal branding, you need to build trust because if people don't trust you, they want to buy from you. So we have a lot of different topics about how you can build a personal branding using contact marketing tools, digital marketing tools, other things. So I think that it's like a basic topic of our today conversation, and I will be happy to share some insights with you.
00:03:45
Speaker
Nice, nice. This is obvious that the power of a brand is a very huge thing. And meanwhile, I work at the marketing agency. I see how much efforts different companies and brands and people are putting into the development of their brands, not like promoting any particular service or any particular product, but just investing in their brand and their
00:04:15
Speaker
for the people to know them and be aware of that company and their values. Yeah, this is huge.
Building a Network and Leveraging Events for Branding
00:04:23
Speaker
So, to your mind, how can a strong personal brand help professionals stand out in their industry? The first and the main thing, you will build a really great network. If you talk about personal branding and the concept, how it can be built, the first thing you need to create
00:04:42
Speaker
the right user persona profile, you need to understand your main target audience. And when you understand your key client, the person you want to collaborate or person you will need your help, you will find the ideas how you can find these people, how you can find them with events, content you're creating, your social media marketing, offline events, etc. And it will make your network bigger. And if you talk about the main key points of B2B marketing, first, you need to build expert,
00:05:11
Speaker
Second, you need to build events. You need to communicate on events, meet people, find people. And the third big thing is partnership marketing. You will need to find partners and personal brand will help you on all these stages. So at first, you are building content and expertise. On the second, you meet on the events of line and online events, the right people. And you build partnership network, people who can help you, people who can
00:05:36
Speaker
implement some things in your strategy and help who can recommend you to your customers, to your partners, etc., making your exposure bigger.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, the idea of expanding a network and meeting with other people, talking to them, is so vital. I believe not only in our industry, but in every area of life. Because ultimately, there's other people who feed us, who take care of us, or we can just share our experience, which is also something that is bringing us joy.
00:06:13
Speaker
Okay, so what do you think? What are the common misconceptions about personal branding? Is there any at all?
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, the common misconception is about who needs to talk. The main thing you need to do in personal branding, you need somebody to talk about you, not talking to everyone that hi, my name is Anton, I'm digital marketing expert, it will also work. You need to understand your concept, you need to understand your target audience, but at the same time, it will work much more better if someone will recommend
00:06:46
Speaker
For example, I'm a Google Academy certified trainer, and I was a speaker on some of Google events. And if we talk about this concept when somebody recommends you how it works, I can start going through the streets. For example, you are in California, and I'm going to you, Dmitry, and say, Hello, Dmitry, I'm Anton. I'm digital marketing expert. Can I help you with your digital marketing? What will be your reaction in this case?
00:07:12
Speaker
Who is this guy? Yeah, you are not sure. In other case, you are coming for some of Google's events. Google said we are collaborating and gathering our main partners. And Mitter, you are invited to Google's event. And on this Google event, some of Googlers will say, guys, we want to tell you about some stuff in digital marketing.
00:07:32
Speaker
Anton is our partner expert. He will share his expertise, case studies, and so on. And from the stage, I will say, okay, we are going to do something like this, this, this, and we will be happy to collaborate. So Mitra, you have the same choice. You have the case one of me on the street of some Californian city, so villagers, and me on the Google stage. To which person you will believe more?
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, this is obvious. This is obvious. This is obvious. So you need to build this partnership. And a lot of people don't understand it. When people start to build a personal brand, the first thing they want to try to do, they want to shout about themselves. But it's not about shouting about themselves. It's about building network. It's about building a relationship. It's about building micro and micro influencers of network around you. People need to recommend you.
00:08:25
Speaker
and to make people recommend you need to think about the base, about the values, how you can help them and it will work. It will work and it may be the most common mistake I see and maybe it's like number one thing which can stop your personal branding expansion.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's an impressive idea. And it sounds like a life hack for me, like something contour intuitive for sure. But yeah, thank you for sharing. That's a great point.
Strategic Approaches to Personal Branding
00:09:00
Speaker
So you already mentioned that like developing your network, meeting with other people, like having someone who would maybe help promote you or in your skills. And those are the good tips. Do you have something else like to add there, like more some other effective strategies that might be useful?
00:09:22
Speaker
Maybe I want to talk about strategies. I will talk about the whole concept of personal brand and the first thing I already mentioned. It's your customer profile, so you need to understand for whom you build your personal brand. For example, if you talk about.
00:09:37
Speaker
We promise experts business, we help marketers and we help marketers as an agency solving their pain that they need to set up ads, they need to get results from campaigns, et cetera. And we help as educational hub, which helps them to get more knowledge in digital marketing. So we understand our audience, they are marketers, digital marketers, and we are helping them to solve their pain. Agency, we set up in a digital marketing campaigns
00:10:04
Speaker
I'm at an academy with getting knowledge about some tools like TikTok, Instagram, PPC, email marketing, etc. So it's the first main thing. After that, you need to understand the KPIs. What is the main result of your activity?
00:10:21
Speaker
If you will try to say, I want to have 1 million subscribers on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok is bullshit. It doesn't work. You need to build your activity because you want to sell. Everybody wants to sell. And so it's true. And you need to understand how your personal brand marketing activities will influence on your sales.
00:10:42
Speaker
it can be not like the sales of companies can be your salary as expert so if your salary is growing your compensation is growing it's also okay so you need to understand the main people you have portrait you need to understand the qpi the next you need to understand the market of competitors so if you are expert in digital markets you just go to google and try to find
00:11:03
Speaker
digital marketing experts for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, etc. So you will see a lot of people who are experts in the same field. You need to understand what they are talking about and what is your difference, what is unique selling proposition compared with these people. So if this is a short step, first we understand the audience, the second we understand KPIs, the third we understand the market.
00:11:27
Speaker
The next is how we will communicate with them. And it's very important key point because on this stage we can use a lot of stuff which can shout about you and make your message more clear. The easiest way is to start their ads like Facebook ads, Google ads, TikTok ads.
00:11:46
Speaker
But we need to understand that ads without the right message and the right message, the right content, it won't work. So we need to build the content strategy. And if we talk about the content strategy, every professional specialist is thinking what I can post, what about I can talk in my social media, on my LinkedIn page, on my YouTube. Do you have much trouble with me or not?
00:12:11
Speaker
No, I don't. I don't think so. You don't have such trouble. You know what you will post tomorrow or the next week, yeah? No, definitely. I have some kind of a plan, but I would say it is a struggle. Yeah, I would agree with that.
00:12:27
Speaker
I have a formula for you. I have a PMP formula. It's really easy to understand. You have to get three types of content in your LinkedIn stream, YouTube, etc. The first is professional, the second is news, and the third is personal. Any expert, if you talk about personal branding, need to have professional.
00:12:45
Speaker
So what is professional content you need to understand the pain of your customer? You can use for this such tool as Answer the Public. It will help you to find the questions to Google for your niche. You can ask your customers, et cetera. And this is when you are talking about the pain of your customer, for example, how to implement some tool in Martech.
00:13:04
Speaker
or how to find employees in our tech, etc. So there are a lot of questions you need to talk about the pains of your customers. It's the professional content. The second is news content. We are working with you in such niche where if somebody didn't change during this period, for example, Facebook or Google didn't launch something new,
00:13:23
Speaker
I think that it will be an exception. So we need to talk about news which are really important for this niche and for our customers. For example, Google changed its algorithm in SEO. Google updated and added some tools like performance marks, etc. So we need to talk about this news, not
Balancing Authenticity with Professionalism
00:13:41
Speaker
about each news. For example, Google changed the red button to the green button.
00:13:45
Speaker
something really important for their own niche and all structure. And the third thing, what is really important that people don't believe brands, they believe to other people. So we need to show our personality. So you have kids, I have kids, you love sports, you love skis, I love great lawns. So we need to show our personalities that we are not just about business guys, we are guys who have
00:14:06
Speaker
family who have hobby or have something that they are happy about and this is personal content in your link in your facebook instagram etc so we need to combine these three types of content your professional content your news content your personal content and if you will combine three together
00:14:26
Speaker
It will make your personal brand in social network, on your blog, YouTube, etc. more powerful. So try to go through this chain, try to understand your user persona, try to add the right PPI's, add understanding of your market, of people, other people, other experts you work with, and of course the right content strategy. PNP Formula will be the good thing you can implement.
00:14:50
Speaker
Oh, nice, nice. And they already see that the most successful bloggers and most successful influencers, they do exactly the same. Like they talk about themselves, they talk about the news and about their expertise, about some of their ideas and thoughts and some professional insights. However, if we are like in this
00:15:19
Speaker
world where everyone is talking about themselves and about their expertise, how do you balance authenticity with the need to present a professional image? There should be some ratio or maybe some hints and tips.
00:15:39
Speaker
Look, if we talk about the professional content, it must be enough. It must be enough and it must be okay for your audience. So you can measure the efficiency of your professional content just after your audience. Check some metrics like the likes, comments, any other engagement metrics in social media. But at the same time, if you want to create really great professional content, you can use two ways.
00:16:06
Speaker
The first one is hype. You are trying to find something which is really rocking right now. For example, today it's Chagipiti. Chagipiti was started many, many months ago. It became public maybe in November, as I remember. But now everyone is talking about Chagipiti. So you are thinking, yes, I need to be in this stream. So we are talking with you about Chagipiti. It's one here. So you are trying to get the hype.
00:16:33
Speaker
You are trying to catch the trend and you want to talk about this trend. This is one kind of professional content, but it's really hard to do it on a regular basis. You need to spend a lot of time monitoring influencers, monitoring social media to find such trends and find such topics. On the other hand, you have evergreen content. How to find evergreen content for professional niche? You just need to go to Google.
00:16:57
Speaker
use Google Ads Keyword Planner, use SEMrush, similar web, answer the public other tools that help us grab all search questions from your audience. For example, you are interested in J4, the new version of Google Analytics that will kill Universal Analytics. And you are going to answer the public, you type in
00:17:13
Speaker
J4 and look all of these questions that people have. They have questions how to move from Universal Analytics to J4, how to set up goals, how to set up e-commerce, a lot of stuff that we can help them answering their questions, writing how-to videos or writing how-to articles and it will be really great professional content because
00:17:33
Speaker
It's not our place to write about terms and because people ask us to answer their question and we can do it. So I think that this hype theory and SEO theory they must be combined and this will help you to produce really effective content in your professional style.
00:17:52
Speaker
Well, nice. That's an impressive advice. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. Well, that's another backdoor. Yeah, sure. Another live talk, I would say. And I was also wondering, while working on this and while doing all those promotions and doing the posts and working on the social media,
00:18:16
Speaker
and developing your presence, is there anything that can hinder your personal
Risks and Rewards in Personal Branding
00:18:23
Speaker
brand? Are there any mistakes that one can do that would jeopardize the whole effort that was put in before?
00:18:33
Speaker
The personal brand, I think that you create for a long time, but you can kill it for this one mistake. So we have a lot of such case studies in social networks when somebody do something wrong and it's like a lot of shouting social network, etc. So we need to understand what are you doing? And that if you start doing a personal brand, you become public.
00:18:56
Speaker
For not all people it's comfort. So they need to understand that any warmth, any activity, any post, any tweet can be used against them. So it's about tone of voice. It's about understanding what we are talking about. It's about understanding how your words can influence on your company.
00:19:14
Speaker
especially it's very crucial for american companies when you are on ip or when your stocks are trading and so on it can be not just about your words that will punish your personal brand but it's going to be also your words that will punish your stocks your market evaluations.
00:19:32
Speaker
We have a very good example of which everybody knows Elon Musk. Sometimes he talks something great which makes his stocks going higher. Sometimes he just takes some crack and we have stocks that go down. So it's just an example of a person who uses hype on a regular basis but at the same time we understand that for
00:19:54
Speaker
Smaller people who are not in one mask, it also helps you to grow or it helps you to fall down. Yeah, just a few words, not very well thought out, like may definitely damage everything what you did before. Yeah, sure.
Applying Personal Branding for Career Growth
00:20:18
Speaker
Let's imagine we're already doing that. We are developing our network and we already have some presence online. We have our blog, podcasts, whatever. And now, as a professional, for example, how I can leverage that for my personal career, let's say. Do you have any particular tip, for example?
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Of course, most of my case studies and examples they about business when there are person who is building personal brand monetize this personal brand for business evaluation. So for selling more for finding investors, clients, partners and so on. There are a lot of examples.
00:20:57
Speaker
But if you talk about using it for personal career, you can just grow in company because you have this publicity and you can change things. So in my case, my love to be public, to speak on them, they created a new business department. This is how Vaprom experts was created. At first, I was SEO guide.
00:21:19
Speaker
after that ahead of SEO and in one moment I started like speaking on a conference, going as a tutor on some lectures, academies, etc. and I've understood that speaking, sharing, etc. it's my lab.
00:21:33
Speaker
and going public, talking with people, sharing the ideas, sharing my expertise, and so on. I've understood that I'm not going to move forward as SEO head, that I want to start making my SEO department bigger and bigger. I want to do something in the educational field.
00:21:51
Speaker
That's how we're from experts Academy was born. And this is my case study. But if we talk about usual person, when you start to be public, your capitalization growth. So in some companies, it's okay, when the company is open, and everybody wants to build the personal brand. In some companies, for example, if your manager and your co owner start try to build silence,
00:22:14
Speaker
And if you try to shout too loud and the co-owners don't think that it's a good idea, it's going to even harden your career.
00:22:22
Speaker
If it's coordinated conception and you talk about things which are really important, you help your business, you help yourself, it's win-win model. Of course, you will grow, you will get more salary, you will get more benefits, you will get more interested clients because if you build your personal brand, sometimes if we talk about agency business, clients can care, come and tell.
00:22:45
Speaker
Guys, I want to work exactly with Anton, or I want to work exactly with Dmitry, so this is how it works. For example, today I've got a message from a guy which is also in the club with you and me, and he told, okay, I have a clown for you, it's a SaaS company, but I want to personally look for it because I believe that you will do everything good. So it's how the personal brand works.
00:23:11
Speaker
Nice, nice, yeah, very insightful, very insightful, yeah. I was also thinking about like, is there a difference for the manager, let's say, and like an expert, some individual contributor?
00:23:28
Speaker
in developing their personal brand or we are just should talk about our expertise and about ourselves and Expanding our network regard regardless of what's is our like particular position this moment Look, it's really depends. It's really depends I think that if you talk about the concept how it work PNP formula we discussed previously it will work both for individual contributor and for manager and
00:23:56
Speaker
But if we talk about different concepts, that network really can help. You can change company, you can change product, you can make a pivot and the company will go to another.
00:24:11
Speaker
way, but your network people who are well connected with you, they can help. So personal brand creates the circle of people, it creates a really good network. And at the moment, for example, you're launching something new, new project in existing company or definitely a new project, you can ask for accommodations, you can ask for review for feedback,
00:24:37
Speaker
and these people will help you, they will say this guy is great, I know him for that project, I believe that something new that he is going to do will work and I can say yes, I support him and it can be money, it can be reviews, it can be connections, it can be network, etc.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, nice. It's amazing. I know you for several years, like one in four, maybe even five. We've met on some of the conferences and probably at that time you were already doing this personal brand development. Sure. I started to follow you on the social media and was also admiring
00:25:21
Speaker
how you do all that stuff, how you find the time, how you find the appropriate topic to share, how you find the appropriate way of communicating your expertise and using your personal life. I liked following you all the time, but now it's here. More of how you do that gives me more insight. It's not rocket science, apparently, it's just something that you just go and do.
00:25:50
Speaker
Thank you for feedback. I really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah.
The Power of Passion in Branding
00:25:55
Speaker
So besides of you, obviously, can you share an example of a leader or professional who has a strong personal brand and what makes it successful to your mind? There are a lot of such leaders. I can show a lot of examples in Ukrainian business. For example, if you talk about our partners, I can talk about founders of Ahrefs,
00:26:20
Speaker
Our partners will create samples, other SaaS companies will collaborate on a regular basis. There are a lot of such strong leaders that create personal brands and it's really great. But if you talk about another small insight that I want to share you,
00:26:35
Speaker
And if you talk about building personal brand, it's about love. You need to love what you do. And you was asking what the reason why it was doing it 15 years ago, why I'm doing it 10 years ago, and why I'm still doing it now. The one main reason is love. I love what I'm doing. And if you talk about that great leaders that I've named and a lot of other guys that I didn't name,
00:27:00
Speaker
They love what they do. They love their companies, they love their services, they love their teams, they love their companies and it's all about love. Maybe the right words must be changed, not love, but passion. It's about great passion that changes their life and it also changes the life of people that are close to them. Passion.
00:27:26
Speaker
Fulfillment, joy, everything. Yeah, it's hard to argue, hard to argue that those activity can be very beneficial, not only to your personal career growth or your business development, but for yourself as well. You share something, you engage with the audience, you keep in touch with the people,
00:27:53
Speaker
that you care about to the people that you want to share your good news and getting the feedback on that and like just talking to them is like very very beneficial I would say.
Final Thoughts and Advice
00:28:07
Speaker
Okay so it looks like we are time and
00:28:12
Speaker
We should be wrapping up here. Thank you so much, Anton, for joining us today. It was very, very useful conversation. I've heard so many tips on the personal brand development. And this is just so amazing to have you here and to listen about your expertise and experience. Is there any last advice that you want to share with the audience?
00:28:35
Speaker
Maybe the last one will be the same as the previous. Try to love what you are doing and try to scale it and it will help you grow your personal brand, the brand of your company and get a great results. Thank you for having me today. Awesome. Thank you for joining. Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you.