🤫 Secret Sauce To Powerful Personal Branding On Social Media 🔥

Hitting the road of business and leveraging your market is essential to succeed in your business. Either you can scale your business locally or scale your business on social media. In this episode, Carolina Millan, a Business Coach, shares how she built her brand online from scratch and gives advice on how you can build your brand too! She provides tips and strategies for your business to venture into the digital world. Carolina compares the social media platforms in terms of starting your brand. Tune in to this episode now and learn how Carolina helped her clients and how some reached their first million dollars!

#impactfulentrepreneurshow #guestinterview #personalbranding

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🤫 Secret Sauce To Powerful Personal Branding On Social Media 🔥

We’ve all heard that when it comes to building a brand on social media, personal branding is super important but what exactly does that mean? Why is it so powerful? How do you get started? All of the things for anyone of you who has been hearing about how important building a personal brand is, but no one seems to be able to explain actually what it is or how to do it. This episode is just for you. We are going to dig into all of those things and clear away all the mysteries so you can get started on building your own brand. Let’s do this.

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I am so excited because I'm here with Carolina Millan, who is a digital marketing expert and coach from Chile. She is here to talk to us about all things digital marketing, specifically her personal branding secrets that have allowed her particular business to take off. She's taken over a lot of social media platforms and has a nice following going for her. I'm super excited to pick her brain and learn about her zone of genius. Welcome.

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm excited to be here and add a little extra culture to your summit.

I can't wait to dig in. For those in the audience who maybe have not met you yet, can you tell us a little bit about your business and how you got your start, and how you found yourself in the world of digital marketing?

I got started a long time ago, back in 2008, while I was at my job. It was my first job fresh out of university. A few months into it, I discovered I couldn't be an employee and I started looking for ways to start my own business. I went online and I discovered all sorts of people making a living on the internet and being able to travel and do everything from their laptops, and it sounded very appealing to me.

I started self-educating, reading books, following experts, and trying to figure out what would work for me, and that's how I discovered social media and became very passionate about it. I realized I had a talent for it. After a few months, I started getting attention first locally here in Chile and other businesses started to ask me, “Can you help me with my Twitter or Facebook strategy? It seems like you know what you are doing.”

While I was still at my job, I started doing this little side hustle and helping some businesses. When I was able to replace my salary, that's when I quit my job and started working as a freelance social media community manager at first and then consultant, and then I started to branch out to other areas of digital marketing funnels. I started learning about traffic, Facebook ads, and sales funnels. I started my blog and my YouTube channels, and so slowly but steadily, I started to take off and get closer to where I am now.

You were able to build this alongside your career. You started helping local businesses that were local to where you are living.

I was working with a couple of restaurant owners who wanted to leverage social media to get more clients and provide better customer service. I started locally and then I started thinking that my goal was to work from anywhere in the world. I would like to have clients anywhere in the world and not just locally. I started branching out and generating content in English because I figured that might get me more attention outside of Latin America and it did.

A lot of the people reading that are working very hard to do exactly what you were able to successfully do and specifically build their business through using social media. Working your way out of your job is a challenge. Do you have any tips for those who are in that place of trying to make that leap? What can they do to help to make social media work harder for them?

The first thing I focused on was building my personal brand because the experts I started following when I went on Google to look up, “How can I start a business online?” I discovered a few experts mostly from the United States, who were saying, “You need to build a brand. You need to stand out. You don't want to be a commodity. You don't want to be the same as everybody else. You need to be known for who you are, have your voice heard, and identify what your message is.” I spend time on how I can position myself as an expert in something that I care about.

I started learning about social media so that I could be seen as an expert on the topic without calling myself an expert. I want other people to see it, and that's what happened. Other people started asking me before I started offering anything. They were like, “Can you help me with this?” That's when I realized, “It's working.”

If you add value and you invest time and money in yourself, in hiring, sometimes you have to hire some mentors to help you along the way. In the beginning, I didn't have a big budget to pay a coach, mentor, or somebody to teach me everything one-on-one. I had to buy some books and take some online courses, and that's what allowed me to gain skills that the average person didn't have when they were trying to get on social media and make it work for them.

If you learn a few skills, that will put you a few steps ahead of the people who are coming right behind you. That's all you need. You don't need to be the ultimate expert or invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to have some authority. What you need to be doing is implementing what you learned. That's important. Everything I was learning, I was implementing it on my own brand like I was my first case study. If it worked for me, it worked for other people. It’s important that you test if things work before you go and try to make it work for someone else if you don't even know if it works for you.

For those of you reading, there are so many golden nuggets in what she shared so I want to pull out a few to highlight. These are things that stood out to me. You said that you were building a personal brand around who you are. It's not that you were trying to be someone you are not. You are trying to truly stand in who you are and what you already care about. You then said to implement what you are learning. You are your first client.

You should be your first success story.

I love that you said you don't have to be the expert of all experts. You have to be two steps ahead. That's so inspiring because a lot of people feel a lot of pressure that they have to be something they are not, or that they can't possibly help anyone until they are such a big expert that everyone knows them, but honestly, it starts with your first success story, and then you have to help one other person and it goes from there.

You start building that confidence, and that applies to any niche and market you are in. If something works for you, it might work for other people, so you will want to test and help other people. If that works, you will gain more confidence and you see, “There's potential for what I know and what I do. What if I can help a few more people who are a couple of steps behind me?”

You want to keep investing in yourself so that you continue to be two steps ahead of the people that you started bringing with you. You need to be educating yourself constantly. Figure out who are the other experts in my market that I should be following. What are they doing? What books are they reading? Maybe I should read those books, too. What's working for them? Have a few role models that you can follow, but you don't need to be at the super level in order to help other people.

You need to build a brand, stand out, and don't want to be the same as everybody else.

That's so inspiring because one step at a time. It seemed in the beginning that you started local and you started with Facebook and Twitter, is that correct?

Twitter was my go-to platform at the time. It was still relatively new in 2008. It’s like a long time ago. Facebook had only been around for a few years, so they were new. Those were the two main platforms I was on, and then I started generating content on YouTube, but I started with Twitter.

It seems that you started learning and appearing on all the different social media platforms and how nice to be on the leading edge when they are still new. Do you have specific techniques or strategies that you've found work better on some versus others in terms of building that personal brand or any tips for the audience on where it might be best to start or spend their attention?

It varies from market to market. For some markets, Instagram would be the number one network where you should be focusing on. For others, it might be Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or Clubhouse, the newest one. I find that nowadays, with how many different formats you have an Instagram. It's a good one to start with because you have photos and videos, you have longer videos, you can go live, and you have stories. The only thing that Instagram doesn't have yet is audio, and I'm sure eventually, there will be audio, maybe on Instagram or Facebook.

The good thing about Instagram, it's relatively easy to find new people to follow and connect with. You will probably find most of your own role models or the people that you want to follow in your niche are probably there. It's good to follow some people that you know you look up to. That's important. I follow most of the people that I look up to and following them there and checking out what they are doing.

I'm constantly learning. You never stop learning. If they try something new, maybe you can model that and try it yourself and try to follow certain trends. Sometimes there are certain trends like funny things and challenges. I'm not going to do everything if it doesn't go with who I am. It's very important to be congruent with who you are. If there's a silly dance challenge that everybody's doing or something like that, maybe I'm not going to do it, but if there's something that, “I can do that. It's fun,” then go for it. It's good to be up-to-date with that type of thing, what is trending, and you'll see it on Instagram a lot. That's a good platform to start.

You need to be there daily though. You can't post once a week. You need to be there every day, at least one photo, at least four Instagram stories where people can see a little bit behind the scenes. You can share bits and pieces of your personal life if you want, or you can share your journey. People love to see the journey that you are going through as you build your business. They love to see the real person behind everything.

Share everything that you would feel comfortable with. With video, maybe you can go live stream once a week. Don't worry if only 2 or 3 people will connect. Get it out of your system. Just do it. Slowly, you’ll start building up and more people will show up. Even if 1 or 2 people show up, don't let that discourage you because we all start with zero followers.

The first time I joined Instagram, I had zero followers. I joined when it launched several years ago. When I joined Twitter, I had zero followers. I had no email list. We all start with nothing. The only way to build up from that nothing is to do something, not just sit there until the followers magically come in. Don't buy followers. It might be tempting but don't because they are not going to be real people.

They are not going to engage with you. Even if they are real people, they don't follow you because of who you are. They follow you because someone else put your name on some recommendation list. There are many different ways to buy followers, but I don't recommend them. Just be there. Be present and interact with other people.

The other platform I recommend is YouTube because it has this reputation that it's not just a social media but it's a search engine. The content you upload there will have a longer lifespan than when you put it on Instagram or anywhere else. I have videos from a few years ago that still get views. People still find them because they go on YouTube, they search for something specific and I have a tutorial about it or I have a video where I talk about it, reviews, and stuff like that I upload, so it's powerful.

With YouTube, it's okay if you upload once a week. I'm doing that now because I have to do it in two languages. There's no way I can upload more than twice a week, but that content does require a little more thought. You don't randomly post anything on YouTube. You want to think about the video, plan it, and then record it. That's a good thing because you'll get found if you put the right keywords and all that, but that's a whole other conversation.

If someone is new and emerging and figuring out where to put their time, it sounds that both Instagram and YouTube, for different reasons, are good places to be. If our readers are thinking through and wondering, “How important is my personal brand when I'm trying to sell my offers? I'm trying to sell my products. What role does a personal brand play in that?” If they are struggling with how to make that come to life, how could you help them to put some structure around that?

The one thing is building that brand, but you want to offer something at some point. Some people are scared. Some people don't know when is the right time to make an offer. They don't want to be salesy and you don't have to be salesy. I don't like being salesy. I know that if I offer enough value for free and then I have something to offer, people are not going to get upset or anything because they get so much value from me already for free with my content that it makes it okay to sell something.

The funny thing is, at some point, people will start asking you. “Do you do consulting or mentoring? Do you have a coaching program? Do you have a course?” People ask me all the time because I don't mention them every single day. You don't want to be every single day pushing stuff. You want to give and then, every once in a while, have something to offer.

What I would recommend, even while you are planning, maybe you don't know yet what you want to sell. At least have a freebie, something you can offer for free, a lead magnet. Build a simple funnel where you can offer people, maybe a video course for free, or even an audio course for free or an eBook. From there, capture their emails so that you start building a database so that when you have something you are launching, you have not only your followers but also your email list where you can promote what you are selling.

It's important not to be afraid to sell. If you are adding a lot of value, people will see that and some people will wonder if you have something to sell. I have had clients and I have seen people on social media who build this brand and audience, and then they don't know how to monetize it. It's important to plan that out from the very beginning. What could I give them that adds a little more value than what I can do for free?

It could be some time with you. It could be adding some conference calls with you on Zoom or webinars. You can build a longer course that can follow up on the free one that you gave them. There are so many options to monetize your knowledge and monetize your personal brand. It's a matter of choosing one to start, and then you can build all your product lines.

It seems that in the beginning, too, you were simply sharing your personal brand. You were sharing value and companies were starting to come to you asking if you could help, so you created that poll. It seems like even now, people ask you, “Do you have a course? Do you have a program?”

I get people on Instagram every single day who ask me, “How much is your mentorship? Do you have a mentoring program? Do you do this or that?” Sometimes I can't even keep up with the number of people. Not everybody will end up buying because, for some people, my price is going to be out of reach. If they are asking, it's a good sign. It means they see you as someone who has credibility and authority in the subject, and that will only happen if you are constantly creating valuable content.

I want to circle back to something you've mentioned a few times now because it almost creates this cycle. You are constantly trying to learn something new, better yourself, seek mentorship, read books, and invest in yourself. In return, as you are putting value out, you are attracting people who are ready to invest in themselves.

You’ve figured it out. I don't remember who said it but there's a saying that goes, “Be the client you want to attract.” If you want to attract people who invest in themselves, you should be investing in yourself. Otherwise, why would people invest in you if you don't invest in yourself? Eventually, when people see that you are going to seminars, reading books, and talking to a mentor, they will be like, “That's great. This person is constantly on the edge and they are investing in themselves. I want to invest in them.”

Write that one down in your action workbook for those of you who are VIP holders. That’s a soundbite to save and hold on to because it couldn't be truer. Be the client that you would want to attract. As you are building out your personal brand and you are showing up on social media and sharing value, can you tell us some stories about the types of results you can experience when you are following this method and building a brand, is there anything you've experienced or maybe your clients have experienced in terms of feeling a shift in their business?

On one hand, for some of my products, I haven't had the need to invest so much in paid advertising, for example. For my mentoring, I have never had to set up a campaign to promote it because I get people asking me all the time and they come organically, and that is a result of adding value on social media. That is a result of being present over there.

The same with your email list. If you build content that is useful for people, it's important that you have a link in your profile, especially on Instagram, where people can go and learn more about you. If they click there, they go to your website, they can download your free, your lead magnet, your freebie, they can be on your email list, and then they can start getting more value from you through different platforms. If you only keep it on social media, you are at the mercy of the algorithms.

If the algorithm doesn't want to show your photo now, people are not going to hear from you. When you build an email list, even with people saying that nobody opens their email, it's not true. I still get 10%, 15%, and sometimes 20% open rates in my email newsletters. That's pretty good. When people open your email, it's a different approach. You can bring those people to different social media platforms.

If there's a new social media, “Follow me over here,” then you don't start from zero every time on every new platform that pops up, because you build that audience and that email list. It’s the same thing when you have something you are launching, “I have this new course that I'm launching. I'm doing this web class.” You invite those people from your social media and from your email list, your email subscribers, and that's where you can also do the selling if you invite people to a class.

I tell people that it depends on the price point of what you are selling. If it's a high ticket, if it's something maybe $500, $1,000, $2,000, or higher dollars, you may not want to go on Instagram and say, “Buy my $500 or $1,000 course,” just like that. Unless you have built such a huge celebrity type of brand that they will buy it. That takes a lot of work, but otherwise, you can invite people to a live stream, a web class, or somewhere where you can give extra value than what you are giving them on social. You do a Zoom webinar or something, and there you can make an offer for something that has a higher price point.

If you are selling maybe a $20 course, maybe you are launching your first online course. Maybe you price it at $20, $30, or $50, whatever it is. Maybe it's a short mini-course. If you have built that trust with that audience, if you have built rapport, if you have added so much value, then you will get some sales from mentioning it on your social media. I have seen other people who have done that. You can spend two months going live every single day, and I have seen people do that. You launch your course, your book, or whatever you are launching, and you've given so much value for so long that people are going to go and buy. It creates that reciprocity.

People have this perception that building an audience takes such a long time, but I love that you have concrete examples. That’s a lot of work to show up live every day, but two months can often be enough to build some trust with your audience. At that point, they are probably wondering, “Do you have anything for sale? I like your style. I want more.”

They will. I have seen a case of someone who did that on Clubhouse, where they went live every day for two months, and then they launched the book. They see amazing sales numbers without any ad spent on advertising. You can do that on Instagram or Facebook live. Show up every day for two months and see what happens.

We could call it the two-month challenge. There might be a thing coming out of this event that we'll have a two-month challenge and we'll do it together. Using these personal branding secrets and building out your own brand, do you have a particular accomplishment or something you are super proud of that you could inspire other people to go out and maybe do the same by following your method?

When I started my business, I then had huge expectations or huge goals. As you start and as you start getting results, your expectations and your goals start growing a little bit. That's good to have a big goal or big dream. One of the best accomplishments for me, and which has been quite an honor, was to make it to the Two Comma Club with ClickFunnels, which is a software company that helps you build your own sales funnel without the need to know any coding, design, or anything.

It's a super simple drag-and-drop. You can build beautiful pages where people can buy your products, join your email list, and all the stuff I have been mentioning. Most of my funnels I built on ClickFunnels. When you do $1 million through one of your funnels, they give you an award that's called the Two Comma Club. I'm very proud of that one in particular.

You should be your first success story.

That's a huge accomplishment. To go from starting to build a brand on social media and starting to attract your first two people to scale to the point where you burn more than $1 million is a huge accomplishment. That must feel great. I know from following you and looking at what you have out there that for you, it's not about the money. You are passionate about making an impact in the world and helping people. When you have those types of resources behind you, you can help so many people.

That's the way that I see it and it represents people that you helped, people that somehow you generated some impact, small, big, but something positive. That's the way I like to see it.

I know tons of the people reading are building a business not for the money but for the impact and to help people truly. Being brave enough to put yourself out there and build your personal brand is helping people. You never know who you are inspiring.

You never know who's watching your videos. You never know who you might help because you created a video to put that message out there and then they will leave a comment and they will thank you. For me, that is priceless.

It's wonderful how you've touched on so many different platforms. You started on Twitter and Facebook. You talked about Instagram and YouTube. Are there any other platforms that you work with or that you help clients with to build their brands?

Those are the main ones I use. It's still new. Clubhouse is another one that I would pay attention to if you have an iPhone. It's launching for android, then they are opening it up. If you have an iPhone and you can get an invitation, get on it because it's great. In less than a month, I have made so many connections because it's still relatively small where you join and you get to know a lot of people in a community and you get to connect with high-profile people as well, and you meet people from all over the world. You get to talk to people, which is a cool thing. You join and there are conversations happening between several people and you get to talk to them. It's cool.

The networking is going on there. I have heard of people who, in a month and a half, already signed contracts with seven or more new clients for being there. That platform is something you cannot outsource because you have to be there because it's you talking. It's not like other social media where someone else can post for you. On Instagram, you can have somebody else edit your photos and post them for you, write for you, and everything.

Here, you have to be there and it's live. It's not prerecorded, so everything is happening live. You join a conversation. You chip in, you add value, and you have to be there. It's time-consuming, but for me, so far, it's been very worth it. I'm dedicating a few hours a day to it. I strongly recommend that you pay attention to it if you have an account and iPhone or if you are waiting for the android app to open up. As soon as it opens for android, get in there. It's super valuable.

If you are building a personal brand, it is about letting people know the real you and who you are. That's a great place to do it because you have to show up live. It feels a little bit like they are closer to you almost.

That is a cool thing about it because you get to talk to several people at the same time. It's like having a group conversation with a bunch of people and there are other people listening, and then they go click your bio. It also allows you to connect to Instagram directly. I have had a lot of people who come from there to my Instagram and Clubhouse doesn't have any DMs yet. You can't post on your profile.

All you have is your photo, your bio, and how many followers you have, and then a link to your Instagram and Twitter. If people are interested in what they heard you say, they will go and message you on Instagram and say, “I love what you said.” I have had a bunch of people. They go on Instagram. They direct message me. “I was listening to you on Clubhouse. I love what you do. Tell me more.” That's the power of social.

If people wanted to connect with you on Clubhouse, do you have a handle or place they could find you?

I use the same handle on most of my social media. It's my name @CarolinaMillan. You'll find me on Instagram, Twitter, Clubhouse, YouTube, LinkedIn, all of them with the same @, which is important for your brand. If you are building your personal brand, try having the same handle across platforms.

If people are loving this topic of building a personal brand and they would like to dig in more, are there other places they could find you to continue the conversation if they want to continue following and learning from you?

I create content in Spanish and English, but if you want to connect with me or learn more in English, my English website is still under construction, but it's CarolinaMillan.net. That's my English website. CarolinaMillan.com will be my Spanish one if anybody here speaks Spanish. I have a show. My podcast is in English and it's called Beyond The Hustle, and you will find that on most of the podcast platforms, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, all of those. I do interviews with some great people. I have had Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, and Russell Brunson, who is the founder of ClickFunnels, and a few other amazing people that I admire and look up to that I have been able to interview. Those are the main places to find me.

I love the name, the title, Beyond The Hustle, because this entire summit is all about moving beyond the hustle, building a business that gives us the lifestyle where we want to live, not just more busy work. You have to follow her.

Thank you. I hope so.

I also understand that you have a free gift for our readers. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Yes, I do, and it's newly updated. It's my eBook and it's called Personal Branding Secrets. You'll be able to download it by going to PersonalBrandingSecrets.me/ebook. If you go there, you can download this free guide. I updated it. It's 60 pages or so. It's long and it's free, where I will walk you through some of the things I mentioned now. I will walk you through how to leverage Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and how you can start monetizing your personal brand.

That's so helpful. Be sure to grab that. It's a full 60-page eBook is a massive value. It’s a very abundant gift.

Most eBooks are twenty pages but I wanted to make them complete where you can learn everything. I could probably charge for it, but it's free.

As you are all about impact, connection, and helping people, and it comes through in everything that you say and everything that you are, so I love that. Thank you so much for doing this. This is a pleasure.

Thank you for having me. I had a great time. Thank you for the questions you asked and I hope everybody got some value from what I said now. If you did, I'd love to hear from you.

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About Carolina Millan

Carolina Millan is an International Speaker, Business Coach and Content Creator. Through her videos, podcasts workshops, online courses and coaching programs, she teaches entrepreneurs the necessary marketing skills to position their Personal Brands, to create their own online courses and coaching programs, to be able to live from their passion and to design their lives.

Some of Carolina’s clients have reached their first $1Million dollars thanks to her digital marketing strategies. Carolina speaks on stages around the Globe and has helped thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs in their online journey. She was also the first Latina Entrepreneur to join the Two Comma Club by Clickfunnels in 2017.

PodcastAdrienne HillOctober 10, 2022Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Social Media, Clubhouse, Personal BrandingComment