Have you achieved something cool? Perhaps you’ve written a book, launched a podcast, created a blog, or won an award or a new client? Maybe you launched a programme, created an ebook or lead generator, or went live with a new website?
Success doesn’t need to be earth shattering, it can be the small things we achieve that make all the difference.
Quite often what we don't think what we do is impressive to our audience and we minimise our achievements and our accomplishments because they're just part of our day to day.
Trouble is, if you don’t promote your success, who is going to do it for you?
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A recent poll via LinkedIn showed that a whopping 80% of people don't share their wins because they don't want to show off. The remaining 20% said they didn't know what to say about their win...
Imagine if Sputnik was launched to orbit the earth and no-one knew about it?
What if Thomas Edison successfully tested the lightbulb and kept it lit for over 13 hours but didn’t tell anyone?
If Bob Ross didn’t share his positive outlook on life he may well have been just another artist…
Why do you think you hide your achievements from the world?
Some of us grew up in the 70s and 80s where we were told not to show off and not too ‘big note’ ourselves. Then moving into the 2000s that tall poppy syndrome has taken hold where people fear standing out from the crowd.
There may be some deep psychological issues around the reasons why you don’t share your success, those neural pathways deep in our brain that stop us from wanting to stand out or talk about our wins because of previous experiences where people picked on or bullied us. And now with social media we are in front of so many more people and can so easily get haters or be trolled…the pressure to not stand out too brightly is at an all time high.
Annette Densham of The Audacious Agency says “If its going to be, it’s up to me” so the sooner you can get over your fears and decide that the best way for your brand and business to be seen and noticed, is for you to start talking about it, the better.
You will also discover very quickly, that most of the time people are supporting and happy for you and your success. Many people we help are delightfully surprised by the engagement and comments they get on posts where they open up, share their journey and express how excited or humbled they are to do so well at something.
Its all about perspective - and if you can realise that sharing your success is more about impacting others than impressing them, you will find a purpose behind your actions.
Once you have given yourself a reason to share your stories, the next question is what sort of stories you should be sharing, how do you tell them and when is the best time to be talking about your successes?
What do you share? And what channels can use to get the best bang for your buck? And how many times can you tell the same story?
Here are our best tips to help you talk about what you’ve been up to, do you can connect and engage your audience, and do it without ego, naturally and with purpose:
What do you share?
Consider what aspect of your success will be the most interesting to your ideal audience. Most want to know how you managed to achieve the success, your journey, challenges, feelings and what happened.
Remember the journalists format for story telling - Who, What, When, Where, Why…
It’s also an ideal time to thank people and be grateful for the support you have around you and your business.
Sometimes a simple excerpt or quote from your book, or part of your acceptance speech, or a judges comment can add that really personal note to your content.
Most Facebook groups use themes throughout the week for specific topics to be covered so you can pick the best days to share your stories of challenge, achievement and success.
You can leverage your achievements across multiple Facebook groups across multiple days, slightly tweaking the content, and now you’re getting in front if a larger audience.
We suggest a good mixture of written content, photos, and video as well as graphics, logos of the award you won or even an infographic of your success journey!
Getting a photo of you with your trophy, award, book or new product is always a great way to amplify your story and video of your acceptance speech, or book launch is incredibly captivating.
And remember to update your LinkedIn Profile and add the success to your email footer, website, about page and any other profiles you have.
What channels are best to get the biggest bang for your buck?
This all comes back to where your audience is. It’s always good to go and ask someone of your target audience what social media they use most and use those channels.
And being persistent is key. Because the biggest bang for your buck will come from leveraging that win or success over time.
We are inundated with so much information on social media, the news, the radio etc, that someone might see it, get distracted and then forget. So often we see people sharing their success once, and that’s it. It’s silly not enough.
The best way to be remembered is if you're prolifically sharing your information constantly.
Social media is such a great channel, because it's free and you can get in front of a lot of people repetitively, across multiple groups and multiple places, but you need to be relevant and engaging. In general though, the more that you share, the more that you put out there, the more opportunity you have of getting noticed and coming to people's attention.
Choosing the right channel also plays a major part in gaining the right audience. LinkedIn, you might talk more about the data behind your success, the metrics or the methodology that lead to it.
Whereas on Facebook, it's more about the interaction and the people that were part of that process about winning those clients, or the latest guests you had on your podcast.
ABC Radio is always very supportive of small business, and very supportive of women in business. There's PR distribution sites like EIN Presswire that you can utilise, which helps with your Google-licious-ness too.
If you've got an email newsletter, make sure send it out to your database, letting them know that you've won and award or accomplished something amazing and thanking your clients and fans for their support.
Choose what you want to share where you want to share it so that you're engaging with the right audience.
How many times are going to tell the same story?
How long is a piece of string? Thats how often we think you can repurpose the same story!
A good strategy is to come up with one topic for a month that fits with your brand strategy and is relevant to what your audience is experiencing - i.e. Christmas, Mothers Day, Summer, End of financial year etc…
Write a blog post including the story of your success, the challenges, who was involved, what you did, judges feedback, excepts etc, sharing what's going on in your business, and make it live on your website.
Then use your story which is sitting on your website as a blog, for social media posts, FB Lives, posts on group theme days, LinkedIn stories etc - and before you know it, you’ve got over 40 to 60 additional pieces that you can create in your business. It’s called repurposing.
Repurposing content is vital if you want to get noticed and you don’t have time to constantly create new content and it makes it easy for your to post or share your news and link it back to your website - where people can find out more about you, book a call or buy from you etc.
For example, maybe you've launched a podcast or you've written a book or you've written a new blog article, just take one little bit of content, one little phrase that your guest said on the interview, or one quote form your book or one little tip from your blog, and share that out across multiple social media channels.
You can also look for specific dates that make sense to share your story - celebrity birthdays, days of the year, anniversaries of historic events etc, that relate to your story, and ‘news-jack’ the date with a post.
How do we get media attention and engagement?
To get media attention around your success you've got to have a good angle.
If you're pitching to a certain publication go into their website or blogs a read their content first get familiar with them. What type of stories do they like? What's the style that they like their content written in?
It's like any relationship, the media appreciate it when you understand what they're looking for, then write a really good press release or pitch. Now days don't even have to write a media release, just a simple email will do.
And then follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up. Did we say follow up?
That's what gets stories over the line.
But media attention now is not just about mainstream media where you are at the mercy of the journalists, it’s also about syndication services and paid media. You can pay to make sure that your story gets in front of people. There are plenty of online publications that you can pay to be a contributor, and ensure that every month you've got a story going out there.
These online publications work really hard on their domain authority, so that it still benefits you for SEO and of course, any media appearance enables you to use their logo and build the perception of business leadership.
There are countless ways to get media attention and engagement, it just comes down to planning it out and having persistence.
So what’s next?
If you go to https://theaudaciousagency.com/resource/ you will find a number of resources to help you leverage your wins and plan out your blogs, help you create repurposing ideas and assist you in weekly, consistent action to promote you, your brand and your business.
The awards workbook covers checklists, acceptance speeches, how to leverage it for your marketing, how to write a press release around it.
The marketing action planner helps you plan out your promotion for the next 12 months.
The media magnet method workbook, has got all the templates for how to write press releases, how to contact the media, how to follow up, how to pitch, it's all on there, if you want to go to the resources page of our website, you can do that.
And Selling You helps you create your brand message and tell your story so you engage and resonate with ideal clients.
You might also want to take a look at paid media opportunities, to get guaranteed coverage of your success, so you can leverage your wins even further.
Click HERE to check out the packages available.
So what’s stopping you now? Go out there and tell the world what you’ve done!
