Personal Brand Brief

With the help of lots of referrals and constant marketing on LinkedIn/social media, I've hit 15,000 subscribers!

Here's my reflections and top 3 takeaways scaling the newsletter:

Not many know this, but when I thought of starting a weekly newsletter, I almost said no. Here’s what almost held me back from starting:

📅 I had never written long form articles consistently

😅 I didn’t think many people would care

📝 I'm not a grammar wizard

But low and behold, I said - hey, this will be a fun learning test regardless what happens. I’ll learn something new, find an editor to help and we’ll see if anyone shows up.

And boom. 15 weeks later... we became a community of over 15,000!! 👀

A Short Recap
Last November, I started the Personal Brand Brief, and over the last 16 weeks I’ve been able to celebrate some pretty cool news:

📰 we were recognized as a top LinkedIn newsletter to follow in 2021

🗣 10+ virtual speaking and consulting opportunities developed!

👀 got featured on sites like Inbox Reads and Newsletters.co

👋🏼 100s of you have reached out with ideas (keep it coming)

💸 we’ve had some interest in new sponsors...

3 Takeaways

Since hitting publish on article #1, I’ve had 3 key big takeaways:

1. Ship things at 80% and get feedback to improve as you go
   I think people get so attached to what others think that they delay launching great ideas. Don’t get me wrong. Waiting to be strategic is great. But delaying to the point of over analyzing is pointless. We have to admit with new projects, we’ll never 100% be “ready” to start anything. Instead, get after it! Get it to an 80% quality level, share it with some trusted folks, then adjust along the way.

2. We better understand topics when we have to teach them
   As an extroverted guy from a family of 7, I’ve found that storytelling over a coffee or phone call can be much easier than over a long form article. As a result, I’ve been able to sharpen my thinking and communication through the newsletter series. It’s been a fun challenge to write for an audience on a weekly basis and the new ideas that have stemmed from not having a slideshow or microphone to rely on.

3. The power of having a direct line of communication
   One of my favourite parts about the newsletter has been the dialogue it’s opened with my community. Whether it’s questions they have or strategies they want explained, the newsletter is a perfect open sourced outlet to answer direct questions. If you don't open up lines of communication, you and your team will never know what your community wants and they'll go somewhere else where they can be heard.

Thanks to those that read this far! Any questions, drop them below.

Original link to the newsletter: https://personalbrandbrief.substack.com/p/what-i-learned-reaching-15000-subscribers

For the first time in the newsletter, I built out and marketed an exclusive mini-course for the Personal Brand Brief readers to check out around the topic of building a LinkedIn profile. With Christmas holidays, boxing day and New Year Goals right around the corner, I thought it'd be the perfect time to try it out.

Here's the breakdown of how it went:

• On December 21st, the newsletter went out to 9,210 subs at the time
• In the preface of the newsletter, I wrote "I've hidden a SURPRISE GIFT at the end of today's article... it may or may not include a BIG discount code to a fun project I've been working on for the New Year! 🎄🚀" - hyperlinked to the course page
• At the end I also included a phrase at the end to drive sign-ups: "For the next 48 hours, the readers of this newsletter can pre-order my NEW Leverage Linkedin Video Course with an exclusive promo code that takes $150.00 off the retail price! Just use the discount code: “XMAS150”"
• Landing page was directed to: https://personalbrand.thinkific.com/courses/leverage-your-linkedin

RESULT: $400 USD from 14 accounts and 8 enrolments in that week. Not bad for the first test at monetizing the newsletter.

Link to article: https://personalbrandbrief.substack.com/p/the-power-of-giving-and-a-hidden

I was blown away, after the first week of launching the newsletter on LinkedIn and substack, I had collected 6,000 subscribers!

For those wondering why this was the case, here's the ideas I came up with:

1. I have been writing short form content for 3+ years on LinkedIn, twitter, medium etc and I believe my follower base (25k) at the time, was eager and ready for my long form content.

2. LinkedIn PROMOTES your newsletter.... and I believe with a little lift from their algorithm, I was favoured more sign-ups as a result of the topic alignment with their demographic

3. I shared all over social media about the launch and sent emails, invitations and messages to most of my friends. As Steph Smith says from her book doing content right, your first base of support needs to come from your inner circle.

4. I tried my best to make the first newsletter as visually stimulating and professional as possible to set the bar high.

Those are 4 things that comes to mind on why I landed 6,000 sign-ups in my first week of launching the Personal Brand Brief.

Here's the links to the 2nd article that shares my reflection from the response:

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/find-something-you-care-joel-hansen/?trackingId=Y714WAGHRqimY2oOkzVx7w%3D%3D

2. https://personalbrandbrief.substack.com/p/how-to-find-a-niche-you-care-about

Got any questions? Drop me a note below!

After the planning was behind me, I penned the first newsletter to go out.

I had established the name, the one liner, the cadence and the audience.

In the newsletter, I challenged people to subscribe if they liked the topic and to spread the word if they knew of others.

And voila, the first newsletter was out the door and into people's inbox:

Substack: https://personalbrandbrief.substack.com/p/introducing-the-personal-brand-brief
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introducing-personal-brand-brief-joel-hansen/?trackingId=CZsjN6jOSleomWFfkhgu7w%3D%3D

After being asked many of the same questions about LinkedIn, marketing and personal branding, I decided to launch a newsletter so I could answer people's questions each week and create an archive where anyone could access them for free.

It became a fun way for me to:

1. listen to my audience,
2. create a newsletter that solved a problem and
3. start a "build in public" project that forced me to be accountable

With that in place, I was off to the races!

And the newsletter became live on:

1. Substack: personalbrandbrief.substack.com/

2. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/personal-brand-brief-6667114585805467648/