.png)
Power Your Research w/ Dr. Sheena Howard
Welcome to Power Your Research w/ Dr. Sheena Howard, hosted by professor, author, TEDx speaker, ghostwriter, and academic brand expert Dr. Sheena Howard. On this podcast, you'll hear how to build a big brand, build a community, and leave a legacy, as well as the many failures and lessons Dr. Howard is learning on her path from building a 6-figure business to $1M in net worth.
Power Your Research w/ Dr. Sheena Howard
Higher Ed Storytelling University Podcast Interview
Dr. Howard interviews on John Azonis's podcast HESU, which is about how higher ed marketers can tell better stories. In this episode, she opens up about the common fears and imposter syndrome that plague many academics and offers actionable advice to overcome these barriers. They delve into the nuts and bolts of building a lasting personal brand.
Follow Dr. Sheena Howards' socials:
@drsheenahoward | Power Your Research
The universities and marketing departments at universities are leaving a lot of money on the table, are leaving a lot of butts in seats, enrollment on the table and just visibility period on the table if they are not helping their faculty understand how to promote themselves, because them promoting themselves as faculty members funnels directly into the university in a lot of ways. I don't want my work to be stuck behind an academic paywall. I want to leave a legacy, I want to reach my potential and I want to change lives. This podcast, power your Research, is my attempt to help the smartest people in the world do that very thing. My hope is that you use the lessons I share to make more money than what your higher ed job can ever pay. You higher ed job can ever pay you. I've done it, my clients have done it and so can you. My hope is that you'll apply what you learn here and one day join the Power your Research program where you can work with me one-on-one.
Speaker 2:My guest today is Dr Sheena C Howard. Dr Howard is a range of topics. Sheena is a writer and image activist with a passion for telling stories through various mediums that encourage audiences to consider narratives that are different from their own. So, dr Howard, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:We always like to start out on this show, and I'll just give you a warning I'm getting over a cold on this show. And I'll just give you a warning, I'm getting over a cold, so my voice is a little my voice like started going, like going out and it's kind of just like kind of been hanging out in this like raspy vibe, so um, but we always like to start out on kind of a personal note. But so tell me, tell me something that people might be surprised to know about you.
Speaker 1:Something that people might be surprised to know about me might be just my seemingly random assortment of degrees. So I have a business degree actually in marketing that was my undergraduate degree and my master's degree is actually in graphic design and my PhD is in rhetorical communication, so rhetorical and intercultural communication. So I think that probably would surprise people. But as you get to learn what I do for a living in my journey, it will all make sense.
Speaker 2:Okay, interesting. On that note, tell us a little bit about your journey to bring us up to speed on kind of your background and how you arrived at the work you do today.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I started my PhD when I was 23 years old. So you know I was in the classroom with a lot of older people who actually had, and older by older than me, who actually had like experiences that I just hadn't had yet, whether it just be work or life experiences. No idea what she wanted to do for a dissertation. I did my dissertation on the Boondocks comic strip and in 2007, doing a dissertation on comics wasn't cool, like it wasn't, like it is today, where, like, there are programs that have comic studies and like this is an acceptable thing to study. But I happened, as a 23 year old, to just be interested in the Boondocks comic strip, which a lot of people listening may know it as the animated television show. That is slightly inappropriate and um, but when you listen to my educational background, it probably all makes sense.
Speaker 1:I wanted to do something visual. I wanted to obviously study something rhetorical, so that allowed me to study the rhetorical language of something, and I was just always interested as a young person in not having my work behind an academic paywall. The idea of just other scholars citing my work on like Google Scholar and those types of places just was too limiting for me. Just was too limiting for me. I wanted my work to, yes, be accepted in academe, but really be for people outside of academe as well, and so that's how we get to what we're here to talk about today, which is, as a faculty member, the importance to me of building a brand, and just so happened that I was right, because in 2007, there wasn't social media like it is today. Today, if you are a professor, you absolutely should be marketing yourself and building your brand, and not only helps you, but it also helps your university, and so I'm sure we'll get into that in the upcoming questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are talking today about some learning from a book that you wrote called Academic Branding a step-by-step guide to increased visibility, authority and income. And so you know, in our pre-call we talked about just the importance of faculty and you know, phds and things like that, building their brands and you know, doing TEDx talks and things like that and getting media coverage and how that actually benefits the marketing and communications of the college. So that's what we're going to talk about today, but tell me your perspective on that. Talk about how a college or university benefits when faculty builds their brand and grows their audience.
Speaker 1:I think that the universities and marketing departments at universities are leaving a lot of money on the table, are leaving a lot of butts in seats, enrollment on the table and just visibility period on the table if they are not helping their faculty understand how to promote themselves, because them promoting themselves as faculty members funnels directly into the university in a lot of ways. If my academic book is featured in the New York Times or LA Times or Washington Post, which it has been, you know Rider University gets that really free, free press from me just being out there and it has a correlation to the number of hits that the university is going to see on my Rider University profile page. And I know this for effect because I do this work and so you know we'll get into all the specific benefits as we go along in this conversation as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell me what you do at Rider. Tell me about your relationship with Rider University. Yeah, at Rider, what you do at at Rider. Tell me about your relationship with Rider University.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at Rider University, I am a full-time professor in the department of communication, journalism and media, and so I've got all of my promotions. I'm a full professor. I've been there a little over. I've been there since 2011. So I lost count of how many years that is, but it's a lot. It's the longest job I've ever had and I don't plan on moving.
Speaker 2:So you talk in your book about nine pillars of this overall strategy for professors, researchers and things building their brands. The first six, as we talked about in our pre, called our most relevant for our audience higher ed mark-on leaders. So let's talk about all nine, but then we'll hone in on the first six. So just go down the list what are the nine steps? And then we'll kind of back up and start from step one and go one through six.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. So the book is broken up into three phases. So it's going to be clarity, connection and capital, and it's nine steps, so there's three steps in each phase. This book is based off of my Power, your Research program. The phases are called something different in the actual coaching program, but it's the same.
Speaker 1:It's just when you translate something to a book some things have to be modified to make it all fit and to be able to just speak to a wider audience of PhDs, who will be modified to make it all fit and to be able to just speak to a wider audience of PhDs, who will be able to go through the process without the benefit of the program.
Speaker 1:And so the first phase is clarity helping the faculty member to have the mindset that visibility outside of academe, reaching other people, is okay, and helping them understand that they have value outside of higher ed because in order for them to be out here sharing their work with everyday people, they have to understand that that's okay, and typically in our higher ed ivory tower, we're not necessarily taught that that's okay. That's a good place for marketing departments at universities to start telling them that hey, we want you to do this because it's helpful to your job stability, it's helpful to the university. It's helpful for enrollment. The second step is vision Having the faculty member really understand what their vision is in building their platform in the online space. 100% of the faculty that come to me just aren't clear how to articulate everything that they do for people right, and so they're used to talking to other PhDs and they also have a lot of hesitancy around posting on social media.
Speaker 1:They're scared of trolls, they don't know what to say, and so the vision piece is helping them understand how they can be intentional in building this platform and what platforms they want to be on. A lot of faculty do care about TED Talks, so we do teach that, but some people don't, and that's okay. But there's other niche platforms that they can focus in on that have really big followings, depending on their area of expertise. So, getting the vision clear. The third step is the brand assets. So we're not talking about things like logos and color schemes. We're talking about the brand statement, the brand adjectives, the brand archetype.
Speaker 1:What's the story you can tell around your research right? Numbers and data and qualitative research is great, but you need to have a story behind why you do what you do. So we help them craft that story and connect all the dots in that phase one for clarity. And then phase two is the next three steps, and these steps are all about getting media placements high-level media placements Washington Post, forbescom, but also smaller places. Identifying podcast niche that are relevant to the thing that they research, the thing that they're talking about, and empowering them to land those interviews, and this is all about building SEO on Google so that when that faculty member has keywords that they want to be talking about, when a journalist types in those keywords into Google, their name will come up so that they can continue to get these opportunities. And so all of phase two is all of the things you would expect to build your brand online the social media strategy, all of that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2:And, as you were talking and this hadn't occurred to me before but the other relevance of this for our audience is I talk to a lot of marketing directors that they go on, they try to get on podcasts, they try to do conferences, speaking engagement, keynotes, keynote sessions and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And I asked them why I'm like you know what you work for a college like why, why bother, like building a brand, when that's not? You know your salary isn't really necessarily directly tied to that? And they're they're usually like well, it's for career, you know, for career purposes, like I want to. You know I want to like just build my resume, build my authority as a higher ed marketer and just get out there more and, you know, kind of move up the ladder, maybe move into a CMO role. So I, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking even for our audience beyond just helping people and, you know, helping professors and things like get their research out there and build their brands. I think a lot of this stuff applies to the efforts that our listeners are probably already making. Some of our listeners are like really trying to build a platform for themselves.
Speaker 1:So I teach, I teach exactly. I teach creative entrepreneurship as well, and it's all the same strategy, like the nine steps are the same. No matter what role you're in, whether you're building a personal brand or we're building a faculty members brand, or you're a CMO trying to build your brand and become a thought leader, the nine steps are really the same. It's just for me and my power, your research program, targeting it to the niche. So when I work with creative entrepreneurs, it's just talking in a language that my creatives will understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that Super important to have a niche and you know, because a lot of these things and a lot of what I do at Unveiled you know it applies to. I mean, I work with corporate clients all the time. People always ask me like are you allowed to work with if we're not a college, will you still make videos for us? And I'm like of course it's like all the same stuff. I just happen to like higher ed.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, real quick. I don't run any ads on this podcast, so I have to rely on word of mouth. If this podcast has helped you in any way, please share it with a friend and follow me, Dr Sheena Howard, on LinkedIn, where I give more free content on building your brand as an academic. If you tell me you came to my LinkedIn from the podcast, I'll make sure I accept your request.
Speaker 2:So let's start with step number one mindset. I want to talk about helping faculty understand that their work has value outside of academia, so expand on that for us a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think if you're in a marketing position at a university, you probably didn't go through kind of the PhD tenure track pipeline, so you don't understand the nuances of a faculty member and what they're thinking. Faculty members have a lot of fear, right, they have a lot of fear, more fear than probably most people would expect. But you know there's a correlation between being highly educated and imposter syndrome and so if a.
Speaker 1:CMO can say to a faculty member, starting with mindset, that we want you to do this, we want to empower you to do this. This is helpful for everybody. That is the place that you have to start, otherwise they're not going to be confident in being out here talking about anything. If you talk to any faculty member really and they open up to you, one of the things that you'll find out is they're not comfortable telling their other colleagues like hey, I do want to be on TV. Hey, I do want to be on NPR. Hey, you know, I do want to do a TEDx talk, because some academics will say, oh, if you are on TV, then you're not doing real research, which obviously you can walk and chew gum.
Speaker 1:But for my people in marketing departments trying to empower their faculty members and grow the brand for the university, you really have to kind of do the mindset stuff first if you want to empower your faculty to do that work.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a big barrier to get over Because, as you were talking, I'm thinking about my wife, who is very, very. My wife is a trauma therapist very specially focused in trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. There are not very many of them in Michigan, where I'm from, and for years I have encouraged her to like do a blog or do like do a course. Like you know, talk to adoptive parents and foster parents that want to understand their children's behaviors and where they're coming from and stuff like that, and her response is always yeah, but like, there's other people, other clinicians that are better than me. It's like this imposter syndrome thing.
Speaker 2:This is huge, Exactly yeah of course, but of course there are. But, like that, just by putting yourself out there, it doesn't mean you're trying to say that you're, you are the best. And, in fact, like I actually really hate when any organization comes out and says they're the leading voice in this or that, or they're the leading voice in this or that, or they're the leading business in this or that, cause it's like, what does that really mean? Like based on what? What? Who named you the leading this or that? Like you named yourself that, so, so, yeah, I don't think you have to.
Speaker 2:I don't think stepping out there into the public space and bringing your work to you know, your knowledge to other people is is saying that you are the best and you're going to be judged against whether or not you're the best. I think it's just saying, hey, everyone has something of value and maybe you have some very specific things to communicate. Uh, in a way of communicating that that's going to help people understand, cause it might even just be about the way that you present the information, not so much the information itself. Like I look at um, you know Brene Brown, who is, you know, huge, huge. I mean her whole thing is research. But like. I feel like her benefit is the way that she can tell a story. Is she the best researcher? I don't know, but I like listening to her because it's really engaging.
Speaker 1:Yes, and just her first TED talk brought a lot of visibility to her university because it blew up Again. Universities should be empowering their faculty to be that, to do that for the ones that want it, for the faculty that want it continuing down this track.
Speaker 2:I just I, I've been doing research on what videos are working in in higher ed across, you know, tiktok YouTube shorts, uh reels and then long, long form YouTube videos. One of the sections in this presentation that I'm coming up with is thought leadership, and it is remarkable how seemingly boring things just absolutely take off. Like you know, this, this one professor I'm I'm looking at, like this professor from um university of California, san Francisco, ucsf. He's got a YouTube short that came out in the past year. It has a million views, almost a thousand comments, 55,000 likes, and it's just him at a podium talking about why you shouldn't eat sugar. You know, it's like, yeah, it's like new, new, groundbreaking research on the effects of reducing added sugar in your diet and I'm like there's nothing that special. It's just that he got out there, you know, and like a million people watched this.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and universities have faculty present on campus all the time, so this is low hanging fruit. Mic them up, put a video camera in front of them for a presentation that they were already going to do anyway, and you should start chopping up those clips and either putting them on your university website or giving them to the faculty member to have easy social media content. These things are so easy to do today and you don't see a lot of universities doing them. And the other thing is, when you show support for your faculty members, they are more likely to put the university that they work for in their byline, because when they're out here doing all these amazing things, they don't. I don't have to say professor at Rider University, I could take that off, but when I know the university supports me, I'm happy to mention their name in podcast interviews when I'm in the LA Times, you know, and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was reading Freakonomics. I'm like 20 years behind on reading this book but it's co-written by a professor at University of Chicago. They talk about University of Chicago a lot in that book. And I actually know two people who either went to UChicago or applied because they read Freakonomics Like that's the one reason they went to UChicago, or applied because they read Freakonomics Like that's the one reason they went to UChicago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now imagine all the faculty members who already write books anyway, so that they can get their next promotion If they're in love with their university because their university is supporting them. They're going to be mentioning the university. They work for all over that book and, yeah, people do go ahead and Google that university and like now they write this, this cool professor that they look up to, now they want to kind of go and do a visit or learn more about it. So, yeah, absolutely, it's a great example.
Speaker 2:All right. So step two is vision getting faculty clear on their vision for building their platform and what it, what it looks like for them, what. What are some things that you address with faculty when it comes to vision? What are some of those conversations like?
Speaker 1:Getting them clear on if you wanna amplify your platform, what does this look like? Tying into some of the mindset things? Some faculty do not wanna be on social media right, but you have to be on social media because everybody's on their phone and so helping them understand you don't have to be on all the platforms, but let's pick two that you already like and that your audience is already on, and let's just build off of those two. As the first step, we also get them to think a little bit outside of higher ed, because if you want to build your platform and get visibility, little bit outside of higher ed, because if you want to build your platform and get visibility, you have to feel comfortable thinking outside of higher ed, because what we're talking about is not just having your work in front of other academics.
Speaker 1:By the way, when you do this work, your citations get out there as well, right? Your scholarship gets more hits as well, right? This is the correlation that I don't think a lot of academics make when my book is in the New York Times. Absolutely, I'm going to get more Google Scholar citations for that academic book, their head and putting it on a piece of paper, because if it just lives in your head. You're not going to do anything with it, but when you can identify this is the vision for one year, three year and 10 years. Because we're not just talking about a six month thing or we're talking about, like, you're doing this work that you're passionate about and you're doing a 10 year plan. Right, if you're going to do a podcast, a one year plan is not going to cut it, because at the one-year mark you might still only have like 10 downloads a month. We're talking about 10 years. Right, you got to be in it for the long run and so detailing, helping them detail that level of vision in this step, is what they'd be doing.
Speaker 2:I think that's so important, like to really help them understand that this is not a get rich quick scheme. You know, this is like you know if you they're gonna start a podcast or they're gonna be on instagram or tiktok, it is such a slow build and they might do this for six or eight months and feel like, man, nothing's hitting, why am I doing this? But on the other side of that, success it's. It's really compounds like. On the other side of that, once you start getting momentum, it really takes off and uh, and things start happening, and so it's like I really think there's there's so many like social media gurus and podcasting gurus out there that will that will say, oh, I, you know, I here's how I got a million views and I and I started a brand new channel. I got it in 30 days. It's like it was luck. The answer is that was luck, you know.
Speaker 2:Um 99, 99% of people need to really understand that it's going to be a slow build, and I don't think that we talk about that enough and I think it really just discourages people when they're not maybe even already wanting to do social media, but they do it reluctantly to then also not see results right away when they're expecting that. They were told this was supposed to be like the silver bullet, you know, yep yep know.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I, I, I love that. I love that Just encouraging a slow build. So, uh, we were talking about brand building and it's not about the uh, the, the, the colors and the logo and stuff, and I think that that's probably, uh, you know, the most important part of a brand is, like, the thought that is behind the brand and the story that you are building around your work. Secondary is the visual assets, but talk about brand building. What are some of those conversations like? What are some challenges in building, helping faculty build a brand?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in that second step we have them create. In the vision step, we have them create a purpose statement and then we move to that brand building step and helping them understand. You know, your logos and your color schemes are not the most important things. You know, the most important thing is going to be what's your archetype, what's your story? So there's 12 brand archetypes. We go over all of them in the book. Mine happens to be what's your archetype, what's your story? So there's 12 brand archetypes. We go over all of them in the book. Mine happens to be the sage, and so that's going to frame who you show up as on social media.
Speaker 1:So all of this is not confusing and it simply is who you already are, but it gives you a frame so that you're not all over the place. You're going to identify your brand adjectives. These are going to be three brand adjectives. For example, mine are smart, fearless and empowering and again, this is going to give me a lens to show up in the online space and also in the in-person space.
Speaker 1:If my content doesn't hit on one or all three of those things, I shouldn't be posting it, because I need to stay clear and consistent for my audience.
Speaker 1:If I just go a whole week posting videos with me and my son, I'm going to lose my audience, because they're there for me to give them academic branding advice.
Speaker 1:Right, if I want to post a video about my son, it has to some way connect back to what my target audience wants. I'm giving the example of you know my power, your research marketing, but for my personal brand over on LinkedIn, it still has to have a niche, but you do get to be a full person Like you, don't have to give up who you are, but it still has to connect back through the lens of your frame and this gets a little bit difficult. But this is why we have these steps in place, because it makes so much sense when you can articulate what you do in five seconds, whether then coming in with the unclarity of you know, but I'm a researcher and an academic, but I also have this other talent that I like to do, which is crocheting. This clarity phase in totality is going to show you how you can incorporate as much of yourself into the niche and the people that you're speaking to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think enough people understand LinkedIn, especially in higher ed. I think you know I get bored of like the higher ed people that I follow that all they post is like we're hiring for this thing or like look, we're in the news. You know it's like, it's like great, it's like celebrate with me, kind of stuff. You know it's like, and then maybe if it was like 5% that stuff, I think I would celebrate with you. But if it's like that's all you post, like you're really missing an opportunity to to show your expertise and share, share knowledge in a, in a way that people are going to vibe with and that's going to build um, a following on on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:As soon as I started getting out of that like here's what I'm doing, kind of mindset around, you know what I put like oh, here's the project I'm working on as soon as I got out of that and started like really talking more about storytelling and and messaging and stuff like that, like things really started to take off. So I, I, yeah, I, I love, I love the, the encouragement of really defining some guardrails for you know, for yourself, for your brand, but what, what it is that you talk about.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Like it has to be. You know the things that you post on social media. Whether you're building a personal brand, which is what academics are doing, you know it has to be the three main stages of a sales funnel. You're posting for brand awareness, you're posting for brand trust or you're purchasing. You're you're posting to for people to make a sale. If it doesn't fit into those three things, based on the framework that we already discussed, you shouldn't be posting it Like nobody. You know if you're going to post your, we don't need your political views. If you are trying to like, build a niche and make money right, save that for your dinner table with your family.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. Step four media strategy and placement. What, um, what would you say, are like the main levers to pull for getting media coverage?
Speaker 1:Outreach and clarity, and when you email a producer or a host or a journalist, you need to answer why they should have you on their platform. There should be no guesses. They shouldn't have to figure it out. So is it timely, relevant and newsworthy? Timely, relevant and newsworthy? Your email should communicate those things to a journalist or producer in as few words as possible, because they're busy and they're not going to click your attachment or your links. It needs to be in one short paragraph. I love your work. I've read some of your articles. I think my work would fit in nicely. Here's why it's relevant, timely and newsworthy. I think your audience will love it. Tell them why their audience would love it. Keep it simple.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I've heard I've had a PR strategist on the show earlier who said like you know, we're talking about pitching the media outlets with video, and she's like, make it as easy as possible, like give them just the good clips. You know, for example, don't make them sort through 30 minutes of raw footage. You know to to edit this thing. You know everything is around making it as easy as possible for these busy people to pick you up and up and launch a story about you. Yep, absolutely so. Number five is crafting a compelling story around their research, turning data into engaging narratives. So what goes into that? Because I know that there's data and then there's data storytelling, for example, and there's two very different disciplines that are so closely linked. What, what is the importance of storytelling for you?
Speaker 1:so you kind of alluded to it earlier and there's a lot of different frameworks that we teach for the storytelling aspect. Some of them we already talked about with the brand archetypes and that kind of thing, um, so there's a lot of different directions. I can take this question, but but for simplicity purposes, actionable things that somebody can do right now if they're listening to this podcast. Part of building a brand is learning storytelling. The easiest way to do that is start simply with the hero's journey truncated version of the hero's journey and turn that into your social media content, whether it's a 30 second video or even if it's kind of the timeline of the content you're posting.
Speaker 1:So you said something earlier about nobody just wants to see your wins all of the time. No, we don't. People are going to unfollow you if you're only sharing hey, I got a new research article. Hey, I just was on this stage talking and there's a psychology behind this. Because if you're only sharing hey, I got a new research article. Hey, I just was on this stage talking. And there's a psychology behind this, because if you only share your wins, people start to compare themselves to you and they start to feel inadequate, so they will unfollow you right, this is not about like how you this is just a fact, right?
Speaker 1:This is the psychological component. You need to share your sad stories. You need to share your struggles on this podcast. If you have technology issues, you need to tell your audience. Hey, I had technology issues. This is just an example. I was really frustrated. Here's how I overcame it, because the thing that you're doing is showing this bad thing happened. This is how I felt Show, don't tell. And then this is how I overcame it, because the last part of your video or the last part of the article or the last part of whatever the content is, is helping the audience learn. The audience is there for your sad story, so that they can learn. That's what makes content relatable. If you're not doing that, you're not going to be able to grow your following. Things that go viral. Things that go viral are not you sharing your podcast link or sharing your sales link? Things that go viral are you sharing your story without selling anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because going viral is going to get you sales anyway, even if you don't go viral, if you just get more engagement, they're going to engage with the story, not just your wins, so that when you share your wins they will celebrate with you, because you just spent 30 days telling them about all of the tough things, the actual behind the scenes things that we experienced. So on day 30, when you share your win, they are celebrating because they know what you had to go through to get that publication, to get your first 1,000, 100,000 downloads of the podcast, to publish the book right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never thought about it that way. What you said earlier about people unfollow you if they feel like they can't compare to you, and that's probably what's just one of those hidden subconscious things where it's like. Now it makes me think of like all the you know, the people I see in my LinkedIn feed. They're like I did this or I got this, you know promotion, or I'm speaking, I'm the keynote speaker at this thing, and I'm like that's cool but like oh, what, what went wrong? I, you know, tell me a time when you like applied to one of these conferences and you got rejected.
Speaker 1:You know? And how many conferences and keynote speaking sessions did you apply for and got rejected before you got the one that you posted about? That went viral. For me the first time was me talking about writing for Marvel Comics. When I got to write for Marvel Comics, In that video.
Speaker 1:I didn't talk about. Hey, I published a book with Marvel Comics. I talked about Marvel Comics ignoring me for years and how I used Fiverrcom to get the email address of the editor-in, like, and, and just the process of how it didn't work and how I just forgot about it and moved on and then they asked me to write. So it's a different way of doing it if I had just shared. Hey, I wrote for marvel comics. Yay, doesn't go viral. Not going to go viral.
Speaker 2:It has to be the story of, of of the hero's journey yeah, I'm, I'm uh, as I've probably mentioned on previous episodes, I'm binging all of the top chef episodes and one of the hero's journey. Yeah, I'm, as I probably mentioned on previous episodes, I'm binging all of the Top Chef episodes and one of the things that I noticed that they focus on in the, you know, because there's like the cooking and then there's like the personality behind the chefs and their backstory and stuff, and you know there are some chefs that they focus on, that are like I have applied to Top Chef five times and got rejected and and finally, I told myself like this was the last time I was going to apply and I got in and like that's the human experience, that's 90% of how life works. But what you hear about is like 0.5% of people that you know, you know that got this win. You don't ever hear about the, the, the journey that it took uh to to get there. So, yeah, that's, that's really good.
Speaker 2:I love um. I think that's a good like pillar for any content marketer to have in their back pocket is like if you're running out of things to post, what is the time that you failed. I don't think that we, our minds, go to that Like let me. Let me tell about a time when I screwed up. You know we think about like, oh, what's, what's some new, what's some new research or what's some new interesting thing I can come up with to say, but you know, some of it's just telling stories that people can relate to oh, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then, lastly, is strategies for landing speaking engagements. So like how someone wants to book a TED talk. What if I want to book a TED talk, which I do, what should I do?
Speaker 1:So you're probably not going to get on the TED stage first. First you should be focusing on a TEDx talk and I have a free video on YouTube that shows you exactly how to do a TEDx talk, because there are local TEDx opportunities everywhere. The cool thing is, you know, I did my TEDx talk and sometimes it goes on the TEDcom page. So my TEDx talk is on the official TEDcom page and if it does really, really well, you might be invited to the TED conference. But even if it doesn't like, my TEDxTalk has like 30,000 views and it's just so. Find my YouTube video. It's free. It's easy to find how to land a TEDxTalk. And then the other thing is like, when you do the TEDx talk, it's much. It's much like publishing a book Nobody's going to watch it if you don't have a marketing strategy. I didn't get to 30 K views on my TEDx talk just because I posted it. You have it's this.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing. It's this everything we've been talking about. You got to tell a story around it. You've got to have a strategy around it. If you build it, they will not come. If you promote it they will, and so just people being mindful that doing the TEDx talk is just the first step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, again, I love that I'm like getting so passionate about everything you're saying because it's like everything that I think about lately, where it's like I think more that I think about lately, where it's like I think more, more people would succeed in a digital marketing context if they actually understood what it really takes to get traction on something.
Speaker 1:Yep, I mean, it's an everyday commitment. It's not. It's just an everyday commitment and you know you may never go viral, but you have small wins every week. So it doesn't matter if you go viral and get a hundred thousand followers or if you just had small wins once a month and got a hundred thousand followers.
Speaker 1:So what? You still got the followers. And, by the way, you know you can get the six figures without having all of those followers. But the follower count absolutely does matter for more opportunities because it goes back to the top of the sales funnel brand awareness, just obviously. If more people know about you, you're going to have more opportunities. But I want people to understand that you can get the six figures with 3000 followers as long as they are the right followers, right followers, right. So the quality start focusing on the quality first.
Speaker 2:If you're just starting out or don't have a big account yet yeah, I look at my podcast as a great example of that. Like, we don't get tons of downloads every month and honestly I don't even pay attention to it. But like the amount of wins I could tell you of just from having a podcast and the people that I've met through interviewing them, just the opportunities that I've gotten, not just for business, but just like really rich friendships and relationships and stuff, you know, it's so much more than just what the numbers say. The stats, the analytics really don't communicate even a third of what you're going to experience by building a platform for yourself.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, and that's why you can't be if you're thinking about building a brand, or it can't be just about the money, because that's not going to get you up every day to record these podcasts. It's just not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well, this has been great. Loved having you on, Really excited for our audience to dive into this. As I said, I think it's going to be great for marketers who you know, higher ed marketers and communicators that want to work with their faculty and help their faculty build their brands. But also I think we, you know, we've sort of bled into tips that really are just applicable across the board, you know, for building any sort of platform in any context. So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I want to ask where can people connect with you at?
Speaker 1:So at Dr Sheena Howard D-R-S-H-E-E-N-A-H-O-W-A-R-D. I'm at Dr Sheena Howard on everything, and certainly for the marketing professionals listening. If you want me to come in and speak to a group of your faculty on how they can build their brand, I am certainly open for speaking engagements. We also can do custom branded Power your Research programs only for specific departments or universities. If you just want to send a whole bunch of people through and have access through your company procurement site or something like that, yeah, reach out to me. You can find me at Dr Sheena Howard you.