microDomination: How to leverage social media and content marketing to build a mini-business empire around your personal brand

By Trevor Young

How to harness your passion, develop your platform, and build a community of fans to sustain your micro-business

If you dream of launching your own business, but aren't sure what that business should be, microDomination has the answer. This new book from entrepreneur and communications guru Trevor Young, shows you how to tap into your particular area of expertise and build a small business around what you know and love. No matter what particular subject you're knowledgeable in, from dog training to cooking to financial planning, microDomination shows you how to build a brand around yourself and turn that brand and expertise into profits even from the comfort of your own home.

In the first part of the book, Young uses real-life examples to introduce you to the businesspeople—or "micro mavens"—who are living their dreams and earning money doing what they love. The second part of the book reveals the nuts-and-bolts strategies and tactics you can use to emulate their success and achieve your goal of "microdominating."

• Includes inspirational case studies and practical advice on starting a micro-business based on your talent or expertise
• Features actionable guidance on using content marketing and social media to grow your brand and business
• Written by a leading thinker in the fields of public relations, marketing, and communications

If you're stuck in a dead-end job or just dream of turning your hobby into a business, microDomination gives you a proven plan for turning your passion into prosperity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Feb 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781118505656

Book preview

Part 1: Introducting the micro maven

Chapter 1

From small-time personal profile to global microbrand

Life is too short to be small.

Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister

Back in August 1997, management guru and best-selling author Tom Peters first put the concept of personal branding on the map with a cover story for Fast Company magazine entitled ‘A brand called you’. The article instantly became a classic, representing the Zeitgeist for the business world at the time. He wrote:

It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

Fast forward to today

The concept of the personal brand — or Brand You as Peters calls it — still holds true, but thanks to technology and the hyper-growth of social media, it’s been enhanced with digital steroids. Yesterday’s personal brand has given way to its bigger, more prosperous sibling: the global microbrand.

While the concept of the global microbrand itself is not new — cartoonist and keen social media observer Hugh MacLeod popularised the phrase in 2005 on his gapingvoid blog, describing it as ‘a small, tiny brand that sells all over the world’ — it has only in recent years become a true phenomenon, fuelled by the growth of social media combined with people’s willingness to communicate, connect and collaborate through web-based technologies.

The ability for an individual to create, build, grow and leverage a sustainable global brand from anywhere in the world is today a reality.

We have the technology but, more than that, we — the people — are showing a sizeable appetite for enthusiastic and resourceful entrepreneurs and specialists who inspire, inform or entertain. Of course, if they also have products and services that solve problems for us, so much the better — we are more than happy to buy from them over the internet because we trust the source.

In short, the emergence of the micro maven has taken the concept of personal branding by the scruff of the neck and given it an almighty shake. The result is a truly global phenomenon — a fast-developing megatrend that has seen thousands of individuals liberated from the shackles of a nine-to-five job in order to pursue a passion and a lifestyle they love. What could be better than that?

Britney Spears — Oprah Winfrey — Kim Kardashian

It’s true we have had global microbrands for years in the form of music, sport, TV and movie stars. Think Madonna, Britney Spears, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

However, the key difference between the likes of Madonna, Paris, Tiger, Oprah, and the rest, and micro mavens is they have each had significant traditional media platforms from which to launch themselves. Sure, they needed the talent and the desire and the resolve to win just like today’s new-economy global microbrands, but they also had large-scale sustained marketing machines behind them, rather than being the marketing machine themselves. Not to mention very public stages that attracted the media spotlight along the way.

Madonna and Britney Spears had record deals that resulted in radio and TV airplay of their songs. This led to millions of dollars in sales, which led to media coverage, which led to sell-out concerts around the world, and on it goes.

Michael Jordan had a very public stage — the NBA basketball courts — on which to strut his stuff and launch his brand. But let’s not forget Nike’s massive advertising spend, which ensured the Jordan name was known and desired across the globe. Ditto Tiger Woods. He became well known in golfing circles before exploding into the mainstream, once again thanks to Nike’s humungous marketing budget.

Oprah was a local media personality who used Chicago television network WLS-TV as a springboard to leverage her brand into mainstream consciousness after her show gained national US syndication in 1986.

The Paris Hilton story is a little different in that she attracted media attention in the first place because she is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton of Hilton Hotels fame. Famous for her party girl antics, Hilton didn’t have a platform initially, other than having loads of money, striking blonde hair and access to all the big parties that only the rich and famous were invited to. This led to coverage in celebrity magazines and the tabloid press, which created mass exposure resulting in a public profile that led to a reality TV series called The Simple Life with singer Lionel Richie’s daughter Nicole. With her TV platform in place, editorial exposure of Hilton continued to grow, in turn leading to a bulging portfolio of endorsements, paid public appearances and the requisite book, record and movie deals. Oh, and the homemade sex tape of Hilton romping with ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon that became an internet sensation in 2003 didn’t do her profile any harm either!

Kim Kardashian has traversed a similar path, with potentially even greater and more devastating entrepreneurial effect. In her book Celebrity, Inc: How Famous People Make Money, Jo Piazza claims that everything Hilton did, Kardashian did better. According to Piazza, Kardashian used the Paris Hilton business model of personal exploitation coupled with the distribution platform of reality TV to sell herself and related products. In an excerpt from the book on CelebrityNetWorth.com, Piazza writes: ‘Kardashian’s advantage was that as the second mover in the market, she was able to learn from Hilton’s abundant mistakes’. And, like Hilton, Kardashian’s nascent career got an unexpected boost when her X-rated home video with R&B singer Ray J hit the internet in 2007.

Madonna, Spears, Jordan, Woods, Winfrey, Hilton and Kardashian all have one thing in common: they got past a gatekeeper of some kind. Despite their obvious talent, Madonna and Spears both had to be identified and shepherded through the process by a record company. Jordan had to be signed by the University of North Carolina before being drafted by the Chicago Bulls; Woods needed the top brass at Nike to recognise his potential before he became the brand’s golf ambassador. Winfrey, Kardashian and Hilton all needed TV executives to give them the green light before the public saw them on TV. Even the biggest movie stars in the world got their break at some stage thanks to an eagle-eyed film director or producer.

In other words, all these big stars — major personal brands in their own right — needed someone in a position of power to give them their first major break. Indeed, many of them needed a number of breaks before they made it big. Actress Nicole Kidman began her career in 1983 and it took seven years before she hit it big with the Tom Cruise racing action flick Days of Thunder. Before she became an international household name, Kidman needed producers and directors — gatekeepers — to take a chance on her and give her the green light.

Whereas the powerful media-driven personal brands of Madonna, Hilton, Winfrey and Jordan have had multi-million dollar marketing machines behind their rise, micro mavens as a rule bootstrap their way to success — they intuitively understand the power of the social web and have been able to harness it to connect their personal brands with the global marketplace for commercial gain.

Major media celebrities have teams of marketing and PR experts behind them, carefully crafting and polishing their public image to the point where you get the feeling that even their private moments have been manipulated for public consumption.

Micro mavens, on the other hand, are the real deal in a ‘what you see is what you get’ way. When Chris Brogan tweets, you know it’s him doing the tweeting. Every word he writes in his blogs and his articles can be attributed to him. When Gary Vaynerchuk launches into a rapid-fire rant about the future of business and technology, you know he’s speaking from the heart and not some publicist’s script. When Ashley Ambirge from The Middle Finger Project loads her copy with dollops of sassiness, cheekiness and double entendre, you know it’s genuine because that’s how she rolls. When relationship marketing specialist Mari Smith provides tips on how to get the most out of Facebook from a personal branding perspective, you know she does it because she truly believes in adding value to people’s lives.

Micro mavens are not actors, singers, athletes or reality TV stars. They will never be as famous or make as much money as a big-time media celebrity like Kim Kardashian, but then, that’s not the point. Micro mavens are essentially major niche players. Hilton and Winfrey, on the other hand, are about as mainstream as you can get.

Riches in niches

While niche markets have been around forever, today, thanks to the internet, it’s possible to hit gold by eschewing the mainstream marketplace and instead adopting a laser-like focus. And neither is niche exactly small anymore, not when the entire connected world is your market. Niche could be your lifestyle, passion, hobby, expertise, industry or profession, or any combination