What can you do to STAND OUT from your competition?

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hello and welcome to this broadcast. I am here this weekend to speak at the Penn Con Conference Faculty. Yeah. And I wanted to share with you today a little tip on branding and how you can set yourself apart from your competition. Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz. I am a best selling Author of over 40 books, creator and owner of Author Audience Academy. And I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. And this week I'm doing a special promotion for my Academy. It's authoraudienceacademy.com and I've had so many new people join. It's really fun, it's really exciting. But one thing I've done to set myself apart from the competition when it comes to author coaching is I actually record a personalized video for every single new member that comes into my academy. I get on and it's about a minute long and I tell them the top two things that they can do to get the most return on their investment. I personally welcome them. And, and it is amazing how many people really just are flabbergasted. I mean, somebody literally this week I have recorded over 80 videos because we have a ton of new members. But one of my new members actually emailed me back and she was like, shelly, I almost fell out of my chair when I heard you say my name.

She was so impressed. Someone else was just like, I cannot believe, like you sent out a personal video. I am a fan for life. This, my friends, is just one example of how you can make yourself stand out from the crowd and really differentiate yourself from your competition. What are some other ideas that you have? What are some other tips that you have? What are some things that you can do recording these videos, it does take time, you know, and I send a message afterwards. I use a canned response in Gmail and then I personalize it for each person. But it's worth it because I have a membership. And so with a membership, retention is the biggest key. It's keeping the members. And I want my members to know right away that this is a different type of membership. It's not going to be the same as other places they've gone or other memberships they've had. And I want them to know that I am a personal coach. Coach. I am not just doing a blanket thing like this is not a digital product that you're going to consume on Your own. You're going to get access to me. You get access to me every day in the Facebook group by sending these personalized videos out from day one. It differentiates me. It makes me to stand out from all the other author coaches out there. So what are some things you can do? The this is the tip that I have for you today. Again, I'm here at the PennCon 2016 conference. I'm gonna be speaking tomorrow all about optimizing Amazon and how this is an editor's conference. So I'm gonna be sharing with the editors how they can even help their clients and be able to really offer an additional service by helping their clients think, even after their book is done, how they can optimize on Amazon. The reason I'm sharing this is because I posted a screenshot of like one day this week I created 50 personalized videos for new members in my academy. And so I just took a screenshot and I posted it. It got so much response and people were like, whoa. That is an example of really going above and beyond. It's such a simple thing. One of my coaches last year, Jocelyn Sams from Fliplifestyle.com gave me the idea and I just ran with it and I've done it for every single one of my members. If you become a member of Author Audience Academy, you'll get this personalized video from me. So I hope you guys have a great day and think about, like, whether it's books, products, memberships, whatever you're selling, if it's physical products, what is something that you can do? We are in an automation society and I believe in automation like I believe in working smarter, not harder. I'm teaching over the next few months and my specific automation strategies for authors. And I've reverse engineered some of my success and I realized there's this very specific system that you can set up and that you can set it and forget it, but there are things that you can't automate. But then in our automated society, how can you also give those personal touch points? How can you wow your customers? How can you stand out from your competition? How can you make an impact that people will never forget? What are some little things that you could do? You. You could integrate into your customer? Map your customer experience? Share with me and tweet me. Let me know some other ideas that you have or what are you doing? I'd love to hear.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.