Denzil Duke: The Personal Brand
This will be the most important article I have published on this website. It is a company manifesto I will refer back to in times of doubt and turmoil.
I need a direction with where I'm taking this personal brand. So, I've taken a step back and generated creative ideas.
Before now, I wrote whatever was on my mind.
Instead, I need to take the brand in a direction where it will create the most IMPACT and with a rough plan.
Content that DIRECTLY helps grow the brand we envision for it.
Helping young men on self-improvement journeys whilst delivering my service as a copywriter and salesman to other brands.
This is a pitch and plan.
I will explain how and, most importantly, why.
Choosing A Niche: Self-Improvement
I can talk about this subject all day.
I am passionate about not only improving myself, but I also want to help others begin their journey into self-improvement: finances, productivity and health.
For the past few years, I have retained much knowledge about self-improvement knowledge on the internet.
Now, I want to document my authentic self on this journey. Helping others with obstacles in their own journey.
Why?
Why are we choosing this niche?
The meaningful impact we can provide as a brand is improving someone's life: financially, mentally and physically.
Especially if it is with young men.
In recent times, the purpose of a man has become less clear. The systems emplaced in our society have it so.
Social media, mainstream media, Big Tech, and the school system.
We are going in a direction where men are worsening themselves to serve another party's ideology:
We have become less masculine to serve Feminism; We are rejecting Truth to praise Wokeism; We are rejecting God to indulge in instant gratification.
Especially the polarity between masculinity and femininity becoming blurrier and blurrier.
Men are becoming more like women; women are more like men.
We are not given much guidance as young men.
We are give false idols of actors and celebrities.
Hooking us on social media, normalise them to watch pornography, and indulge in casual sex, drugs and alcohol.
Hedonism in its purest form
Ultimately killing any drive and ambition and hindering progress in a man.
We are not giving them a fighting chance to serve themselves and their families.
As a society, we should have more powerful and capable men.
The future generation needs fathers and future leaders.
Strong men who can face hard times head-on.
To serve their family and community.
Most importantly, themselves.
Creating A Space For No Competition
The idea of a 'blue ocean.'
What will differentiate me from the market?
Let's look at our current products: a website uploading a weekly article and a YouTube channel that is inconsistent in uploads.
What currently makes them different from the market?
My authenticity and personality are the only real distinguishers.
To be different is to be unlike the competition.
That is what's needed for the content space.
Just be DIFFERENT.
Just be me.
This includes talking about my passions while still falling under the umbrella of self-improvement.
I am not just obsessed with self-improvement. I also care about playing the piano, learning Japanese and travelling.
The hook for a new audience member is the niche.
What they stay for is my personality.
But I still need it to relate to a shared interest: helping my audience find solutions to their self-improvement problems.
My Brand's Avatar
Avatar: a character profile that encapsulates the target market.
With any product, there is a particular market in mind. Rather than targeting a whole group, it's more straightforward to create value for an individual in mind who makes up a larger whole.
I could write a whole article about it.
So I'll link it here once I'm done researching my brand's avatar.
Avenues Of Influence
Current Statistics
This is the Impression and Click-Through rates of the website.
This is the Impression and Click-Through rates of the YouTube channel.
As we can see, the YouTube channel has outperformed the articles on the website by every metric.
This might be because one of my videos regarding 4am running gained 8.1k views over a year. However, I wrote an article regarding the same topic. It outperformed all of my articles but not to the level of the YouTube channel.
What is this telling me?
I see people's preferred medium of discovering me: videos.
We can think of it as a funnel.
Videos get more impressions, so more eyeballs are seeing the video in their recommended feed. Then, they might click on the video and watch it.
The people dedicated to the brand will happily subscribe to the email list and read my words if they believe I can help them as much as I do.
I can thus hone in on the people who are loyal and believe in the same mission of the brand.
From a return on investment (ROI) point of view, then, I should allocate more of my time and attention to the YouTube channel.
There is still an incentive in articles. And A LOT of power in email lists.
Articles are now for nurturing relationships rather than capturing new audience members.
Plan
People see my video on YouTube. They like my content. They proceed with my call to action.
YouTube --> Email List --> Website
Monthly Article + Weekly Emails
Do a monthly article. But supplement it with weekly emails to my email list.
These emails will be written from a place of providing value to the individual who is reading them.
Open rate and click-through rate should not matter as much if I GENUINELY care about the individual reading my email and helping them.
By switching from weekly articles to weekly emails, I want to build a stronger connection with my subscribers by letting them send emails back and me responding directly.
I've also noticed that I get the most views on my articles when I post them on my Instagram story.
But I want organic viewership to the website, not only my friends and people who already follow me.
We'll aim to email 1-3 times a week to help nurture our relationship with the audience.
(This means if you email me, I'll do my best to reply :). )
YouTube
With the help of the YouTube algorithm, I can get more eyeballs on the content and deliver free value.
And YouTube videos are just visual versions of my articles.
Why put so much effort into writing when it gets the least people viewing it?
Focus more on quality YouTube content.
Creating videos that inspire to take actionable action. To entertain but also excite the idea of a brighter future with self-improvement.
Create almost cinematic-like visual storytelling if I see the brand going in that direction.
Words are not enough.
Quick dopamine fixes of Tik Tok and Instagram reels have made it so that you cannot purely be entertained with words.
Editing and a good story will go a long way in value.
They will be entertained, and more importantly, they will be entranced by the emotions and feelings conveyed by the framing of the videos.
The words and camera positioning sets up the viewer to see the world in a certain way.
That is the power of visual and oral storytelling.
Facts do matter. But it's ultimately our emotions that gravitate us towards action.
I will be the director. The narrator. The actor. The salesman.
Leading the audience, showing them their dream state and guiding them to achieve it.
Using A Script
I've been going off-script in recent videos. I thought the script sounded too uptight and awkward.
The solution is to create a script that sounds like how I speak. Refining it, not too much to the point of awkwardness, and using a teleprompter.
Not all of the video will be me talking: there will be some B-roll. But, when I am, I need my full attention and focus on the viewer. They will feel it transferred through the camera.
I NEED to BELIEVE the words I am saying.
If I believe what I say helped me, the viewers will FEEL that conviction in my voice and believe me.
With that belief, they will take action to improve their own lives.
Hamza Method
I watched this video a few days ago, and it goes against the 'script write, refine, edit and upload method.'
(Highly reccomend for becoming wealthy.)
Hamza's method is this simple:
- Learn something
- Apply it to your own life
- Teach others and how it affected your life
This is the sympathiser's way of creating content.
You repackage information in a way that is more relatable to your audience.
Hamza's audience do not watch him only for self-improvement but for him.
And audience is a powerful type of leverage in terms of business.
If you have a 1000 loyal, true fans.
If you were a selling a course or product, they would buy it immediately.
how do we get to that point?
Doing the rep of uploading weekly.
Two times a week.
Three.
Everyday, even!
I will trial doing scripted stuff and telling my audience what I learnt.
The point is to not talk to the camera: it's to create a connection with your audience, like you are speaking to them in person.
That's a learnt skill through hours of repetition.
Do that for 2 years, gain 10,000 subs, and you can create wealth.
(I'll do a more in depth study into Hamza's video. It has so much value that he could easily sell for four figures.)
I'm new to the platform, but I've been told it's fantastic for networking and getting clients.
There's going to be a strategy for it as well.
Tweeting 3-5x a day.
I can post client testimonials.
Show the results I'm getting through the service I am providing.
Tweet anything of value to my audience.
Because, unlike any platform, conversations and thoughts are the commodities rather than pictures or videos like Instagram.
Don't get me wrong, they exist on the platform. If you have Twitter, you value having those thoughtful discussions and people's thinking.
And I want the 'get in, get out' mentality when using the platform.
No fluff.
Just type what I got to say and go about my day as usual.
In the content pipeline, if I see a tweet get a lot of engagement, it can become a video or email idea.
Onboarding Copywriting Clients
Developing a personal brand is a platform to gain clients for my copywriting services.
Clients will tell I'm an actual person. I have a real following and a message that resonates with people.
And with self-improvement, I become more credible.
You are presented with two copywriters: one who is not self-improvement and the other who is.
Who are you going to choose to get the job done?
And I'd also like to attract clients who are on some form of self-improvement themselves. They will be people I want to work with, and I am a freelancer they want to hire.
So, to get clients:
- Craft a compelling offer
- Post testimonials of you achieving the results
- Outreach to prospects
It is that simple.
I don't know my offer yet because I have not achieved results.
It's easier to say, "I can add 5 figures to your revenue stream," if you actually have done it before.
Summarising The Brand Into One Sentence
A copywriter who helps clients generate ROI whilst helping fellow young men get onto self-improvement through his personality and content creation interested in his passions: self-improvement, piano, language-learning, and fitness.