Answering Common Questions: How do I get more Votes? - Part 4: Build Your Brand! sykochica (70) in steem-help

Remember...We're Entertainers!! Make it Entertaining!

We're not writing for a grade, We do this for their Attention!

A HUGE part of being entertainers is to be entertaining...right? Because @arbitrarykitten laid it out so well..I'd rather you just check out her post on how to keep your reader engaged in your post HERE. She hit's on all the major points drawing them to your post in the first place with headlines and thumbnail images to getting them want to keep reading. Remember, we read through the posts that keep us entertained and/or curious throughout...right? I'm sure we've all started posts that lost your interest early one!
6 Essential Elements for Writing Evocative Posts by @arbitrarykitten

The rest of this guide will get into things to think about to make YOU stickout outside of your posts. Things that can help make you more memorable. On some level we are all creatures of habit scurrying around this attention economy called Steemit.

Q: Ok...so what do you mean by Building my Brand?

I want you to imagine your at the grocery store, walking down the cereal isle. Among these many dozen (likely more) cereals catch your attention first? The ones you've seen a billion times before in all kinda of ads and likely in the eye level spots on the shelf for years and years?

These major brands like Frosted Flakes (They're Grrrrreat) or perhaps Life (Mikey Likes It!) have repeatedly done everything to get in front of you as often as possible! In the case of the cereal...they use things like having a consistently recognizable box, name repetition (count how many time they try to use the cereal names in commercials) to easy to remember slogan. Obviously those two I used above are still ingrained in my head.
My point from all of this....on Steemit YOU are the BRAND!

We as content creators HAVE to have a way of standing out from the crowd. While this is important with your posts themselves, it's just as important with yourself! This idea of making yourself unique, being easy to identify and have people want to seek you out is your BRAND!

Q: How do I know what my Brand is? What should it be?

This is really something that you will work with and refine over time. In the end only you can say what you want your brand should be. But what your brand is...is how people remember (or don't remember) you. Don't stress out if you can't answer these right away...it's going to take time. Even for those that have already branded themselves, it's often difficult to reflect on it and clearly state what it is...and they already have one in place!

So simply try to keep this in mind as much as you can..try to think about what it is that you bring to the table:

What do you do?
What are your experiences and/or what have you learned?
What perspective does this provide you?
How do you think others remember you or your posts?
What things do you do to make yourself stand out? (like post formatting, sign of banners, the comments you leave, etc)

Every day or two try to reflect on these questions...reflect on what you've been doing and how it's been working for you. I want you to (metaphorically) walk be able to walk into a bar where every person shouts your name in greeting!

Q: What are ways I can make myself more memorable?

Sure..you want people to like you. But how many people have we briefly met only to never see them again?

Some things you can try to get people to recognize you and remember you include:

Using the same or similar formatting style in your posts. If you copy/paste a post (from the Steemit editor..not just viewing the post) into a Google document (or on your computer) and strip out the text and pictures from it...you have a TEMPLATE! Not only is this a huge time saver, but it also give your post's look extra consistency!

Have a sign off message and signature. You've likely seen my "Keep Smilin and Steem On!" graphic at the end of my posts followed by the cursive sykochica. Both of these are extremely easy using sites like:
    This Cool Text Generator
    or this Online Signature Generator
    You just type the text in a box, choose the style, size and color....that's it!! Then you just put them in your post like any other image and will likely be a part of your template.

*Banners are those graphics you see in many peoples posts whether is be something saying upvote/resteem/follow or showing a community you support and/or belong to. (You can see my banner for the Team Girl Powa community right now in my posts.)

Remember that everyone that opens the post has to at least scroll past this to get to the upvote button!

Put yourself in front of the same people regularly. Hang out in the same place for a while. Of course there's nothing wrong participating in multiple communities. But if you are only in a chat or discord with other say once a month...do you really think it's going to make you memorable to people you just met?
    Share you you are! Simply going into a chat room and saying "Hi" really doesn't cut it. Tell me a story...or something crazy that happened to you recently...a memorable experience...an opinion...it really doesn't matter what it is! I just want something REAL! To be memorable...you have to move beyond the small talk!

And as always...
Keep your chin up...Keep posting...Keep improving!

Part 1 of this guide on getting more votes can be found HERE
Part 2 of this guide on headlines and thumbnail images can be found HERE.

Please Follow, Upvote and Resteem if you found this Guide Helpful.