#1038 Build Your Online Brand | Jason Barnard

I had a great conversation with Jason Barnard about online branding. Importance of Brand SERPs:

One of the standout points Jason emphasizes is the critical role of Brand Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). He explains how they reflect a brand’s online reputation and visibility, and why businesses should prioritize optimizing their Brand SERPs for better recognition and credibility.

Knowledge Panels: Jason delves into the significance of Knowledge Panels, those information boxes that appear on the right side of Google’s search results. He discusses how they can enhance a brand’s authority and trustworthiness, offering tips on how to get your brand featured in these panels.

AI and Future Trends: The conversation also touches on the impact of artificial intelligence in digital marketing. Jason shares his thoughts on future trends, suggesting that AI will continue to shape the industry in exciting and unexpected ways, influencing how brands interact with their audiences.

Personal Branding: Lastly, Jason talks about the power of personal branding in the digital age. He offers practical advice on building and maintaining a strong personal brand, emphasizing its importance for professionals looking to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Discover Why Your Personal Online Brand Drives Success

[00:00:00] Lorraine Ball: Welcome to More than a Few Words, a marketing conversation for business owners. This is your host, Lorraine Ball. And these days, your personal online brand is an integral part of your marketing. You hear that from all sorts of people. But you may be wondering, how do you build it? How do you control it? Well, I’ve got just the person to answer those questions. That’s Jason Barnard. He is The Brand SERP Guy. He is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Kalicube.

[00:00:33] Lorraine Ball: He specializes in online brand management and his superhero skill is his ability to influence and reshape Google’s focus on an individual or a company. Jason, welcome to the show.

[00:00:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. Lovely to be here, Lorraine. Thank you for having me.

Build Your Brand with What You Already Have

[00:00:51] Lorraine Ball: It is my pleasure. I’m so excited to be able to turn the tables after being a guest on your show and I really want to dive into this. How do I think about building my online brand? Where should I start?

[00:01:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I think, in fact I know, you should start with what you have, and people get very ambitious very quickly. Thinking I need to do lots of extra stuff. I think the key is to start with what you already have. We all have an online presence. We all have a footprint. How do you amplify that and make the most of what you already have? And that’s what we do at Kalicube. We start with, clarify and amplify what you already have before we build extra stuff.

Create a Website to Anchor Your Online Presence

[00:01:44] Lorraine Ball: Okay. As I’m looking at all of my online resources, I’ve been online for a long time. I’ve got stuff everywhere. What are the things that I should pay the most attention to first to start cleaning up and improving my online reputation?

[00:02:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Great question. You should start with your own website. And if you don’t have one, build one and your own website can be two pages. It can be one page, it can be 20 pages, it doesn’t matter. Start with two pages, a home page and an about page. Your website is what we call at Kalicube, your entity home. It’s where your audience and Google and all of the other machines, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing, Apple are all looking for information about you, from you. And it’s where you get the opportunity to define who you are, what you do, which audience you serve, and start to control how these machines perceive you.

Highlight Your Current Identity to Stay Relevant

[00:02:44] Lorraine Ball: Okay. As I’m building this website and I’m putting together this picture of who I am, what kind of information should I absolutely be sure to include on my webpage?

[00:03:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You should always start with what you do today. A lot of us start with, I was born in 1966, in my case, or my favourite is I was a musician in the 1990s. I’m so proud of that. Or I was a cartoon blue dog. That’s very, very, very interesting information about me. But it’s not the focus today. The focus today is Jason Barnard is an entrepreneur, a writer and helps brands manage their digital presence. I need to start with that.

[00:03:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I need to put it at the top, front and center. And all the rest of it is interesting, but only interesting to people who are really researching me. Number one, for people and number two, needs to be put at the bottom so the machines, Google, ChatGPT, Bing, Perplexity, Apple understand that it’s the least important thing right now, even if in my soul and for my ego, it’s the most important thing.

Separate Your Personal and Business Brands Clearly

[00:04:01] Lorraine Ball: Absolutely. And I really struggled with that, particularly when I first started my business. I had a lot of credentials, I had chops and I wanted people to know that. And as you say, they don’t really care and search engines don’t really care because nobody goes searching for I want somebody who used to be a corporate executive.

[00:04:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Exactly. And the credentials, if they’re relevant, should be amplified and should be put to the top. But if they’re not relevant to what we want today, they should be put to the bottom. And I think that’s the key, is what do I want to be known for today? What are people looking for when they’re searching for me today? What do I want to communicate today to drive my career forwards. And we make often the mistake of looking at our past and amplifying that at the expense of the present.

Leverage Your Personal Brand for Long-Term Success

[00:05:02] Lorraine Ball: So as I’m looking to build my online brand, and this was definitely something that I struggled with, I was building a company, but I also had my own identity. How do you balance those two? Because they aren’t the same.

[00:05:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No. And a lot of people confuse the two, including myself for many, many years. My own personal brand is one thing. I have the red shirt. I’m Jason Barnard. I have a history of work with multiple corporations. I created or founded WTPL Music. I founded UpToTen.

[00:05:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, I founded Kalicube, three very successful companies. I’m an entrepreneur, the company is Kalicube. The company was UpToTen, the company was before that, WTPL Music. So the first thing is to define the difference in my own mind between myself, my own personal brand, as a successful career entrepreneur, and Kalicube, which is a Digital Marketing agency that deals with brand. And today, we’re doing the same thing. But myself and my company are two different things. If I leave the company behind, I still have a personal life and a career. And if the company leaves me behind, it still has an existence and a corporate career.

How Personal Branding Drives Business Growth

[00:06:23] Lorraine Ball: So you really touched on something there, because the two do play together. How do you think that your online, your personal brand, helps grow your business? How does investing in building your personal brand pay off in the bigger picture?

[00:06:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, it’s huge, because as the CEO and founder of Kalicube, my personal brand is very important to people’s understanding and appreciation of Kalicube. And as a B2B business in particular, I personally am responsible for a lot of the sales of Kalicube. So my personal brand is a huge part of what drives Kalicube’s business. B2C, less so. But somebody like Jeff Bezos is going to help Amazon. It doesn’t help relatively, quite as much as I help Kalicube, but at the same time, his personal brand, my personal brand, are both driving our corporations, our companies forwards. So always remember, people do business with people. And the person at the head of a company is hugely important, whatever the company, whatever the size of the company.

How Your Personal Brand Shapes Future Ventures

[00:07:37] Lorraine Ball: Absolutely. And when I think of Jeff Bezos, I don’t think it impacts my decision to shop or not shop with Amazon, but if he came up with a totally different company, a totally different product, I would consider it seriously, because I’ve had satisfaction with his other products and I am impressed with him. So I can see where even, even at that stage, his personal brand does contribute to my comfort level with his products.

[00:08:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): 100%. That’s a brilliant point. Right now, Jeff, my friend Jeff and I are contributing to our current company, but we take our career with us. So whatever I do next is going to benefit from what I’ve done for Kalicube. And as you’ve noticed, I’ve talked about WTPL Music, I’ve talked about UpToTen. And those successes are driving my personal brand today. And my success with those two companies has driven or partially driven the success of Kalicube today. So always remember, as a personal brand, you take it with you, it stays with you. Good or bad, it’s yours for life.

Shape Google’s Perception by Controlling Your Brand Narrative

[00:08:52] Lorraine Ball: Absolutely. So one thing that you say in your bio and in the definition of your brand is that you’ve got this superhero skill to influence and reshape Google. Now, you can’t tell me everything that you do, but what’s one thing I can do to influence Google positively about my brand?

[00:09:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, it’s a lovely question. Number one, I would say that you can learn everything we do by going to kalicube.com K-A-L-I-C-U-B-E .com. We share everything we do. And what we do is actually fundamentally very simple. We take what exists and we focus and format what it is we’re communicating both to the audience and to the machines. And it’s not just Google, it’s Bing, it’s ChatGPT, it’s Perplexity, it’s Apple through that website.

[00:09:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s how we start this conversation with the machines and with our audience and emphasize what it is we want them to focus on. And over time, both your audience and these machines will trust that website for information about you, from you. And if you can focus on that, you have what I would call long-term self determination. You decide who you are, what you do, which audience you serve in terms of how you communicate it to your audience. But how you communicate it to your audience through your website is also going to fundamentally change the way that these machines perceive you and represent you to the subset of their users who are your audience. So the first step, and the most important step for self determination for your own personal brand is to build a small website for yourself with a homepage and an about page. And I’ll really quickly explain one thing. Why do I keep saying two pages? Your homepage is for your audience, for your human audience, and the about page is for the machines.

[00:10:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s a factual explanation of who you are. And the about page will also be seen by the incredibly enthusiastic people who really want to know more about you. So make sure it’s full of the facts, the information, and as you said earlier on, the credibility signals, the trust factors that you can communicate to both.

Take Control of Your Digital Footprint

[00:11:11] Lorraine Ball: Fantastic. Jason, this was wonderful. Thank you so much.

[00:11:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s an absolute pleasure. I love talking about personal branding and I love thinking and working with people about how they are represented online. Always be aware that you have a digital footprint, whether you like it or not. And it’s your responsibility to control, manage and optimize that digital footprint for your audience and for the machines.

[00:11:41] Lorraine Ball: Fantastic. And if you are curious about any of the things that Jason has just said, I know he covered a lot in a very short period of time. Be sure to look for the link to kalicube.com in the show notes. Thanks, Jason.

[00:11:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you, Lorraine, that was delightful.

[00:12:01] Lorraine Ball: And if you’ve enjoyed this conversation and want to find other resources for your brand, be sure to look for MTFW. Wherever you listen to podcasts, listen to two. They’re short. This has been another episode of More than a Few Words. Thanks for listening.