#66 - Empowering Faculty to Build Their Personal Brands
w/ Dr. Sheena Howard
Professor, Award-winning Author & Founder of Power Your Research
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SHOW NOTES
My guest today is Dr. Sheena C. Howard, an award-winning author, filmmaker, and professor of communication. In this episode, Dr. Howard discusses her book "Academic Branding: A Step-by-Step Guide to Increased Visibility, Authority, and Income," and how universities can empower their faculty to build their personal brands, which in turn benefits the institution.
Dr. Howard shares her nine-step process for faculty to build their personal brands, focusing on the first six steps that are most relevant to higher ed marketers. She emphasizes the importance of mindset, storytelling, and the long-term commitment required to build a successful online presence.
Key Takeaways:
Faculty personal branding can directly benefit universities through increased visibility, citations, and student enrollment.
Start by addressing faculty mindset - they need to understand that their work has value outside academia.
Help faculty develop a clear vision for their online presence, focusing on one or two platforms where their audience is active.
Brand building is more about crafting a compelling story around research than logos and colors.
Storytelling is crucial - share struggles and failures, not just wins, to build a relatable brand.
Building a brand is a long-term commitment; it's not a quick fix or get-rich-quick scheme.
Universities can support faculty by recording and repurposing their presentations for social media content.
Connect With Dr. Sheena Howard:
Websites:
Personal: https://sheenachoward.com/
Company: https://poweryourresearch.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drsheenahoward/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsheenahoward/
Resources Mentioned:
Book: "Academic Branding: A Step-by-Step Guide to Increased Visibility, Authority, and Income"
YouTube Video: "How to Land a TEDx Talk" by Dr. Sheena Howard
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:24:03
John Azoni
My guest today is Dr. Sina C Howard. Dr. Howard is a professor of communication. She is an award winning author, filmmaker and scholar. In 2014, Sheena became the first black woman to win an Eisner Award for her first book, Black Comics, Politics of Race and Representation. She's also the author of several critically acclaimed books and comic books on a range of topics.
00:00:24:13 - 00:00:35:15
John Azoni
Sheena is a writer and image activist with a passion for telling stories through various mediums that encourage audiences to consider narratives that are different from their own. So, Dr. Howard, thanks for being here.
00:00:36:12 - 00:00:39:14
Dr. Sheena Howard
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
00:00:40:12 - 00:01:03:08
John Azoni
Yeah. So we always like to start out on this show and I'll just give you a warning. I'm getting over cold, so my voice is a little. My voice, like, started going, like, going out, and it's kind of just like, kind of been hanging out in this, like, raspy vibe. So. But we always, like, start out on kind of a personal note.
00:01:03:11 - 00:01:06:11
John Azoni
So tell me tell me something people might be surprised to know about you.
00:01:07:13 - 00:01:44:18
Dr. Sheena Howard
Something that people might be surprised to know about me might be just my seemingly random assortment of degrees. So I have a business degree actually, in marketing. That was my undergraduate degree. And my master's degree is actually in graphic design and my Ph.D. is in rhetorical communication. So rhetorical and intercultural communication. So I think that probably would surprise people.
00:01:44:18 - 00:01:51:08
Dr. Sheena Howard
But as you get to learn what I do for a living and my journey, it will all makes it okay.
00:01:51:08 - 00:01:59:03
John Azoni
Interesting. On that note, tell us a little bit about your journey to bring us up to speed on kind of your background and how you arrived at the work you do today.
00:02:00:04 - 00:02:37:04
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yes. So I started my Ph.D. when I was 23 years old. So you know, I was in the classroom with a lot of older people who actually had an older by older than me who actually had, like, experiences that I just hadn't had yet, whether it just be work or life experiences. And I think because of being a young person, doing a Ph.D. who had no idea what she wanted to do for a dissertation, I did my dissertation on the Boondocks comic strip in in 2007.
00:02:37:04 - 00:03:00:15
Dr. Sheena Howard
Doing a dissertation on comics wasn't cool. Like, it wasn't like it is today where, like there are programs that have comics studies and like this is an acceptable thing to study. But I happened as a 23 year old to just be interested in the Boondocks comic strip, which a lot of people listening may know it as the animated television show that is slightly inappropriate in.
00:03:00:15 - 00:03:30:22
Dr. Sheena Howard
But when you listen to my educational background, it probably all makes sense. I wanted to do something visual. I wanted to obviously study something rhetorical. So that allowed me to study the rhetorical language of something. And I was just always interested as a young person in not having my work behind an academic paywall. The idea of just other scholars citing my work on like Google Scholar in those types of places just was too limiting for me.
00:03:30:23 - 00:03:50:16
Dr. Sheena Howard
I wanted my work to yes be accepted in academe, but really be for people outside of academe as well. And so that's how we get to what we're here to talk about today, which is as a faculty member, the importance to me of building a brand. And just so happened that I was right because in 2007 there wasn't social media like it is today.
00:03:51:04 - 00:04:02:17
Dr. Sheena Howard
Today, if you are a professor, you absolutely should be marketing yourself and building your brand and not only helps you, but it also helps your university. And so I'm sure we'll get into that in the upcoming questions.
00:04:03:23 - 00:04:38:18
John Azoni
Yeah, so we are talking today about some learning from a book that you wrote called Academic Branding A Step by Step Guide to Increased Visibility, Authority and Income. And so, you know, in our pre call we talked about just the importance of faculty and, you know, PhDs and things like that, building their brands and, you know, doing TED talks and things like that and getting media coverage and how that actually benefits the marketing and communications of the college.
00:04:39:15 - 00:04:50:20
John Azoni
So that's what we're going to talk about today. But tell me your perspective on that. Talk about how a college or university benefits when faculty builds their brand and grows their audience.
00:04:52:00 - 00:05:24:00
Dr. Sheena Howard
I think that the university is and marketing departments at universities are leaving a lot of money on the table, are leaving a lot of butts in seats, enrollment on the table and just visibility period on the table. If they are not helping their faculty understand how to promote themselves because them promoting themselves as faculty members funnels directly into the university in a lot of ways.
00:05:24:00 - 00:05:44:15
Dr. Sheena Howard
If my academic book is featured in The New York Times or L.A. Times or Washington Post, which it has been, you know, right. Or university gets that really free free press from me just being out there. And it has a correlation to the number of hits that the university is going to see on my right or university profile page.
00:05:44:22 - 00:05:55:01
Dr. Sheena Howard
And I know this for a fact because I do this work. And so, you know, we will get into all of the specific benefits as we go along in this conversation as well.
00:05:55:23 - 00:06:00:01
John Azoni
Yeah. Tell me what you do at at right. Tell me about your relationship with Rider University.
00:06:01:01 - 00:06:22:17
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, at Rider University I am a full time professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism and Media. And so I've got all of my promotions. I'm a full professor. I've been there a little over. I've been there since 2011, so I lost count of how many years that is. But it's a lot. It's the longest job I've ever had, and I don't plan on having this.
00:06:23:06 - 00:06:49:16
John Azoni
Awesome. So you talk in your book about nine pillars of this overall strategy for professors, researchers and things building their brands. The first six, as we talked about in our pre called, are most relevant for our audience higher ed marketing leaders. So let's talk about all nine, but then we'll hone in on the first six. So just go down the list.
00:06:49:16 - 00:06:54:20
John Azoni
What are the nine steps? And then we'll kind of back up and start from step one and go one through six.
00:06:55:17 - 00:07:30:00
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, for sure. So the book is broken up into three phases, so it's going to be clarity, connection in capital and it's nine steps, so there's three steps in each phase. This book is based off of my power, your research program. The phases are called something different in the actual coaching program, but it's the same. It's just when you translate something to a book, some things have to be modified to make it all fit and to be able to just speak to a wider audience of these will be able to go through the process without the benefit of the program.
00:07:30:07 - 00:07:58:14
Dr. Sheena Howard
And so the first phase is clarity, helping the faculty member to have the mindset that visibility outside of academe reaching other people is okay and helping them understand that they have value outside of higher ed, because in order for them to be out here sharing their work with everyday people, they have to understand that that's okay. And typically in our Higher Ed Ivory Tower, we're not necessarily taught that that's okay.
00:07:58:14 - 00:08:19:17
Dr. Sheena Howard
That's a good place for marketing departments at university, is to start telling them that, hey, we want you to do this because it's it's it's helpful to your job stability, it's helpful to the university. It's helpful for enrollment. The second step is vision. Having the faculty member really understand what their vision is and building their their platform in the online space.
00:08:20:13 - 00:08:43:10
Dr. Sheena Howard
100% of the faculty that come to me just aren't clear how to articulate everything that they do for for people, right? And so they're used to talking to other PhDs, and they also have a lot of hesitancy around posting on social media. They're they're scared of trolls. They don't know what to say. And so the vision piece is helping them understand how they can be intentional.
00:08:43:21 - 00:09:02:13
Dr. Sheena Howard
And in building this platform and what platforms they want to be on. A lot of faculty do care about TEDTalks, so we do teach that, but some people don't, and that's okay. But there's other niche platforms that they can focus in on that have really big followings depending on their area of expertise. So getting getting the vision clear.
00:09:02:20 - 00:09:23:16
Dr. Sheena Howard
The third step is the brand assets. So we're not talking about things like logos and color schemes. We're talking about the brand statement, the brand adjectives, the brand archetype. What's the story you can tell around your research, right? Numbers and data and qualitative research is great, but you need to have a story behind why you do what you do.
00:09:23:16 - 00:09:55:03
Dr. Sheena Howard
So we help them craft that story and connect all the dots in that phase one for clarity. And then phase two is the next three steps. And these these steps are all about getting media placements, high level media placements, Washington Post, Forbes.com, but also some other places identifying podcast needs that are relevant to the thing that they research, the thing that they're talking about and empowering them to land, to land those those interviews.
00:09:55:09 - 00:10:19:19
Dr. Sheena Howard
And this is all about building SEO on Google so that when, when, when that faculty member has keywords that they want to be talking about, when a journalist types in those keywords into Google, their name will come up so that they can continue to get these opportunities. And so all of these tools is, is all of the things you would expect to build your brand online, the social media strategy, all of that good stuff.
00:10:20:22 - 00:10:41:10
John Azoni
Awesome, awesome. And as you were talking and I had this hadn't occurred to me before, but the other relevance of this for for our audience is I talked to a lot of marketing directors that they go on, they try to get on podcasts, they try to do, you know, conferences, speaking, engagement keynotes, keynote sessions and stuff like that.
00:10:42:07 - 00:11:14:02
John Azoni
And I ask them why and like, you know, why you work for a college. Like why, why bother? Like building a brand when that's not, you know, your salary isn't really necessarily directly tied to that. And they're, they're usually like, well, it's for career, you know, for career purposes. Like I want to, you know, I want to like, just build my resume, build my authority as a higher ed marketer and just get it get out there more and, you know, kind of move up the ladder, maybe move into a CMO role.
00:11:14:02 - 00:11:37:23
John Azoni
So as you're talking, I'm thinking even even for our audience, beyond just helping people, you know, helping professors and things like get their research out there and build their brands. I think a lot of this stuff applies to the the efforts that that our listeners are probably already making. So some of our listeners are like really trying to build a platform for themselves.
00:11:37:23 - 00:11:57:01
Dr. Sheena Howard
So yeah, so I teach, I teach exactly. I teach creative entrepreneurship as well. And it's all the same strategy. Like the nine steps are the same no matter what role you're in, whether you're building a personal brand or we're building a faculty members brand, or you're a CMO trying to build your brand and become a thought leader, the nine steps are really the same.
00:11:57:01 - 00:12:08:00
Dr. Sheena Howard
It's just for me, like, how are your research program targeting it to the niche? So when I work with creative entrepreneurs is just talking in a language that my creatives will understand.
00:12:08:00 - 00:12:26:10
John Azoni
Yeah, yeah, I like that. Super important to have have a niche and you know, because a lot of these, a lot of these things and a lot of what I do at Unveiled, you know, it applies to I mean, I work with corporate clients all the time. People are always asking me like, are you allowed to work with if we're not in college, will you still make videos for us?
00:12:26:10 - 00:12:29:00
John Azoni
And I'm like, Of course, it's like all the same stuff I just happen to.
00:12:29:00 - 00:12:29:19
Dr. Sheena Howard
Like, That's right.
00:12:30:01 - 00:12:42:06
John Azoni
Higher up. So let's start with step number one mindset. I want to talk about helping faculty understand that their work has value outside of academia, so expand on that for us a little bit.
00:12:43:10 - 00:13:09:08
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, I think if you're in a marketing position at a university, you probably don't didn't go through kind of the tenure track pipeline. So you don't understand the nuances of a faculty member and what they're thinking. Faculty members have a lot of fear, right? They have a lot of fear, more fear than probably most people would expect. But, you know, there's a correlation between being highly educated and imposter syndrome.
00:13:09:15 - 00:13:43:08
Dr. Sheena Howard
And so CMO can say talk to a faculty member starting with mindset, that we want you to do this, we want to empower you to do this. This is helpful for everybody. That is the place that you have to start. Otherwise you're not going to be confident in being out here talking about anything. If you talk to any faculty member really, and they open up to you one of the things that you'll find out is they're not comfortable telling their other colleagues like, Hey, I do want to be on TV, hey, I do want to be on NPR.
00:13:43:15 - 00:14:07:22
Dr. Sheena Howard
Hey, you know, I do want to do a TED Talk because some academics will say, Oh, if you are on TV when you're not doing real research, which obviously you can walk and chew gum. But for my people in marketing departments trying to empower their faculty members and grow the brand for the university, you really have to kind of do the the mindset stuff first.
00:14:07:22 - 00:14:10:11
Dr. Sheena Howard
If you want to empower your faculty to do that work.
00:14:11:10 - 00:14:44:17
John Azoni
And I think that's a big barrier to get over because as you were talking, I'm thinking to my wife, who is very, very my my wife is a trauma therapist, very specially focused in trauma focused cognitive cognitive behavioral therapy. They're not very many of them in Michigan or where I'm from. And for years I have encouraged her to like, do a blog or do like do a course like, you know, talk to, you know, adoptive parents and foster parents that want to understand their children's behaviors and where they're coming from and stuff like that.
00:14:44:17 - 00:15:19:05
John Azoni
And her response is always, yeah, but like there's other people, other clinicians that are better than me. It's like this imposter syndrome is huge. Exact, of course. But yes, like, of course, of course there are. But like that just by putting yourself out there, it doesn't mean you're trying to say that you're you are the best. And in fact, like, I actually really hate when any organization comes out and says they're the leading voice in this or that or they're the leading business in this or that, because it's like, what does that really mean?
00:15:19:06 - 00:15:41:20
John Azoni
Like based on what? What who named you the leading this or that, like you named yourself? So, so so yeah I don't think you have to I don't think stepping out there into the public space and bringing your work to your knowledge to other people is is saying that you are the best and you're going to be judged against whether or not you're the best.
00:15:41:20 - 00:16:04:21
John Azoni
I think it's just saying, hey, everyone has something of value and maybe you have some very specific things to communicate in a way of communicating that it's going to help people understand because it might even just be about the way that you present the information. Not so much the information itself. Like I look at, you know, Brené Brown, who is, you know, huge, huge.
00:16:05:05 - 00:16:21:01
John Azoni
I mean, her whole thing is research. But like I feel like her benefit is the way that she can tell a story. Yeah. You know, is she the best researcher? I don't know. But I like listening to her because it's really engaging.
00:16:21:22 - 00:16:46:02
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yes. Yes. In just her first TED talk brought a lot of visibility to her university because it blew up. And again, universities should be empowering their faculty to to be that to to do that for the ones that want it or the faculty that that want it.
00:16:46:23 - 00:17:34:19
John Azoni
Yeah. And just in and just continuing down this track, it just I mean doing research on what videos are working in in higher ed across you know tik-tok YouTube shorts reels and then long long form YouTube videos. One of the sections in this presentation that I'm coming up with is thought leadership. And it is remarkable how seemingly boring things just absolutely take off like you know this this one professor I'm looking at like this professor from University of California San Francisco, UCSF he's got a YouTube short that came out in the past year, has a million views, almost a thousand comments, 55,000 likes.
00:17:36:00 - 00:17:45:05
John Azoni
And it's just him at a podium talking about why you shouldn't eat sugar. You know, it's like.
00:17:45:05 - 00:17:45:11
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah.
00:17:45:11 - 00:18:00:06
John Azoni
It's like new, new groundbreaking research on the effects of reducing added sugar in your diet. And I'm like, There's nothing that special. It's just that he got out there, you know? And yes, and like, 1 million people watched this.
00:18:01:14 - 00:18:24:16
Dr. Sheena Howard
Exactly. And in universities have faculty present on campus all the time. So this is the low hanging fruit. Make them up, put a video camera in front of them for a presentation that they were already going to do anyway. And you should start chopping up those clips and either putting them on your university website or giving them to the faculty member to have easy social media content.
00:18:24:16 - 00:18:48:09
Dr. Sheena Howard
These things are so easy to do today and you don't see a lot of universities doing them. And the other thing is when you show support for your faculty members, they are more likely to put the university that they work for in their byline, because when they're out here right now, all these amazing things, they don't I don't have to say Professor at Rowdy University, I could take that off well, but I know the university supports me.
00:18:48:18 - 00:18:54:11
Dr. Sheena Howard
I'm happy to mention their name in podcast interviews when I'm in the L.A. Times. You and all that good stuff.
00:18:55:20 - 00:19:20:04
John Azoni
Yeah, I was reading Freakonomics. I'm like 20 years behind on reading this book, but it's written co-written by a professor at University of Chicago. They talk about University of Chicago a lot in that book. And I actually know two people who either went to U. Chicago or applied because they read Freakonomics. Like like, that's the one reason they won't tell you.
00:19:20:04 - 00:19:20:17
John Azoni
Chicago.
00:19:22:02 - 00:19:42:11
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah. Now imagine all the faculty members who already write books anyway so that they can get their next promotion if they're in love with their university because their university is supporting them, they're going to be mentioning the university they work for all over that book. And yet people people do go ahead and Google that university and like now they write this this cool professor that they look up to now.
00:19:42:11 - 00:19:48:06
Dr. Sheena Howard
They want to kind of go and do a visit or not more about it. So yeah, absolutely. It's a great example.
00:19:49:10 - 00:20:04:19
John Azoni
Okay, cool. All right. So step two is vision getting faculty clear on their vision for building their platform and what it what it looks like for them. What are some things that you address with faculty when it comes to vision? What are some of those conversations like.
00:20:06:02 - 00:20:29:07
Dr. Sheena Howard
Getting them clear on? If you want to amplify your platform, what does this look like? So tying in to some of the mindset things, some faculty do not want to be on social media, right? But you have to be on social media because everybody's on their phone. And so helping them understand you don't have to be on all the platforms.
00:20:29:13 - 00:20:54:10
Dr. Sheena Howard
But let's pick two that you already like and that your audience is already on and let's just build off of those two as the first step. We also get them to think a little bit outside of higher ed, because if you want to build your platform and get visibility, you have to feel comfortable thinking outside of higher ed, because what we're talking about is not just having your work in front of other academics.
00:20:54:23 - 00:21:15:09
Dr. Sheena Howard
By the way, when you do this, work your citations, get out there as well. Right? You're scholarship gets more hits as well. Right. This is this is the correlation that I don't think a lot of academics make when my book is in The New York Times. Absolutely. I'm going to get more more Google scholar citations for that for that academic book.
00:21:16:07 - 00:21:42:00
Dr. Sheena Howard
And so in here, it's taking their idea for amplifying their platform out of their head and putting it on a piece of paper, because if it just lives in your head, you're not going to do anything with it. But when you can identify, this is the vision for one year, three year in ten years, because we're not just talking about a six month thing or we're talking about like you're doing this work that you're passionate about and you're doing a ten year plan, right?
00:21:42:00 - 00:22:01:15
Dr. Sheena Howard
If you're going to do a podcast, a one year plan is not going to cut it because at the one year mark, you might still only have like ten downloads a month. We're talking about ten years, right? You got to be in it for the long run in so detail, helping them detail that level of vision in this step is what they be doing.
00:22:02:18 - 00:22:27:10
John Azoni
I think that's so important, like to really help them understand that this is not a get rich quick scheme. You know, this is like, you know, if you're going to start a podcast, are they going be on Instagram or TikTok? It is such a slow build and they might do this for six or eight months and feel like, man, nothing's hitting, why am I doing this?
00:22:27:17 - 00:22:50:06
John Azoni
But on the other side of that success, it's really compounds. Like on the other side of that, once you start getting momentum, it really takes off and and things start happening. And so it's like I really think there's there's so many like social media gurus and podcasting gurus out there that will that will say, oh, you know, here's how I got a million views.
00:22:50:06 - 00:22:59:06
John Azoni
And I started a brand new channel. I got it in 30 days. It's like it was luck. The answer is that was luck. You know?
00:22:59:06 - 00:22:59:21
Dr. Sheena Howard
No, absolutely.
00:22:59:21 - 00:23:27:20
John Azoni
99, 99% of people need to really understand that it's going to be a slow build. And I don't think that we talk about that enough. And I think it really just discourages people when they're not maybe even already wanting to do social media, but they do it reluctantly to then also not see results right away when they're expecting that they were told this was supposed to be like the silver bullet, you know.
00:23:28:03 - 00:23:29:05
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:29:16 - 00:23:52:17
John Azoni
Yeah. So, yeah, I love that. I love that. Just encouraging a slow build. So we were talking about brand building and it's not about the the colors and the logo and stuff. And I think that that's probably, you know, the most important part of a brand is like the thought that is behind the brand and the story that you are building around your work.
00:23:53:16 - 00:24:04:15
John Azoni
Secondary is the visual assets. But talk about brand building. What are some of those conversations like? What are some challenges in building helping faculty build a brand?
00:24:05:13 - 00:24:27:23
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, So in that second step, we have them create the visions that we had and create a purpose statement, and then we move to that brand building step in helping them understand, you know, your logos and your color schemes are not the most important things. You know, the most important thing is going to be, what's your archetype, What's your story?
00:24:27:23 - 00:24:45:21
Dr. Sheena Howard
So there's 12 brand archetypes. We go over all of them in the book. Mine happens to be the sage. And so that's going to frame who you show up as on social media. So all of this is not confusing and it simply is who you already are, but it gives you a frame so that you're not all over the place.
00:24:46:11 - 00:25:12:09
Dr. Sheena Howard
You're going to identify your brand adjectives. These are going to be three brand adjectives. For example, minds are smart, fearless and empowering. And again, this is going to give me a lens to show up in the online space and also in the in-person space. If my content doesn't hit on one or all three of those things, I shouldn't be posting it because I need to stay clear, consistent for my audience.
00:25:12:20 - 00:25:39:22
Dr. Sheena Howard
If I just go a whole week posting videos with me or my son, I'm going to lose my audience because they're there for me to give them academic branding advice, right? If I want to post a video about my son, it has to suddenly connect back to what my my target audience, what I'm giving the example of, you know, my power, your research marketing, but for my personal brand over on LinkedIn, it still has to have a niche, but you do get to be a full person.
00:25:39:22 - 00:26:19:18
Dr. Sheena Howard
Like you don't have to give up who you are, but it still has to connect back through the lens of your frame. And this gets a little bit difficult. But this is why we have these steps in place, because it makes so much sense when you can articulate out what you do in 5 seconds and whether that's coming in with the unclarity of, you know, But I'm a researcher and an academic, but I also have this other talent that I like to do, which is crocheting This clarity phase in totality is going to show you how you can incorporate as much of yourself into the niche and the people that you're speaking to.
00:26:20:19 - 00:26:42:16
John Azoni
Yeah, I don't think enough people understand LinkedIn, especially in higher ed. I think, you know, I get bored of like the higher ed people that I follow that all they post is like we're hiring for this thing or like, Look, we're in the news. You know, it's like, it's like, great. It's like celebrate with me kind of stuff, you know?
00:26:42:16 - 00:27:12:22
John Azoni
It's like, yeah, maybe if it was like 5%, that stuff, I think I would celebrate with you. But if it's like, if that's all your posts, like you're really missing an opportunity to show your expertise and share share knowledge in a, in a way that people are going to vibe with and that's going to build a following on LinkedIn as soon as I started getting out of that, like, here's what I'm doing kind of mindset around, you know what I like, Oh, here's the project I'm working on.
00:27:13:03 - 00:27:34:06
John Azoni
As soon as I got out of that and started like really talking more about storytelling and and messaging and stuff like that, like things really started to take off. So I absolutely, yeah, I love, I love the, the encouragement of really defining some guardrails for, you know, for yourself, for your brand about what it is that you talk about.
00:27:34:23 - 00:27:54:05
Dr. Sheena Howard
Absolutely. Like it has to be, you know, the things that you post on social media, whether you're building a personal brand, which is what academics are doing, you know, it has to be the three main stages of a sales funnel and you're posting for brand awareness, you're posting for brand trust or your purchase that you're posting to for people to make a sale.
00:27:54:05 - 00:28:12:06
Dr. Sheena Howard
If it doesn't fit into those three things based on the framework that we already discussed, you shouldn't be posting it like nobody. You know, if you're going to poster, we don't we don't need your political views if you are if you are trying to like build a niche and make money, right. Yeah. Yeah. For your dinner table with your with your family.
00:28:12:12 - 00:28:25:03
John Azoni
Right. Exactly. So step four, Media strategy and placement. What what would you say are like the main levers to pull for getting media coverage.
00:28:25:03 - 00:28:54:14
Dr. Sheena Howard
Outreach and clarity? And when you email a producer or a host or a journalist, you need to answer why they should have you on their platform. There should be no guesses. They shouldn't have to figure it out. So is it timely, relevant and newsworthy, timely, relevant and newsworthy? Your email should communicate those things to a journalist or producer in as few words as possible because they're busy and they're not going to click your attachment or your links.
00:28:55:06 - 00:29:14:01
Dr. Sheena Howard
It needs to be in one short paragraph. I love your work. I've read some of your articles. I think my work would fit in nicely. Here's why it's relevant, timely and newsworthy. I think your audience will love it. Tell and tell them why their audience would love it. And that's it. Keep it simple.
00:29:14:02 - 00:29:37:05
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. I've heard I've had a PR strategist on on the show earlier who said like, you know, we're talking about pitching the media outlets with video and she's like, make it as easy as possible. Like give them just the good clips, you know, for for example, don't make them sort through 30 minutes of raw footage, you know, to edit this thing.
00:29:37:05 - 00:29:44:07
John Azoni
You know, everything is around making it as easy as possible for these busy people to pick you up and and launch a story about you.
00:29:45:01 - 00:29:46:08
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, absolutely.
00:29:47:07 - 00:30:11:02
John Azoni
So number five is crafting a compelling story around their research, you know, turning data into engaging narratives. So what what goes into that? Because I know that there's data and then there's data storytelling, for example. And, you know, there's there's like two very different disciplines that are so closely linked. What is the importance of storytelling for you?
00:30:11:20 - 00:30:33:07
Dr. Sheena Howard
So you kind of alluded to it earlier, and there's a lot of different frameworks that we teach for the storytelling aspect. Some of them we already talked about with the brain archetypes and that kind of thing. So there's a lot of different directions. I can take this question, but for simplicity purposes, actionable things that somebody can do right now, if they're listening to this podcast, part of building a brand is learning storytelling.
00:30:33:07 - 00:31:00:20
Dr. Sheena Howard
The easiest way to do that is start simply with the hero's journey. Your favorite movie probably uses the Hero's journey. You want to take a truncated version of the Hero's journey and turn that into your social media content. Whether it's a 32nd video or even if it's kind of the timeline of the content you're posting. So you said something earlier about nobody just wants to see your wins all of the time.
00:31:00:20 - 00:31:21:03
Dr. Sheena Howard
No, we don't. People are going to unfollow you if you're only sharing. Hey, I got a new research article. Hey, I was on the stage talking and there's a psychology behind this because if you only share your wins, people start to compare themselves to you and they start to feel inadequate. So they will unfollow you. Right? This is not about like, for you.
00:31:21:14 - 00:31:47:10
Dr. Sheena Howard
It is. This is a fact, right? This is the psychological component. You need to share your sad stories. You need to share your struggles on this podcast. If you have technology issues, you need to tell them, tell your audience, Hey, I had technology issues like this is just an example. I was really frustrated. Here's how I overcame it, because the thing that you're doing is showing this bad thing happened.
00:31:47:20 - 00:32:06:01
Dr. Sheena Howard
This is how I felt. Show don't tell, and then this is how I overcame it. Because the last part of your video or the last part of the article or the last part of whatever the content is is helping the audience learn. The audience is there for your said story so that they can learn. That's what makes content relatable.
00:32:06:12 - 00:32:12:19
Dr. Sheena Howard
If you're not doing that, you're not going to be able to grow your following things that go viral.
00:32:12:19 - 00:32:14:06
John Azoni
You're with great idea for.
00:32:14:06 - 00:32:44:16
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, So things that go viral are not you sharing your podcast link or sharing your sales link, things that go viral. Are you sharing your story without selling anything? Yeah, because going viral is going to get sales anyway. Even if you don't go viral, you just get more engagement. You're going to engage with the story, not just your wins so that when you share your wins, they will celebrate with you because you just spent 30 days telling them about all of the tough things that the actual behind the scenes things that we experience.
00:32:44:21 - 00:32:57:17
Dr. Sheena Howard
So on day three, when you share your win, they are celebrating because they know what you had to go through to get that publication, to get your first 1000 100,000 downloads of the podcast. So to publish the book right?
00:32:57:17 - 00:33:20:05
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Yeah. I never thought about it that way. What you said earlier about people unfollow you if they feel like they can't compare to you. And that's that's probably what is just one of those hidden subconscious things where it's like, now it makes me think of, like, all the, you know, the people I see in my LinkedIn feed, they're like, I did this or I got this, you know, promotion or I'm speaking, I'm the keynote speaker at this thing.
00:33:20:05 - 00:33:41:02
John Azoni
And I'm like, That's cool. But like, Oh, what what went wrong? I you know, Tom, tell me a time when you, like, applied to one of these conferences and you got rejected, you know, and how many conferences and keynote speaking sessions did you apply for and got rejected before you got the one that you posted about?
00:33:41:23 - 00:34:13:09
Dr. Sheena Howard
Exactly. You know, one of the posts that went viral for me the first time was me talking about writing for Marvel Comics. When I when I got to write for Marvel Comics in that video, I didn't talk about, hey, I publish a book with Marvel Comics. I talked about Marvel Comics ignoring me for years and how I use five second, I get the email address of the editor in chief and like and just the process of how it didn't work and how I just forgot about it and moved on.
00:34:13:09 - 00:34:26:19
Dr. Sheena Howard
And then they asked me to write. So it's a different way of doing it. If I had just shared, Hey, I wrote for Marvel Comics. Yeah. Doesn't go viral. Not going to go viral. It has to be the story of of of the hero's journey.
00:34:27:15 - 00:35:00:12
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm as I've probably mentioned on previous episodes, I'm bingeing all of the Top Chef episodes. And one of the things that I notice that they focus on in the you know, because because there's like the cooking and then there's like the personality behind the chefs and their, their backstory and stuff and, you know, there are some chefs that they focus on that are like, I have applied to Top Chef five times and got rejected and and finally am I told myself, like, this was the last time I was going to apply and I got in and like, that's the human experience.
00:35:00:12 - 00:35:31:01
John Azoni
That's 90% of how life works. But what you hear about is like 8.5% of people that you know, you know, that got this when you don't ever hear about the the the journey that it took to get there. So yeah that's that's really good. I love I think that's a good like pillar for any content marketer to have in their back pocket is like if you're running out of things to post, what is the time that you failed?
00:35:31:01 - 00:35:48:03
John Azoni
I don't think that we are minds go to that like let me let me tell you about a time when I screwed up. You know, we think about like, oh, what's what's some new what some new research or what some new interesting thing I can come up with to say. But, you know, some of it's just telling stories that people can remind you of.
00:35:48:03 - 00:35:49:04
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yes, absolutely.
00:35:51:01 - 00:36:05:08
John Azoni
And then lastly is strategies for learning speaking engagements. So like how someone wants to book a TED talk? What if I want to book a TED talk, which I do? What should I do?
00:36:05:08 - 00:36:29:10
Dr. Sheena Howard
So you probably not going to get on the TED stage first. First, you should be focusing on a TED talk. And I have a free video on YouTube that shows you exactly how to do a TED talk because there are local TED opportunities everywhere. The cool thing is, you know, I did my TED talk and sometimes it goes on the TED.com page.
00:36:29:10 - 00:36:56:19
Dr. Sheena Howard
So my TED talk is on the official TED page, and it does really, really well. You might be invited to the TED conference, but even if it doesn't like my my TED talk has like 30,000 views. And it's just so by my YouTube video, it's free. It's easy to find how to land a TED Talk. And then the other thing is, like when you do the TED talk, it's much it's much like publishing a book.
00:36:57:02 - 00:37:12:21
Dr. Sheena Howard
Nobody's going to watch it if you don't have a marketing strategy. I didn't get the 30 K views on my TED talk just because I posted it. You have this. This is the same thing. Is this everything we've been talking about? You got to tell the story around it. You've got to have a strategy around it. If You build it.
00:37:12:21 - 00:37:23:06
Dr. Sheena Howard
They will not come. If you promote it, they will. And so just people being mindful that doing the TED talk is just the first step.
00:37:23:06 - 00:37:47:01
John Azoni
Yeah. Oh, again, I love that. I'm like getting so passionate about everything you're saying because it's like everything that I think about lately or it's like I think more and more people would succeed in a digital marketing context if they actually understood what it really takes to get traction on something.
00:37:47:12 - 00:38:08:04
Dr. Sheena Howard
Yeah, I mean, it's a every day commitment. It's not. It's just an everyday commitment. And you know, you may never go viral, but you have small wins every week. So it doesn't matter if you go viral and get 100,000 followers or if you just had small wins once a month. I've got 100,000 followers. So what, you still got four followers?
00:38:08:12 - 00:38:32:22
Dr. Sheena Howard
And by the way, you know, you can get to six figures without having all of those followers. But the follower count absolutely does matter for more opportunities because it goes back to the top of the sales funnel brand awareness. Just obviously, if more people know about you, you're going to have more opportunities. But I want people to understand that you can get the six figures with 3000 followers as long as they are the right followers, right?
00:38:33:16 - 00:38:42:05
Dr. Sheena Howard
So the quality start focusing on the quality first. If you're just starting out or don't have a big account yet.
00:38:43:01 - 00:39:16:20
John Azoni
Yeah, I look at my podcast as a great example of that. Like we don't get tons of downloads every month and I honestly, I don't even pay attention to it. But like the amount of wins I could tell you of just from having a podcast and the people that I've met through interviewing them, just the opportunities that I've gotten not just for business, but just like really rich friendships and relationships and stuff, you know, it's so much more than just what the numbers say, but the, the, the stats, the analytics really don't communicate.
00:39:16:20 - 00:39:23:19
John Azoni
Even a third of of what we're going to experience by building a platform for yourself.
00:39:23:20 - 00:39:35:06
Dr. Sheena Howard
Exactly. Exactly. And that's why you can't be if you're thinking about building a brand or it can't be just about the money, because that's not going to get you up every day to record these podcasts is just not.
00:39:36:02 - 00:40:08:08
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been great. Love to having you on. Really excited for our audience to to dive into this. As I said, I think it's going to be great for marketers who, you know, higher ed marketers and communicators that that want to work with their faculty and help their faculty build their brands. But also I think we you know, we've sort of bled into tips that really are just applicable across the board, you know, for for building any sort of platform in any context.
00:40:08:08 - 00:40:13:08
John Azoni
So thank you so much for being here. I want to ask, where can people connect with yet?
00:40:14:07 - 00:40:39:15
Dr. Sheena Howard
So at Dr. Sina Howard, they are e and ah0werd Dr. Sina Howard on everything. And certainly for the marketing professionals listening, if you want me to come in and speak to a group of your faculty on how they can build their brand, I am certainly open for speaking engagements. We also can do custom branded power, Your research programs only for specific departments or universities.
00:40:39:15 - 00:40:52:07
Dr. Sheena Howard
If you just want to send a whole bunch of people through and have access through your company procurement site or something like Yeah, reach out to me. You can find me at Dr. Sina Howard anywhere.
00:40:53:01 - 00:40:55:07
John Azoni
Awesome. Well, this has been great. Thanks so much for being here.
00:40:56:01 - 00:40:58:04
Dr. Sheena Howard
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, John.
