Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Ben Roberts. In the previous episode, we discussed how to create a successful business through consistent publishing.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss how we can use buzzwords to build our personal brand.

Have you ever heard of buzzword marketing? I hadn’t until this interview, but it makes a lot of sense, and now I’m working to implement it through my business. Ben Roberts is a highly experienced digital marketer. He wrote a book titled Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority, and in this episode, he will teach us how we can increase our authority with buzzword marketing.

Today, buzzwords are everywhere. No matter how many people try to hate buzzwords, they still use them in their everyday language. Oftentimes, “people use buzzwords not to convey factual meaning, but to show they belong to a social group … Buzzwords are code words to show you're an inside member." (Source: WSJ) 

How Buzzwords Differ from Jargon

Jargon and buzzwords may seem similar, but there is a distinct difference. Jargon is very industry-specific. It’s very technical and ingrained in industry-specific language. On the other hand, buzzwords are terms and phrases that help describe something else. Terms like social media marketing and content marketing were big buzzwords. Now, they’ve become part of the vernacular. It’s now common to talk about things like artificial intelligence, chatbots, and cryptocurrency which are also buzzwords.  

Businesses that Used Buzzwords Effectively 

Many companies have used buzzwords effectively to their advantage.

HubSpot and Inbound Marketing

HubSpot has succeeded in effectively using and leveraging the buzzword “inbound marketing.” Until HubSpot started using it, most people had never heard of inbound marketing, but now, HubSpot has now built a business around inbound marketing.

Ben believes buzzwords are powerful because they’re memorable. People will remember and associate us with that term when they hear or see it. This is how we build personal brands. 

 

Coining our Buzzwords vs. Leveraging Existing Ones

At Monetization Nation, we focus on some buzzwords, such as tectonic shifts, passion marketing, and credibility marketing. Credibility marketing is a newer buzzword that has become more popular recently which means it's not a saturated buzzword. Where there's less competition, we have more opportunities to grow our personal brand around the buzzword. 

One of the elements Ben explores in his book is how to choose between coining our own buzzword and leveraging one that already exists. 

Coining our Buzzword

Deciding on coining our own buzzword or using an existing one depends on many factors. It depends on how much time and energy we have. Coining our buzzword is like creating a product. We have to be able to promote the product and make people aware of it. If we create a new product or buzzword that no one's ever heard of before, we have to market it and convince people why it's different from anything else. 

That being said, coining our buzzword has potential rewards if we do it right. With coining, we may be able to secure the buzzword domain name, file the trademark, and get some proprietary protections that we can't do if lots of people are already using it. It becomes our term, our word, and our phrase that we can leverage as the buzzword popularity grows.

Using Existing Buzzwords

If we choose to use an existing buzzword, it means there are already people searching around it. They already know a bit about our subject matter. We get to stand out through our brand. That's the differentiator. There’s less risk because there’s existing awareness.

Leveraging Buzzwords to Build our Personal Brand

Ben believes that the key to using buzzwords to build our personal brand is to choose the right platform—one that we’re passionate about and can explain clearly, concisely, and share our knowledge on. Ben said, “It's got to be a platform that you enjoy.” He explains how many people are jumping on Clubhouse. As a platform, it may be perfect for one person and it may be completely wrong for another because they don't necessarily enjoy that audio discussion experience. Other people may consider TikTok, Twitter, or LinkedIn. 

It doesn't matter which platform we use as long as we enjoy it and it’s where our potential target market is. After we choose the right platform, we need to reach out and be consistent over a long period of time.

The Future of Buzzwords

Ben believes buzzwords are here to stay. People will keep saying we should get rid of them but we can't. The world is ever-changing and new technologies keep surfacing. For example, people will talk about Clubhouse and form new buzzwords about audio marketing that will stay with us for a while. New buzzwords are always being created. Some will stay around for a long time and become part of the vernacular just like the example Ben gave earlier of social media marketing and content marketing. They are now part of everyday marketing lingo. Using buzzwords allows us to create a business or personal brand that differentiates ourselves from others in the same niche.  

Becoming the Authority our Industry Needs

In his book, Ben talks about becoming a teacher about buzzwords in our space and the buzzword authority our industry needs. He believes we need to educate people about our buzzword especially if it's upcoming or hasn't existed before. If we don't educate people, they won’t know what to do with this word that we’ve suddenly started using. 

The more we teach people and the more wisdom and ideas we share with them, the more they see us as an authority within that subject. This can take a long time but it will establish our credibility in our market. It shows people that we know what we’re talking about and positions us as an expert in our field. 

 

Finding the Right Buzzword  

To find the right buzzword, Ben advises us to look at our business and ask, “What is it that we do? How do we help people?” We should find and use a codeword or phrase that we use in our everyday speech, content that we put on our website, or even just within our business. Then we can start looking at this word or phrase that we can build our business around - one that we want to become known for and be seen as authorities in. This is actually from where Ben got the title of his book, From Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority. We want people to be able to sing and echo back to us this word or phrase we use regularly. We want to be the first person they think of when they hear this term.

 

Using Buzzwords to Leverage our Marketing Efforts

The key point of a buzzword is to be able to use it to leverage our marketing efforts. It doesn’t help if we’re just using it a couple of times on our website. This won’t teach people and it won’t build our credibility and authority. We have to tie our buzzword into all the multiple marketing assets that we have such as podcasts, blogs, email newsletters, or any social content we’re creating, and ask, “How do we weave this word into all of those?” We need to make sure our buzzword is related to everything we do because it’ll help build up that knowledge with other people. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Ben for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

 

1. Buzzwords are powerful because they’re memorable.
2. Where there's less competition, we have a better chance to grow our personal brand.
3. When we use an existing buzzword, we're filling an existing demand that exists. We don't have to start from scratch.
4. To leverage our personal brand using buzzwords, we need to be consistent over a single platform with high-quality content over time.
5. We have to tie our buzzword into all our marketing assets that we have such as podcasts, blogs, email newsletters, or any social content we produce.

Connect with Ben

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Ben or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also visit his website at ben-m-roberts.com or listen to his podcast at marketingbuzzword.com.  

 

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/121-how-to-leverage-buzzwords-to-build-our-personal-brand/