Charlotte’s Web was one of the most pivotal movies for my generation. We watched as Charlotte, a wise and loving spider, used her web not just to take care of her needs, but to save the life of someone she cared about with simple yet powerful messages that spoke to the hearts of the people she needed to reach.

Building a personal brand is akin to building a spider web, and you are like Charlotte grabbing the attention of your people. The way your personal brand comes together, between your messaging, your presence, your SEO, your website, and more creates an attractive web that calls to the very core of your audience. 

The key to using the Spider Web Method is to join the dots for your people and make each touchpoint memorable and valuable. That way when people search for you or the type of services you offer, you become the clear choice because you’ve built a relationship with them at each possible touchpoint of the web. 

How you’re seen

Everywhere you’re seen online (intentionally and unintentionally) impacts your value. That’s why it’s vital to show up consistently and in alignment with your brand values. That means every post, every profile, every picture, and every website needs to bring a consistent message and tone, evoking specific emotions in your audience. 

For example, is your ideal client someone who makes more emotionally-based decisions or logic-based decisions? If your ideal client is more of an emotional decision-maker, you’ll need content that represents their feelings, their current situation, and their ideal outcome in a more story-based way.

However, if your ideal client is more logic-based in their decision-making, they need content that has specific details with point A to point B information so they can think it through. How your ideal client processes information and makes their decisions will form the foundation of your messaging (AKA: your spider web). 

Along this vein, ensure your bio and photos are consistent across all platforms along with your brand message. And don’t forget to customize each message to the specific platform and audience you’re interacting with at each moment.

The audience on Facebook interacts with content differently than the audience on TikTok does. You want to be sure that you understand how the audience wants to interact with the content in their feed on a given platform. That will help make your content easily consumable—and when your content is easy to consume, it’s easier for your audience to take it in.

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” – Seth Godin

Driving results

Now that you know how your spider web is attracting your people, you want to amp up your results. The first thing you want to do is to ensure that you keep your online content updated and current. Life happens, and it can be easy for days, weeks, even (sometimes) months to go by without releasing new content or updating what you have on your profile.

But it’s important to build this as a process into your business so that it’s easy for you to keep up with the content flow your people need in order to make a solid buying decision.

This looks like posting valuable content a few times per week and looking over your bio once per month to see if anything needs to be updated.

A second powerful practice that will help you is setting yourself up to be searchable. SEO isn’t the sexiest thing for us to talk about, but it’s important for you to show up in search when your ideal clients are Googling who to hire. One way to do this is to build backlinks and connect everything online using one consistent email address.

This means you want to create a professional website and an email address that goes with it. These are the links and the email address that you build from. This allows your spider web to reach much farther across the Internet so you can reach ideal clients that you may not find on your social media algorithms alone. 

Getting social

Speaking of social media, let’s talk about how this plays into your overall spider web to attract high-ticket, premium clients. Social media gives you the power to be more than just a business and attract the right clients. There’s an engagement factor your ideal clients get with you on social that’s not possible on your website.

But you want to be careful. Don’t join every social media platform just for the sake of it. Be strategic in your approach and use the platforms where your people reside.

For example, Facebook might not be the best place for some experts or businesses. LinkedIn can give you the ability to connect better if you’re focusing on B2B, especially with medium-sized to larger corporations. Facebook is great for connecting with coaches and entrepreneurs, but it may be harder to connect with decision-makers in bigger businesses if you’re a consultant. 

Be clear on your objectives and whom you’re wanting to speak to.

Here is a quick cheat sheet so you can use all forms of content to promote your personal brand and expertise with the corresponding platforms each type of content works well on:

• Pinterest: share images, quotes, and ideas 
• Youtube: share short videos, reviews, information, and entertainment
• Facebook: share short posts, results, and event information
• Eventbrite: create an account and host virtual events
• LinkedIn: create short, one to three-paragraph posts with images 

Make sure all of these social media profiles link back to your website and personal brand name. That will help to make you even more searchable and support the other SEO work you’ve done.

As all of these parts come together, you have your own special spider web that spreads across the Internet to bring your ideal clients to you and makes you stand out as the perfect choice for them. The more you hone this over time, the more effective it is. Much like Charlotte, with her messages becoming more compelling over time, so will your messaging as you implement the Spider Web Method.