Gary V lied to you...

I love Gary V, but he lied to you about how to build your personal brand.

He tell you “The niche is you.”

No.

It’s not (yet).

Lemme explain…

The most common mistake people make when trying to grow their personal brand on social media is a mistake I made 3 years ago.

When I started my social media journey, I took a course that told me to create broad content that appealed to everyone.

It makes sense, right?

The more your content appeals to everyone, the more followers you’ll gain.

So I made an account called “Philosophy of Fit” (yes, super cringe, I know) and posted content about fitness, philosophy, and a bunch of cheesy self-help stuff.

And after spending hours posting 5 times a day every single day, I only grew to 750 followers in 3 months.

A “viral” post for me was 11 likes.

It was frustrating and humiliating to see content I spent hours on consistently flop.

But around the 3rd month of posting content, I came across another social media account that was blowing up.

He grew from 0 to 1000 followers in 30 days.

I wanted to know what his secret to growth was, so I got on a call with this creator.

And what he told me on that call changed my entire social media strategy…

And honestly, is the reason I grew my following to hundreds of thousands of people.

He told me that a year ago, he was in the same position as me.

Creating broad self-improvement content that tried to appeal to everyone.

And unsurprisingly, he got the same crappy results as me.

But his new account took the opposite approach.

He narrowed his content and focused on teaching a skill to his audience.

Copywriting.

And that’s when it clicked for me…

I first had to provide value to be valued by others.

So I started a new social media account and primarily focused on giving writing tips.

And where it took me 3 months to grow to 750 followers, it only took me 40 days to grow to 1000.

Now, this goes against what big creators like Gary V are telling beginners on social media…

Telling you to be as broad as possible and talk about whatever you want, then you’ll magically attract followers.

I like Gary V, but this is flat out wrong.

Because you have to realize, what works for big creators now is not what they used to grow their account at the start.

Big influencers start very narrow, then broaden their content later on.

• Gary V started educating people on wine

• Alex Hormozi started educating people about sales

• Iman Gadzhi started educating people about SMMA

Once they gave a ton of value and showed their competence, then they all broadened their content to other things.

Because here’s the harsh truth:

When you’re starting out, nobody cares about you.

Think about it…

If Gary V makes a social media post saying “Believe in yourself” it’ll get 10,000 likes.

But if a random person posts the exact same thing, nobody cares.

The difference is that Gary V built his brand and reputation first, so people know, like, and trust him.

Which means he can post any broad content and it’ll work.

So when you’re starting out on social media, you need to realize that people care about 1 thing:

What’s in it for them.

So, if you want to avoid the mistake of posting broad social media content and getting 0 engagement, you need to create content around a topic you have interest in AND has market demand.

If you don’t have interest in the topic, you won’t enjoy making the content and you’ll give up.

If there isn’t demand for the topic, nobody will want to consume your content or follow you.

The key is to provide value.

And I kinda hate that term because all these gurus tell you “Provide value, bro”.

But they never tell you what “Value” is or how to give it.

So, let’s fix that:

My definition of value is anything that solves people’s problems or moves them closer to a desired outcome.

And value you can give falls into 1 of 3 categories:

1) Health (improving people’s health)

2) Wealth (making people money)

3) Relationships (improving people’s dating or family life)

As my friend, Lara says, “That’s literally it.”

So the key is to look at what skills you currently have or would enjoy learning that you can create valuable content around.

THIS is what you center your personal brand around at the start.

Think of your growing your personal brand like growing a tree.

A tree first grows its trunk, then as it gets bigger, it grows branches.

So, start narrow by primarily giving value, then branch out to broader topics later on.

Now go out there and write some banger posts.

Your Canadian friend,

Dakota “I’mma Tree” Robertson

P.S.

I made a YouTube video showing you how to grow you social media fast (starting from 0 followers).

If you want a full walkthrough on how to grow your social media, click here.