Shownotes
When I ask artists what they struggle with the most, it's almost always about social media - what to post that actually works, how to stand out in the noise, why someone would engage with their content over other creatives, and how to build a community of raving fans. Sound familiar?
Today, we're going to talk about how to show up, stand out, and sell your work online with confidence, with something I like to call your YOU-SPs.
You’ll learn what makes you and your creative work unique in a market filled with millions of other artists. We explore how to uncover your YOU-SPs - those special qualities that set you apart and make your audience remember you. You'll learn how to research what's truly different about your work, decide on your core unique selling points, and weave them through all your messaging so you can be confident in what you're sharing online.
It’s time to turn your unique qualities into content that resonates and helps you build a community of people who truly love what you do!
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✨ Ready to suss out & share your YOU-SPs so you can show up, stand out, and sell your work online with confidence?
Join the free 5-day YOU-SP Challenge at bit.ly/YOUSPChallenge where we’ll work through all of these steps together alongside your fellow creatives! You’ll get a prompt every day, a community of creatives, feedback & support from me, and more!
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WANT MORE?
Want your questions answered on the podcast, or be part of an awesome community of creatives supporting each other? Join us in the Brand Your Passion Collective at www.makerandmoxie.com/community. We’d love to have you 🧡
🎧 59. Why creatives need to pinpoint their people
🎧 79. Brand voice: what creatives need to know about finding and using your brand voice
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Transcripts
When I ask artists what they struggle with the most, more often than not, their answer is all about knowing what and how to post on social media. And the reason that they find that difficult is 'cause they don't know what to post that's gonna actually work. Why someone would engage with their content over someone else's, amongst all the social media noise and how to really build a community of raving fans of them and their work.
Does it sound familiar? Today we are gonna talk about how to show up, stand out, and sell your work online with confidence with something that I like to call your YOU SP’s. Let's get started.
Standing Out in a Crowded Market
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The illustration workforce alone is currently made up of 2.2 million people, and that is growing by 3.58% every year.
So with millions of illustrators, and that's, as I said, illustration alone. Not taking into consideration like your, whatever your specific industry is, like design or jewelry making or taxidermy or whatever. The point is, there are a lot of artists out there, right? So how can you stand out among millions of people?
To think about this, I want you to think about your favorite artist, someone that you love to follow. Maybe you've bought stuff from them before. Every time they announce that they have new things, you go and at least look at it thinking like, oh, I would love to have that. Maybe you buy it, maybe you don't, but you follow them.
You love their content. You love their work. Think about your favorite artists. You can probably list three to five things about that person and about their work and about their business that makes them stand out and makes them an artist that you love, that makes them your favorite artist. I. Maybe it's like the subject matter in their art.
Maybe it is the way they talk about creativity. Maybe it's the issues that they're really passionate about. Maybe it's their hilarious personality. Whatever it is, there are probably a multitude of things that make them unique, and especially when those things are combined that make them someone that you love to follow that make them your favorite artist.
Identifying Your Unique Selling Points (USPs)
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Now think about whether you could do that for yourself. It's a little bit harder, but could you think of the three to five things that make you and your work unique and different? I. U SPS are your unique selling points, and I'm spelling this YOU sps. These are the things that set you, your business and your creative work apart and make you stand out.
They are the key to differentiating your creative business, which is the key and vital for attracting, engaging, and converting potential customers. They are the things that you want to be known for. Like I said about your create your favorite creatives, your favorite artists, those things that they share out in the world that make them your favorite are probably things they want you to know them for.
They probably want you to know that they care about these specific issues, that humor is a big part of their work. These are the things that they probably want you to know them for. You need to know what your USPS are so that you can use them in your messaging to position yourself, and then people are gonna learn more about you and come to recognize and remember you for those things.
This also makes it way easier for people to recommend you too. If I came to you and I said, oh, you need to follow this person, Jess makes jewelry. That is maybe I would be like, okay, it's coming from my friend, like maybe I'll go follow them. But what would be way more compelling is if they, or I said, oh my god.
Jess is an amazing maximalist designer. She uses recycled beads to make the funkiest necklaces, and every single one is unique. So they're really special and she donates 10% from each sale to a sustainability trust. Plus she always talks about slow creativity, and I love that so much. I just included in three sentences, two to three sentences, things that make this artist, this fake artist, completely unique to every other person who makes jewelry, right?
All those things combined, each individually and together make. Jess really easy for me to recommend because I know what makes her distinct and unique. I know why I love her work, and it's easy for me to advocate and share her work with other people, right? So specificity equals easy advocacy. It's easy when your brand and your positioning is specific for people to recommend you and become advocates of your brand.
Researching and Defining Your USPs
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So how do we suss out and share your u sps? There are five steps to doing this. Number one is a step zero, and that is that you need to understand that you are your niche. So this isn't about putting you in a box. This isn't about saying you have to only work for certain people, or you have to only make a certain specific medium.
You just have to be yourself. And when I say that, I mean we need to figure out what it is that makes you stand out. Tell people what you wanna be known for and own those things. These are also not things that you have to force or make up or pretend like you're somebody that you're not. You are already these things.
You already have things that make you unique. It's just about. Uncovering those things, pulling them together, figuring out what you wanna share with your audience and how to do that in a way that stands out and appeals to them. So step number two is to research what is unique about you and your work.
This means looking yourself, so looking at your work, looking at yourself, doing some journaling, looking at your content that you've posted in the past, feedback you've had from clients or customers reviews. All the kind of things that you already know inside are unique about you and your work, but then it can be really helpful to also get some external thoughts on what people think about you and your brand and your work.
One thing that I always say, and I wish I could remember where I heard this from because it's so good and I repeat it all the time, is that sometimes it's really hard to read the label from inside the jar. So it's hard for us to see what other people are seeing when we're inside the jar. We are ourselves, so it's hard for us to see okay, how do I come across?
What do you think is unique about me and my work and my brand and my business? So you can ask customers, either customers who have bought from you or have thought about buying from you. Maybe they are on your email list or something like that. Ask them what they think is unique about you and your work and your creative business.
You can ask your general audience, so use like polls or question boxes on Instagram or on Threads or TikTok or wherever you are posting. Ask your audience what they think, and then also ask the people who know you really well, this is gonna be really helpful to see like the people who are the closest to me and know me the most, what do they think is unique about me?
What would they say makes me stand out? Then you can pull all of that research together from you, your customers, your audience, and the people who know you really well, and see what the common threads are, what the themes are across them, and what kind of the main things are that people say is unique and different about you.
Then we wanna decide what are our U sps. I would say you wanna have between three to five things so that you can be specific and repeat those things over and over again so people come to know and remember you for those things. So there are tons of ways that you can stand out and that things that can be different about you.
Here are just some categories. There are tons within this ca, these categories, but I wanna give you these to spur some ideas. Things that could be your usps could be around your visual identity and style, your content and storytelling, your audience and who you create for your experience and expertise, your distribution channels, so where and how you create your work and where it's sold, and all those sorts of things.
Your community and network. Your vision and mission, your service model. So what products and services you have and how that works. Your philosophy, that's like your approach, your beliefs, your values, and your personality. So just who you are as a human. So as I said, there are a bunch of different specific things within that, but hopefully that will spark some ideas for you.
Integrating USPs into Your Messaging
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Step four, you wanna start weaving your USPS through your messaging. So that can be in your social media bios, in your artist bio, if you have that on your website throughout all of your other marketing content. And in things like pictures and applications, these are the perfect places to start talking about the things that make you different.
You probably have seen this kind of thing before in their social media content, in their website, in their bios. This is what you wanna do as well. Then you wanna start sharing your USPS with the world consistently. So you might wanna do like a reintroduction, tell people This is who I am, this is what makes me different, and this is why you wanna follow me.
And then ongoing content and your U USPS can become your quote unquote content pillars. So if you want people to know about like the sustainability. Aspect of your work and how you do that really uniquely and differently. That could be a content pillar for you, is to continually talk about sustainability, about climate change, about all of those sorts of things can become a content pillar.
So you know what to talk about because you are, you wanna be repeating these things in different ways all the time so that people know you for these things. So that is the process for setting out and sharing your USPS in five steps. Number one is just to get in the mindset of I am my niche.
I'm not trying to put myself in a box. I'm just trying to uncover all of the things that make me unique that are already there. I just wanna figure out what I wanna share with the world and how I'm gonna do that. Then you wanna do the research about what's unique about you, your work, your business from yourself, your customers, your audience, and the people who know you really well.
Decide on those three to five usps. Weave those through your messaging and things like your bios, your website, your pictures, applications, et cetera, and then start continually sharing that with the world.
Join the Free Five-Day USP Challenge
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If you want to suss out and share your USPS so you can show up, stand out, and sell your work online with confidence, then I wanna invite you to join me and a bunch of other creatives in a free five day UP challenge.
You can go to bit ly slash u sp challenge, that's Y-O-U-S-P challenge where we will walk through all of these steps together one every day alongside other artists creatives. And we will figure it all out together. You're gonna get a prompt every day, a community of creatives feedback and support from me, and so much more so that you can figure out what your unique selling points are.
Show up, stand out, and sell your creative work online confidently. So that sounds good. Head to the show notes or head to be ly slash. USP challenge, that's Y-O-U-S-P challenge. Enjoy me for the free five day challenge and I hope to see you there. It'll be a great time and I can't wait to see what everybody comes up with.
Conclusion and Call to Action
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Other than that, hope this episode has been helpful as always, and I can't wait to see you in the next one. Keep being creative and I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Brand Your Passion. If you enjoyed this one, it would mean the world to me if you could share it on social media and make sure to tag me at Maker and Moxie so that I can see and share it too.
It really does help to get the show out there, which means that we can all work towards that maker and Moxie vision. Of making the world a more creative place, one brand at a time. Thanks so much in advance and I will talk to you in the next one. Until then, keep creating!
