Turn Your Followers Into Superfans With Trust and Authenticity | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator

72.981 - 91.547 Hala Taha

Building trust online is crucial, especially when you don't interact with your audience face-to-face. In a digital world, trust transforms casual followers into loyal supporters and eventually customers. But how do you establish that trust from behind a screen? The first step is to get personal. That means being open about meaningful details from your life.

88.63 - 106.64 Hala Taha

Let me tell you, these two elements can make or break your connection with your audience. Trust is the foundation of any strong brand. And authenticity is the glue that holds it all together. The force that keeps people coming back for more. In today's episode, we're diving deep into why trust is essential to building a loyal community.

133.582 - 145.012 Rory Vaden

There's a good chance that the people on that list, like you would trust with your banking information or your, you know, like that kind of stuff. There's a good chance you know those people intimately. You know...

146.218 - 162.432 Hala Taha

Sharing who you are behind the polished brand makes you relatable, approachable, and real. Rory Vaden, a brand building expert, explained to me why this personal connection is so essential for building trust and why it even made him change his mind about the people on social media who like to post about their every meal.

146.957 - 163.373 Rory Vaden

where they eat, you know, where they live, you know, about their families, you know, where they went to college, you know, where they grew up, you know, about their siblings, you know, like, you know, maybe some of their fears, you know, some of their mistakes, like some of where they're, you know, those people intimately.

164.614 - 190.264 Rory Vaden

And when I first got on social media, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so stupid. Why is everyone posting pictures of what they ate? And then I realized, oh, because we trust people that we know intimate details about their life. Now, that doesn't mean you have to post pictures of your kids, right? There's a lot of reasons why not to and a lot of fears why not to.

166.097 - 186.649 Rory Vaden

How do you best build trust online? We would say, how do you best build trust offline? Well, if you made a list, okay, so let's first start with the people. If you made a list of the top 10 people you trust in your life, like would trust with your life or with your kids, right? Like I've got two toddlers. So like if you go, who would you trust?

389.575 - 408.366 Rory Vaden

We typically say your feed should be more of what you do and it should educate, encourage, or entertain because strangers don't care about your cat. The only people who care about your cat typically are going to be once they're intrigued by you and they want to kind of really vet you out, that's where they go, who are you really, right?

402.801 - 420.879 Sean Cannell

We do business with people we know, like, and trust, and video is the best trust accelerator. If people read something you've written, they can get to know you a little bit. If they hear your voice on audio, that's great. They can get to know you better, but if they see you, they can get to know you best. And so it's kind of like. Old school, small town rules.

412.028 - 431.483 Hala Taha

Rory talks about how trust comes from familiarity. People trust those that they feel that they know, whether that's through personal stories, inspiration, or education. His three E's framework, educate, encourage, and entertain, is a simple yet powerful way to build genuine relationships online. But how can we take this trust building to the next level?

466.218 - 487.104 Sean Cannell

And so the power of video is you're giving people a chance to get to know you pre-sale, pre-sales conversation and get to know your expertise, get to know some of your values and your principles. In fact, this would kind of be like a checklist of the types of buckets of content that you'd wanna have. It's why that, yes, you wanna establish your authority.

475.134 - 491.506 Sean Cannell

You know, we, we meet someone face to face for coffee. You want to connect with your real estate agent in person, look them in the eye, firm handshake. What are you wearing? You know, every, all those details speak something about you. While in video, we are able to now communicate those details.

487.184 - 506.282 Sean Cannell

So you have videos that, oh, this person knows what they're talking about. You establish something that'll help them. Wow, this person got me results in advance. So their content helped me solve a micro problem compared to the big problem they solve. Dang, I can see they're good for it. They know what they're talking about and they've already helped me for free.

492.367 - 506.075 Sean Cannell

And, you know, Google released a report years ago called, I believe the three 11 four rule, which was, or the seven 11 four rule, which was people need to consume seven hours of your content, uh,

506.822 - 526.659 Sean Cannell

But one of the missing pieces is they also maybe hear bits and pieces of your story. this whole idea of we do business with people with shared beliefs, and we do business with people with similar values. And sometimes we just go so logical and so practical, like, okay, cool, this person can help me with Facebook ads, this person can help me with my taxes. But when you start weaving in

691.87 - 710.784 Kat Norton

And so for me, it was just an authentic expression. It was cool. It was something I had never seen anybody do before in terms of the Excel space, especially, but also in a lot of learning spaces, integrating dance, which is more native to the TikTok app, but then layering in the educational piece. And that polarity is what really helped the videos take off.

705.254 - 721.789 Hala Taha

With over 1.1 million followers on Instagram and 2.3 million followers on TikTok, Kat has mastered the art of capturing attention. She told me how combining her distinctive passions for dancing and Microsoft Excel created an unexpected level of engagement from her audience.

710.845 - 726.838 Kat Norton

Because if I just posted Excel tip videos, people would have been like, cool, like I don't use Excel and moved on. But so many people were commenting because they were like, what the heck is this girl? doing? She is dancing. She's doing the Tuesday slot, left or right function. What is going on here?

725.606 - 745.498 Kat Norton

So I was really just learning by the seat of my pants. Like I would read the comments people had and I'm like, okay, what do they like? What do they not like? But also for me, it really came down to authenticity. So I love dancing. I love helping people and I love Excel. So I was like, what would happen if I put all of that inside of one video, right?

727.039 - 748.557 Hala Taha

And that's really what helped it go through the algorithm. And I want to laser in on something you said, and we'll go deeper on it later. But you talked about polarity. So the fact that you combined two things that are really uncommon together, dance and Excel. It gets people talking. It gets people like complaining. Why are you dancing talking about Excel? Or some people will love it.

826.775 - 847.593 Kat Norton

when it comes to polarity, it's important to make sure that your mental health is in a great spot to be able to receive what comes with polarity, right? Because a lot of times when a video goes viral, negative comments are the majority of the ones in there because it's being shown to people, it's being shared, and that's just the nature of the planet, right? We live on a polarity planet.

827.168 - 839.502 Kat Norton

So it's really important to keep coming back to yourself, come back to that intuition and know that, you know, the polarity is going to trigger some people and that's okay. That was a big lesson for me as a former people pleaser. You know, I had to, I had to let that go.

843.755 - 866.588 Hala Taha

As Kat Norton points out here, combining contrasting elements in a genuine way, what she calls polarity, can drive engagement and deepen connections. It's a reminder that showing up authentically may involve quirks or unique passions, even if they seem unconventional. When people see those real, unfiltered sides of you, they're drawn into the person behind the brand, not just the content.

847.613 - 867.429 Kat Norton

There's always positive and negative forces. So it comes to making sure that your nervous system is able to hold positive the energy of what is going to come through from creating the polarity in that content. So for me, that was my biggest work. I was constantly working on myself because easily some people get some negative comments and it'll take them out.

867.108 - 884.762 Hala Taha

Okay, speaking of drawing audiences, audiences today crave authenticity. They wanna connect with somebody who feels real and relatable, not just some polished, perfect version of you. So don't shy away from sharing the ups and the downs. True engagement comes when you share your failures, your setbacks, your lessons in progress.

1115.159 - 1129.998 Rudy Mawer

I had a million followers there. I've sold out events around the world, had a Facebook group, 60,000 members, and I saw the power of it. And so I was like, okay, well, now I'm moving into the business space. I'm going to do the same here. So I brought someone in to run my agency.

1117.14 - 1128.791 Rudy Mawer

I just see his red ads everywhere and his branding's on point and he clearly knows what he's doing. Luckily, touch wood in this industry, I do feel I know what I'm doing. It's not just a facade like half the industry we live in is.

1130.018 - 1151.494 Rudy Mawer

I went all in with my personal brand and we did $25 million in three years, just selling courses, programs, coaching programs. So we grew it super fast. And I'm saying that because I think half of that is because I went all in on the personal brand and the social and the organic and stages and all of that sort of stuff. So it had a massive impact. I don't think I would have...

1130.332 - 1150.165 Rudy Mawer

And then I was going to events when COVID lockdown ended and all the friends that I had known for five years were like, dude, I love your branding now, like how you did this whole red thing. So it just got more and more and more. And I'm a very extreme person, which is sometimes great and sometimes terrible. So I just went all in. All my cars were red. I made all the offices red.

1150.205 - 1156.128 Rudy Mawer

I made all the staff wear red. And I played into it, and now it's very recognizable, and I'm well known for it.