How to Build Brand Engagement That Actually Converts with Melanie Benson

TL;DR

How can solopreneurs use storytelling to build trust and convert followers into clients?

Storytelling for solopreneurs is one of the most powerful and most underused tools for building the kind of trust that turns a casual follower into a ready-to-buy client — but only when the story is built around your ideal client's experience rather than your own expertise. Effective brand storytelling follows a specific structure: a hook that stops the scroll, a problem that creates recognition, symptoms that deepen resonance, and a call to action that feels like a natural next step rather than a pitch. When that structure is paired with deep audience understanding, authentic timing, and consistent messaging, storytelling stops being a content tactic and starts being your most reliable conversion tool.

Why Storytelling Is More Strategic Than You Think

Most solopreneurs understand intuitively that stories are more engaging than facts. But knowing that storytelling works and knowing how to use it as a strategic, repeatable part of your content is a completely different thing.

Effective storytelling isn't about being a gifted writer or sharing vulnerable personal moments. It's about understanding the specific structure that moves someone from passive scroll to genuine interest — and knowing how to build that structure around the exact experience your ideal client is already living. When those two things come together, your content stops feeling like marketing and starts feeling like the first conversation in a relationship that eventually leads to a sale.

Here's how to build that structure intentionally.

The Story Arc That Drives Storytelling for Solopreneurs

Every piece of content that converts — whether it's a social media post, an email, or a blog post — follows a recognizable arc. Understanding this arc is what separates content that gets engagement from content that drives action.

The hook is where everything starts, and it has one job: stopping your ideal client mid-scroll and creating enough curiosity or recognition that she has to keep reading. The most effective hooks for solopreneurs aren't clever or dramatic — they're specific. A hook that describes a situation your ideal client is currently in, in language she would use to describe it herself, creates an immediate "this is for me" response that no amount of design or polish can replicate.

The problem deepens the hook by naming what's actually happening beneath the surface. This isn't a surface-level symptom like "you're not getting enough clients." It's the internal experience of that problem — the second-guessing, the frustration of doing all the right things and still not seeing results, the quiet fear that something fundamental isn't working. When your story names that internal experience accurately, your ideal client doesn't just feel understood. She feels seen.

The symptoms extend that recognition by walking through the specific, identifiable signs that the problem is present. This is an underused part of the story arc and one of the most powerful. When you can describe the specific ways your ideal client's problem is showing up in her daily business life — the patterns she's noticed, the decisions she keeps making, the cycle she can't seem to break — she stops wondering whether your content applies to her and starts wondering how you knew.

The call to action closes the arc by giving her a clear, specific next step. The most effective calls to action in storytelling for solopreneurs feel like a natural conclusion to the story rather than an interruption of it. She's been guided through recognition, resonance, and understanding — and now the invitation to go further feels earned rather than pushy.

Why Audience Understanding Is the Foundation of Effective Storytelling

You can know the story arc perfectly and still produce content that doesn't land if you're building the story around assumptions about your audience rather than genuine understanding of their experience.

The most important investment you can make in your storytelling strategy is understanding three things with precision: who your ideal client is at this specific moment in her business journey, what challenges are most pressing for her right now, and what she actually wants — not the surface-level goal but the deeper desire underneath it.

That last piece is where most solopreneurs stop short. Your ideal client doesn't just want more clients. She wants the feeling of opening her laptop on a Monday morning and knowing exactly where her next sale is coming from. She doesn't just want consistent revenue. She wants the peace of mind that comes from understanding her business well enough to trust her own decisions. When your stories speak to that deeper layer of desire, something shifts in how your content lands. It stops feeling like information and starts feeling like recognition.

Practical ways to develop this understanding include paying close attention to the language your existing clients and inquiries use when they describe their situation, noting the specific words and phrases that come up repeatedly, and using that exact language in your stories rather than translating it into polished marketing copy. The closer your content is to the words your ideal client uses to describe her own experience, the more magnetic your storytelling becomes.

The Role of Timing and Authenticity in Storytelling for Solopreneurs

Even a perfectly structured story built around genuine audience understanding can fall flat if the timing is wrong. And in the context of storytelling for solopreneurs, timing is really about the relationship stage.

Think about meeting someone new at a networking event. The conversation flows naturally, you find genuine common ground, and the connection feels real. Now imagine that at the first pause in conversation, they hand you a sales brochure and ask if you're ready to buy. The disconnect isn't about the offer — it's about the timing. The relationship wasn't ready for that step yet, and making the ask before the foundation was built doesn't just fail to convert. It erodes the trust that was starting to form.

The same dynamic plays out in content. Cold direct messaging, uninvited pitches to new followers, and conversion-focused content delivered before any relationship has been established all create the same jarring disconnect. They signal that you're more interested in making a sale than in genuinely understanding whether you can help.

Authentic storytelling for solopreneurs respects the relationship timeline. It invests in creating genuine connection and demonstrated understanding before making an ask — and when the ask does come, it feels like the logical next step in an ongoing conversation rather than an interruption.

Why Consistency Makes or Breaks Your Storytelling Strategy

The final and most underestimated element of effective storytelling for solopreneurs is consistency. Not posting frequency — consistency in message.

Your ideal client needs multiple meaningful touchpoints with your content before the trust required for a purchase decision is built. Research suggests it takes approximately seven exposures to your message and eleven meaningful interactions before that threshold is reached. This means that the story you tell today needs to reinforce the same core message as the story you told last week and the one you'll tell next week — because each touchpoint is building on the ones before it.

The most common place this breaks down is when solopreneurs chase the next trend, the next platform, or the next approach instead of staying committed to their core message long enough for it to compound. Each pivot resets the accumulation. Each new direction requires your audience to reorient before they can continue building trust.

A consistent messaging framework doesn't mean saying the same thing in exactly the same way every time. It means that no matter what format, platform, or topic you're addressing, the underlying message — who you help, what you understand about their experience, and why your approach is different — remains recognizable and reinforced. That consistency is what transforms individual pieces of content into a coherent brand narrative that your ideal client can follow, trust, and eventually act on.

Putting Storytelling for Solopreneurs Into Practice

Storytelling isn't a talent. It's a learnable, repeatable skill built on a clear structure, genuine audience understanding, authentic timing, and consistent execution.

The next time you sit down to create a piece of content, start with one question: what is my ideal client experiencing right now that this story speaks to? Build your hook from her reality, deepen it with the internal experience of her problem, extend it with the specific symptoms she recognizes in her own business, and close with an invitation that feels earned.

Do that consistently — across platforms, across formats, across time — and your content stops being something you push out and starts being something your ideal client actually looks for.

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Transcript for Episode 309. A Better Approach to Sales with Melanie Benson

Amy [00:00:02]:

Welcome back into the Motivated CEO podcast. Today we're talking with Melanie Benson about a topic that makes us all cringe, and that's the cold DM's we have all gotten them. And let's be honest, it's enough to make you want to stay off of certain platforms. I mean, I wasn't on LinkedIn, full disclosure, for the longest time because of the cold DM's that I kept getting. But there's a right way and a wrong way to approach networking, relationships, sales, business growth, all of the things. And today's guest, Melanie Benson, is going to shine light on this particular subject. So without further ado, Melanie, thank you so much for being here today.

Melanie Benson [00:00:45]:

Thanks, Amy. I loved how this all unfolded, too, because this is what happens when you start talking about the elephant in the room or the thing that nobody wants to really like put out there. And it gets contagious, it gets compelling, it gets really like there's some buzz around it. And yeah, let's unpack this a little bit, because I think there's a really amazing opportunity for our fellow entrepreneurs to lean into social media and do it in a way that's so authentic and so powerful and effective that they're like, why did I wait so long?

Amy [00:01:21]:

Exactly. But before we do that, tell us all the things about yourself. Who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

Melanie Benson [00:01:28]:

Thank you. I'm Melanie Benson. I am known as an authority amplifier. I work with experts who feel like a best kept secret, even though they're massively talented and oftentimes they've been over relying on referrals and non aligned marketing strategies that feel like so much work. I show them how to stand out in a crowded marker as a recognized authority by borrowing what I call million dollar visibility streams. And I've been in business since the year 2000. So I've been up, I've been down, I've been sideways. I've seen all the trends emerge.

Melanie Benson [00:02:06]:

I was in business before social media existed. That sounds so Og to say. And yeah, I really, I love what I'm doing today because it's in a culmination of a lot of things that I know work mindset, strategy, visibility and positioning.

Amy [00:02:25]:

So, so good. So let's talk about the elephant in the room. I saw when I was on LinkedIn one day you posted about the cold DM's. We've all gotten them. I get them all the time. And it just feels so icky, so sleazy, so spammy. All of the things. Yeah, people continue to do it and a lot of times it's turning people off of platforms so that we don't even want to leverage, exactly as you said, this valuable tool that could amplify our reach as business owners.

Melanie Benson [00:03:03]:

Yeah, well, that was an inspired, short video that I put out. And oftentimes I try to, in my content, talk about the thing that everybody's uncomfortable about but isn't necessarily getting hit straight on. And there's, there's two schools that thought, and I think what's happening is there has been a lot of training about leveraging the DM's, the direct messaging, just in case you're not familiar with that term, to start a conversation and engage your ideal clients to buy from you. And what I see is a lot of people took the part cold DM strategy and went rogue and started just cold pitching. And I want to be clear, that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about the cold pitches. There's no relationship, there's no context, there's no positioning, there's no nothing that has opened that door. And it just feels like an onslaught.

Melanie Benson [00:03:57]:

And I think a lot of us are starting to turn it into a fun little game, like, do we respond? Do we push back? Do we turn that into a sales conversation for ourselves? And everybody's kind of mystified about what to do. But one thing I know for sure, Amy, and I think this is how we ended up in this podcast episode, is a lot of people are just avoiding using social media and having any conversations in the DM's because they're so afraid to get lumped into that group of people that feel so cringey. Really, that's what it is. It feels cringy, it feels icky, me included. And one of the things that I think is worth looking at is there is a way to create a presence in your online experience where you're moving out of kind of shouting and trying to get attention and just like, see me, see me type stuff into creating content and a presence that positions your authority as an expert, as someone who has massive talent and great results that you can provide. And it opens conversations if you know how to structure your content properly. So I think we're both here to say you don't have to be a cringy, a pitchy DMR to get business from your social strategies. And I've been test driving some stuff for the last year.

Melanie Benson [00:05:21]:

What you were avoiding on LinkedIn, I was avoiding on Facebook for a few years and for a little bit different reasons. I found myself just feeling like it was just noisy, like there's just so much noise. I didn't really know what to say. I didn't feel like I had this clarity of a way to have a presence that made any sense to put effort into it. And then one day I took a training, and I took the training because I saw something this person was putting out. And I thought, huh, okay, hold on. I'm seeing a different approach here. I'm seeing a different way to go about using social media.

Melanie Benson [00:06:01]:

And these light bulbs start sparking, and I started to run some tests, and we can unpack however much of that you want to share today.

Amy [00:06:09]:

I absolutely love that you said, I started to run some tests because that is one of the most powerful things as a business owner that we can do. We test, we guess we revise or guess, you know, the whole scientific process. We're just gathering data to find out what works and what doesn't. But you're exactly right, too. You said, you know, we started to see, like, this rise of, okay, you have to have conversations in the DM's. That's where you're going to sell. You're going to sell in the DM's. And you're right.

Amy [00:06:39]:

People went rogue. They took that as, okay. Every single person that follows me, I'm just going to, like, send them the same pitch. I'm going to sell to them. But are those people actually selling? I want to know if people are actually getting conversions, because there is no way I would ever in a million years just be like, oh, sure, take my money.

Melanie [00:06:57]:

No.

Amy [00:06:57]:

It's like somebody proposing to you on the street. You know, you're just walking along and, hey, will you marry me? Like, what. What just happened? And it takes you just so off guard that you don't even know what hit you. But there's a better way we can approach this, and I would love for you to shed some light on how can we go about doing this in a way that is authentic, in a way that doesn't feel cringy.

Melanie [00:07:23]:

Yeah. I just have to share a little analogy about the different stages of the DM conversations, because as you're talking, what I'm seeing in my mind is the good old days. Maybe for some of our listeners, this is still part of your lifestyle. But I remember back in the day when I was not married, I was not in a relationship, and I was more frequent at a bar or out with friends. Right? And I. And to me, the cold pitch DM is the person who sees you across the room and says, ooh, attractive. They walk up, hand you a drink, and say, shall we leave this place? Right? Like, they're just, like, getting right to it. And most of us are going to be like, are you kidding? But it's that .01% conversion that keeps them in that game.

Melanie [00:08:15]:

Right? And that's what's happening with the cold pitches. The second stage is, you see somebody across the room, you're kind of having eye contact. The person comes over, and they say, hey, you know, some kind of silly thing, like, haven't seen you around here before, or, you know, they make up one of those silly quips that.

Amy [00:08:39]:

The pickup lines.

Melanie [00:08:40]:

Yeah, the pickup line. Thank you. It's been a long time. So.

Amy [00:08:43]:

Yes, no, I get it.

Melanie [00:08:45]:

And so maybe you're a little curious. You see where it goes for a minute, and that's what happens when you get too early into the DM conversation. There's something there. You're willing to have conversation, and then all of a sudden, you're just turned off, and you're like, ew. Because they're making this person in the bar says, hey, let's get out of here. And you're like, hold on. I'm here with my friends. Like, this is not really what's relevant and what I'm looking for.

Melanie [00:09:10]:

Okay, so there's a little bit of a warm up. Still the wrong direction. What I think is possible is somebody who maybe you've seen this person several times at the bar. You had regular connection. There's been some flirting. There's been some conversation. There's some chemistry. There's some good energy, and you are looking to have a relationship.

Melanie [00:09:33]:

And instead of saying, hey, let's get out of here, they say, can I see you again? Or they ask you some questions to find out what you really want and make the connection and then offer an invitation from there. So I think that that's the sweet spot. How do you create an environment where there's curiosity and some desire and some relevance, and you've asked enough questions. You've explored and built some credibility and trust so that by the time you make an invitation, there is a. You know, there's a better, more likely yes. And even still, some people are gonna go, whoa, hold on. Nope. Too soon.

Melanie [00:10:14]:

Right? And, like, you may have some noes, but the yeses are going to outweigh the nos at that point.

Amy [00:10:19]:

And that's really what sales is all about. It's about presenting an invitation when you feel it's appropriate and not doing it super early and turning that potential buyer, that could be a dream client off, we forget that people buy from people, that we're human at the end of the day. And I love how you, you walked us through that, that bar analogy because it's so relevant. It's absolutely 100% true. We need that time to get to know each other, to find out if it's a good fit both ways, because early on, we've all had clients that were not aligned, that we were, like, so desperate, you know, for somebody to buy from us that we're like, yeah, of course I can help you. I can help everybody. Right? But when we really take the time to build those relationships, to build that know, like, and trust, to build that relationship from the ground up, it's sustainable. And that creates those aligned partnerships, that creates those clients that have great wins and then turn into great referral sources because they had a wonderful outcome.

Melanie [00:11:26]:

Yeah, this is a good segue into a little bit of a test that I did. And I'm so glad you're embracing this idea of a test, because some people are not familiar with the idea that good marketers test everything. And I don't teach anything until I've tested it and tested it in a lot of different ways. And I just want to say, for the record, LinkedIn and Facebook and all the social media platforms, they operate pretty differently. So sometimes what works in one platform isn't necessarily translated to the other platform. It's really understanding three key things. Who's my audience, what do I want to be known for? And how can I communicate it in a way that's really compelling and relevant to my audience? Right? So that's the foundation to me of all good content, whether we're talking about a podcast or we're talking about social media or an email, anything that we're putting out, those are three fundamentals. Well, here's the test I did.

Melanie [00:12:21]:

So I started to see, all right, there's all these people that are just getting so many hand raises, they're getting all these people who are paying attention to what they're doing, they're saying, okay, like, I want to know, like, what you're doing off of social media. And to me, it was like a wasteland. Like, okay, I don't get it. So as I started to dial it in, what I realized is there's something that changes the game. Consistent, relevant content. So that's one, two is long form stories. So I'll unpack that minute and then three combined with hand raisers. Okay, so this is the short version.

Melanie [00:13:04]:

And what happens is people tend to lean on sharing links. They share content that is interesting, but it's not in the right format. And so it doesn't pull people in. It just like it's this noise. And if you're not pulling people in, and this goes all the way from the image you pick to this way you tell your story to what you invite them to do, there's a whole strategy in that. And I started to test this. And, I mean, again, I mentioned I've been in business since 2000. I got on Facebook right in the beginning.

Melanie [00:13:39]:

So what was that, like, 2006? Seven? I don't know. Whenever it started. So I have a lot of people that I don't have no idea who they are on Facebook anymore. And I started to run this test of doing this intermittent process, and I went deeper into the long form stories. All of a sudden, people were coming out of the woodwork that I have known forever and said, melanie, I'm interested, Melannie, how do I work with you? So now, I've not pitched them anything. There's no, like, I'm going straight to them. I'm not hounding the new followers and trying to get them to do something. These are people that have known me since the beginning of time.

Melanie [00:14:24]:

One of them even was a high school friend who found me through another peer of ours that's a speaking mentor and followed me on Facebook. And all of a sudden, I'm filling my masterclasses. I'm getting people who are not just willing to say yes, but willing to invest in high ticket and are sharing my stuff with their audience because the connection was there before I moved them into some kind of call to action. So the experiment paid off in that. And what I discovered is, it goes beyond just your content, Amy. It also goes to, who are you connected with? And it's not just your ideal clients that you need to be connected with. It's not just your grandma or your dog's Facebook account, right? Like, no. It's like, we have to be really strategic here.

Melanie [00:15:18]:

We need to really look at who do I want to see my content and engage with it and move them into action. So I've got former clients. I have people who I believe their synergy in what we do. I have other fellow peers like yourself. We've been connected on LinkedIn for a while now, and I have other influencers that I connect with. And what started happening was not only was I filling my programs with these people who'd known me forever, but peers were saying, oh, I didn't know that's what you were doing, Melanie. Oh, that thing that you talked about. Hey, that podcast that you shared, can you come share that topic on my platform? And instead of, like, feeling like I was doing all the heavy lifting and having to work at getting pitched or to pitching myself at other places, they were coming to me.

Melanie [00:16:10]:

And I think it's a direct result of consistently presenting one very clear message across multiple channels, repeatedly, and interspersing these different formats that people are going to respond to differently.

Amy [00:16:25]:

Yes, you spoke on consistency, and that's a part of what I think trips a lot of entrepreneurs up. We feel like we're being repetitive. We feel like the broken record. So we start chasing and pivoting and going after the shiny objects because we get bored. Let's face it, it's boring to say the same thing over and over and over, but in a noisy world, we need to be known for the one thing. We need to have people able to refer to us because it is clear what we do. You said you had that consistent message across all of your platforms. And something else you shared, too, was the fact that you were sharing these long form stories.

Amy [00:17:08]:

Let's dive into that a little bit more. What does that look like when you say you're sharing long form stories? What do you mean by that?

Melanie [00:17:15]:

Yeah, and you're welcome to go and kind of check it out on my, this is mostly on my Facebook profile that I see the most traction, which blows everybody's mind, right? Cause they're like, well, what about the business page? I'm like, I do that for brand consistency, but that's not necessarily where the hand raising comes from. So what it means to do long form story is it's almost like you have a story arc inside of the post, have like a catchy headline, and I freely use emojis on both LinkedIn and Facebook that moves into a identification of a problem or a desire that then highlights and unpacks that a little bit with signs or symptoms or results or something that kind of ends up in bullets and then a call to action or actually, sorry. Then a, hey, here's what was different or better and then the invitation of some kind. And I find that the invitation part is where people really kind of drop the ball. So they'll link it to their event, or they'll link it to the podcast, or they'll link it to their lead magnet or something. And really instead what you want to do, and this is something I learned from a friend of mine. So, full disclosure, I didn't come up with all this on my own. But you don't just link it to something.

Melanie [00:18:36]:

You say, hey, do you want more information? And you get people to engage with you. Now, the trick is to understand your audience, understand that buyer, to really go deeper into what do you want? Who do you want to attract and what action do you want them to take and to design stories that are so compelling that people are like, I want that. So one of my best performing was the story of me feeling invisible when I pivoted the brand of my business 1213 years ago. And so many people who'd known me forever were like, oh, my God, you felt invisible. I've known you forever. How would you ever feel that way? But really, everybody goes through periods of feeling invisible. Like everything they're doing isn't working. And they, when they feel seen in that way, like, oh, my gosh, it's not just me.

Melanie [00:19:35]:

They're more likely to keep reading and to pay attention and to go, oh, my God, you did all that. Like, you put something in place. Like your strategy, your authority strategy is actually producing those kind of results. Like, I want to learn. So we all have unique story arcs. And I got to say, you don't want to just emulate and copy what you see other people doing. You gotta deep dive into your ideal client, your message, your. The words that really are authentic and relevant to you and your clients.

Melanie [00:20:07]:

And that's where the magic comes live.

Amy [00:20:09]:

And I think that's where a lot of people don't want to do the work, because it's hard unpacking that it might cause us to confront parts of our past that we've suppressed for a while. But what this does is it's humanizing our brand. What you're telling us is absolutely brilliant because it is humanizing. It's allowing us to build those connections to make others feel seen, because they see themselves in us. They see that transformation that we provide. So it's really easing that burden of trying to put ourselves out there constantly, buy my thing, buy my thing. Buy my thing, buy my thing. To just being human, just being ourselves, just sharing the solution to the problem that they have.

Amy [00:21:00]:

I just absolutely love this process that you've developed. How long have you been using this process? When did you first develop this?

Melanie [00:21:10]:

Well, I would say I've always been a storyteller. I mean, I think that's one of the things that worked really well for me back in the early days of email marketing in 2004, 2005, when my business was super booming, the first time. I move people to action and email all the time with stories. Like one of my best stories was the story about the $19 hamburger. And I'm going to have to revive the story because it's been a while. But when I started to bring this same process back to social, I think it was like three years ago. But here's another layer to this. It only works if you have crystal clear focus on what you offer and what problem it solves or what outcome it delivers.

Melanie [00:21:59]:

And where I see a lot of my clients, maybe you see this too. I see a lot of people have a breakdown in creating the content is because they don't have that confidence and that full body alignment with what it is they're doing. And so they're wishy, they're like, it's like a little vague. It's kind of all over the place. So one of the ladies that went through my, I call it the accelerator because I'm accelerating people's authority in twelve weeks. And she was really, really smart, very talented, been in business a long time. But something had stopped working. And when I looked at her content, I was like, can you just paint your walls white more often? There's nothing that pops here.

Melanie [00:22:43]:

There's no clear, like, what I do and how I solve it. There was nothing that differentiated her from anyone else that did something similar. And so I put her through what I call my authority that converts my authority, content that converts workshop. It's the first step I do with people for a couple reasons and another one that I want to share in a minute. But what all of a sudden she started to see was, oh, I can't use language that's generic. I had to use a language that's unique to me or unique to my process or unique to my audience. And I have to build in compelling sound bites that pull the reader in and like, create these like, snappy moments because literally you have to stop the scroll. As you know, we do this with our podcast episodes, we do this with YouTube content, we do this with emails.

Melanie [00:23:39]:

We have to do this in every place that we produce a message. You had to get people's attention in a very attention deficit world. People's attention is being pulled in 100 different directions. And you don't have to get everybody's attention. Right, Amy? Like, we want the attention of our buyer, our potential client, the person who was, we're most suited to work with. So I dropped a nugget there a second ago in that there's another kind of payoff around this. I want to just take a pause and see if you want to follow up on that at all before I drop into that, because there's. There's a hidden benefit to doing this.

Amy [00:24:16]:

Well, no, I absolutely agree with everything you're saying, and it's that clarity piece that we're missing. We're missing that clarity. So taking the time to unpack that, to get into your messaging, to get into the mind of your ideal buyer. So they're going, yep, that's me. I need this. You're creating that desire. So let's go in and let's. Let's dive into part two.

Melanie [00:24:45]:

Yes, I had a client, very, very big name in his industry, very well known in his area, and he wanted to grow the reach of his work. He wanted to get into new markets. And he's like, I want to get on podcasts. And this was part of why he started to work with me is because not only did I specialize in helping people stand out online, but I also have a bit of a track record with podcast guesting. Right. And so he wanted to skip through a lot of steps because, like most people, it's like, let's just get to the ROI. I want to get to the bottom line. And he didn't want to kind of do some of the steps that I recommend.

Melanie [00:25:27]:

So he went right to a pr agent, and this was early on in our work together. And I had said, like, I really think we need to do x, y, and z first, one of which is you don't have a social media audience built up. So he spent $7,500 on this pr agency, and he got a couple of bookings, but that was it. And the feedback that kept coming from the high profile shows that he really should have been on was, I'm sorry, but you don't have a reach. I don't really get what you do. Because he had no brand messaging that was really congruent on the primary platform that I think he was really suited for, which is LinkedIn. So we worked on getting his LinkedIn built up and really using the strategy that I teach around authority content and being consistent and bringing that energy up. And then all of a sudden, he was getting podcast invitations left and right.

Melanie [00:26:24]:

I was like, yep, that's what happens. And I think what we don't understand is there is two exchanges that happen when you're in a podcast interview. Part of the exchange for the guest expert is you're getting visibility on a new platform to a new audience. But the other side of that equation, you and I both being podcast hosts of really popular shows, we know how valuable this is. The guest has to do their part and bring new listeners, too. They need to share it with their audience. They need to have reach in their own social media presence or their email presence, if that's their email community, if that's where they're active. And if you don't, can't contribute that into the conversation.

Melanie [00:27:07]:

Yes, you may have an amazing topic, and you may be a badass. Can I say that?

Amy [00:27:12]:

Is that okay?

Melanie [00:27:13]:

Absolutely. And you might have all the good stuff, but if you can't bring social reach, if you can't bring that, you can't demonstrate your authority in your social presence, then you're probably getting passed over at a minimum. You're not getting invitations. You're invisible. You're best kept secret. You're just in the background. And so having this presence, this building up this conversation through your content, building up your audience, I know it takes time, but that's okay. Invest in it.

Melanie [00:27:45]:

Do ten a week, 20 a week, something like that. But building that up gives you cachet and an asset that makes you highly bookable and in demand. I'm giving away so many of my best little secrets here.

Amy [00:27:59]:

I was gonna say, this is amazing. Oh, my gosh, definitely. And as a podcast host, you're absolutely right. We look at these things. When someone cold pitches me, I do my research. I'm looking in to see, okay, would it be mutually beneficial? Because there's a lot that goes into the back end of producing a show. It's not, hey, let's just hit record and see you by. No, like, there's a lot of money on the back end that's invested in having the right people edit, upload all of the things.

Amy [00:28:32]:

So I want to make sure the guests that I'm bringing on are going to provide my audience value. And the really cool thing about podcasting then, too, is now my audience is aware of you. So now we're amplifying your reach even more. So there's such a mutual benefit when it's done in the right way. So if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, my gosh, I need to start getting on podcast. There's a right way and a wrong way. Go back, listen to this episode again. Use the strategies that Melanie shared with you.

Amy [00:29:05]:

What she shared today is pure gold. Like she said, she's sharing the good stuff with you. But what does that do, Melian, that, like, makes you stand out as an authority now in our minds, because if we take what you taught us. If we implement it, we're going to move the needle, we're going to amplify our reach. We're going to be able to use social media in a way that feels good again, because now we're telling our stories, we're using that long form storytelling and really leveraging it to grow our businesses and grow our bottom line. This was incredible. I am so appreciative for you. How can we get into your world, learn more about you, all of the things, tell us all the details?

Melanie [00:29:52]:

Well, I absolutely love to connect with you as you're listening in on social media. So wherever your favorite social media platform is, you can reach out to me and I'm sure Amy's going to link those up. I loved sharing this resource that people ask me all the time, like, how did you put all the puzzle pieces together? How do you make all the pieces work? I'm doing the content strategy. I'm still not monetizing my visitors or Melannie. Like, how do you even start these conversations? And so I created what I call this framework. It's the million dollar visibility framework. There are seven key factors that when you put all seven of these things together, you're not only going to be able to attract more clients with your message and be a higher authority present in your industry, but you activate a lot of amazing opportunities that come to you because you're borrowing visibility streams from other influencers and it just shortens the whole path. So if you go to melaniebenson.com forward slash motivatedceo, easy to remember because you're listening right here to the podcast.

Melanie [00:30:52]:

You can download that and it's absolutely free. It's my gift to you. There's a little bit of follow up material that will come for you to help you really unpack the different key strategies in that, and I think you'll really find it massively, massively valuable.

Amy [00:31:08]:

So good. Thank you, Melanie, for taking time out of your busy schedule to share so much value with our listeners.

Melanie [00:31:15]:

Thank you for the invitation. And I'll just leave everybody with if they can't see you, they aren't going to hire you, and they see you because your message means something to them. It's relevant, it's impactful, and you have that message inside of you.

Amy [00:31:32]:

Mic drop right there. I love it. Thanks again. I appreciate you. And until next time, cheers to making the money you want so you can create the impact you desire.