Golding Group CEO Kyle Golding interviewed by Ann Brown for The Network Journal.
December 1st, 2016
Your lifestyle is your unique experience. And that experience is brandable. That’s what Amy Oestreicher found out. She has used her life experiences, good and bad, to inspire others. Today, Oestreicher is a PTSD peer-to-peer specialist, an artist, author, health advocate, as well as a TEDx speaker.
Like Oestreicher, many others can also brand their lifestyle. Here, Oestreicher gives the how-to–and why:
TNJ.com: Can you actually brand your lifestyle?
“Yes, you can brand anything that has substance to it (content that can be consumed or understood). Branding is simply explaining why someone should be interested in what you are presenting to them,” explains Kyle Golding of The Golding Group, a strategic growth services firm.
TNJ.com: How can you tell if your lifestyle is brand-able?
“You can research others doing the same or similar to what your lifestyle brand would/could be as a potential indicator, but you won’t know 100 percent what it is until you try it,” Golding points out.
TNJ.com: Why should you brand your lifestyle?
“Branding your lifestyle is creating potential influential or economic value from something you are already doing, have access to and are paying for. The benefit of documenting and sharing is completely value added, but only if the lifestyle is completely authentic to you. You must actually live this lifestyle. Sports, arts, travel, business or other topic that you legitimately are engaged in before creating a brand around it. You can try to fake it, but the public will figure you out eventually,” says Golding.
TNJ.com: Three steps on branding your lifestyle
1. Who are you? Who do you want to reach? “Define what your lifestyle is and why an audience would be attracted, who that audience is (and is not),” advises Golding.
2. How will you reach your audience? “Choose your platforms (Twitter, Instagram, website, etc.), your tactics (text, photos, video, etc.), and your ‘brand voice” (serious, sexy, funny, authoritarian, etc.),” offers Golding.
3. Reach out. “Start documenting, sharing and engaging your potential audience,” says Golding.
