There Are No Rules - The Hardest Part About Developing Platform (Who Are You Anyway?)

The Hardest Part About Developing Platform (Who Are You Anyway?)
Posted by Jane

The hardest part about developing a platform is deciding what you're all about. In business terms, it would be considered your unique selling proposition (USP).

Identifying this USP—or your reason for being!—involves deep self-knowledge, an understanding of what you want out of life, and how that interrelates with what other people need and enjoy.

It boils down to 3 questions:

What are you passionate about?
Who's your audience?
What are your strengths?

Think of it as a Venn diagram.

What are you passionate about?
What's the unique content, authentic experience, or remarkable work you would undertake even if you weren't paid for it? What motivates you to get up in the morning?

Who's your audience?
What are the needs of your audience? How do they want to be approached? What kinds of appeals are they most receptive to? Where can they be found?

What are your strengths?
When are you strongest in interacting and reaching and serving? What formats or mediums are a good fit for you—and match your passion? When is your content/service/product at its best? (Example of bad fit: Your passion for the cave dwelling Luddite movement combined with your Twitter marketing strength.)

What you're looking for is that moment of peak experience, when who you are and what you're passionate about and how it is expressed or manifested all comes together to create a compelling experience that your audience needs and loves.

Think about times when you've experienced peak performance, the times when you felt you were in your absolute element, better than anyone else in the world at what you were doing in that moment. You felt happy, fulfilled, relaxed, joyful. Some people call it "flow."

That's the seed of your platform.

Building Readership | General | Marketing & Self-Promotion

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 6:05:26 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [2] Trackback

Monday, July 06, 2009 5:15:29 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Thank you. I attempted a serious writing career in 2002 and was published for the first time in early 2003 with an article in GRIT. I had to abandon my writing for awhile for personal reasons. I have made the decision with my husband to start writing again. It's been so long and the doubts and lack of focus are so great. It reminds me of when I left my small town in PA to look for a job in California in '98 in an old car with very little money. At the end of the first driving day outside of Cincinatti, I opened the trunk of my car and looked at a suitcase, two garment bags and a duffel, thought about the enormity of what I was doing and wondered if I was crazy. That memory makes me smile when I think of my doubts now. Thanks for you words. They help so much.

Patti Stone

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 7:54:35 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Thanks for putting a broad subject into three easy steps.
Carol Silvis

Carol Silvis

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