I’ve got a bit of a truth bomb for you today… Not everybody likes you, and that’s awesome.

Okay, you’re probably sat there thinking, “What the hell is she talking about? How can she say not everybody likes me? How does she even know not everybody likes me? She doesn’t even know me!” Well, here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter who you are, how wonderful you are, how lovely you are, how talented you are, how phenomenal you are, there is not a single person in the world who is universally liked.

That’s actually a really good thing.

Why It’s A Good Thing Not Everyone Likes You…

If you stop and think about it for just a second, it’s perfectly okay that not everybody likes you, because you don’t like everybody. And, more specifically, you don’t want to work with just anybody, you want to work with a very specific type of person.

You might have sat down and written out a profile for your ideal client, or it might be that you subconsciously know what kind of people you like working with, and what kind of people you don’t. If you haven’t thought about this already I really recommend that you do.

[Tweet theme=”tweet-box-shadow”]Defining your #IdealClient, who you love working with, will really help your #marketing, #blogging, and #business. [/Tweet]

The better you understand the person you want to work with, the more effectively and efficiently you will attract that type of person. This is where the whole “not everybody likes you” thing comes in.

Authenticity And The Marmite Factor

I talk an awful lot about authenticity and the need to be authentic in your blogging, to really be yourself, and I get a lot of people saying to me, “Do I really want to be myself? Not everybody likes me!”

The answer is yes, you do want to be yourself, no, not everyone likes you, and that’s good!

The kind of people you want to work with are the people who really click with you, the kind of people who just ‘get’ you, who love you.

They love your style, your sense of humour, and the particular thing that you do in your niche that nobody else can do the way you do it.

If you weren’t you, you wouldn’t be able to do your thing, your way, and your ‘thing’ is what they love about you, it’s what they want from you.

The people who don’t love you, and don’t want that ‘thing’ from you are not the people who you want to work with.

So why would you want everybody to love you when you don’t want to work with everybody?

The thing about authenticity is if you’re being inauthentic in any way it is really obvious. It’s very easy to see through someone who is putting up a façade, even if it’s a professional façade and the reason they’re doing it is because they want to appear corporate, straight-laced, professional, and give the impression they’ll do everything exactly as you want it done.

That’s fine, that image works for some people, but what for entrepreneurs it’s a little different. When you run your own business, to a great extent you are your business.

If you’re doing any kind of content marketing: blogging, vlogging, even social media, trying to put on a ‘front’ is just not going to work. Nobody’s going to click with it, nobody’s going to mesh with it, nobody’s going to like it, because they will sense there isn’t a real person behind it. If, however, you are your fabulous self, people will get to know, like and trust the real you, and the people who really love you are going to absolutely adore you.

They are the people you want to attract to your business, so authenticity is the perfect way of attracting your ideal client. The reason it’s so awesome that not everybody likes you, is that it automatically filters out a massive number of people you really wouldn’t want to work with.

The people who aren’t going to click with you, the people who are going to find you annoying, the people who are going to think your Northern English accent is a bit weird, the people who are going to dislike the fact that you occasionally drop an F-bomb, the people who aren’t going to like your clothes and wonder, “Why the frigging hell is she doing wearing that? Like, really, she’s wearing that?” The people who think like this are not your people, they’re not the people you want to work with. Simply by being yourself, simply by allowing that natural process of people liking you or disliking you to happen, you automatically filter out a bucket load of people who you really don’t want to deal with.

This is what’s known as The Marmite Factor – people either love you or hate you; the ones that hate you never give you another thought, and the ones that love you can’t get enough of you.

Why Vlogging Is The Perfect Filter For Your Audience…

One brilliant example of this is when I started vlogging. I knew right off the bat that going from blogging to vlogging was going to be a bit of a transition, both for me and for my readers.

They are used to reading my words on the computer screen, their phones, or iPads. They weren’t used to seeing me, they weren’t used to hearing me, and they weren’t used to the kind of full-on personality that exists behind the words that they’d been reading.

Even though they’re your words, when they’re not spoken with your inflections, when they’re not given with your particular flair, it does come across as a bit flat, and it can be quite difficult to get a feel for the personality and the intention behind those words, which is why some people will occasionally misunderstand something you’ve said. You might have made a joke and they’ve taken it the wrong way, you might have said something seriously, they thought you were joking, and that this was in poor taste. The reason that happens is because without being able to see somebody’s facial expressions, without being able to hear the tone of their voice, and get a sense of how they’re saying something, it’s very easy to misinterpret it.

Which is why you will often find people being quite cautious when they write and blog, because the want to make sure that nothing they say is misinterpreted in the absence of the person behind the words.

It’s a lot easier to interpret the meaning behind what I’m saying and whether I’m joking or not when you can see me.

But the thing is, going from that distant, detached, just reading your words on a blog, to getting a full on, “Oh, crap, she actually does dress like that. Oh, my God, she really does talk like that!” is a lot to take in.

Let’s be honest, talking is not even remotely as polished and edited and pretty as my normal blogs would be.

I don’t have an auto-cue. I don’t record my Vlogs off a script, I have no script, I don’t even have notes. The most I ever do is write a brief list of my main points, for example, the Vlog I’m recording after this on is on Five Sites You Need To Be Guest Posting On, and so I have a written list of the five sites. That’s it, that’s all I have. The names of those sites to keep me on track.

This isn’t scripted in any way shape or form, this is just me talking the topic of the day. When I write, obviously I have a chance to draft and edit a post, go over it, tweak it, check it, make sure it’s as perfectly pristine as possible and really get my wording absolutely spot on. Now unless I want to sit around all day recording, re-recording, and re-re-recording every single thing I say, perfection is just not going to happen.

I do edit my videos. I do screw up. I have to go back and start again, repeat myself, and do various little bits a few times to get them right, but I’m not worried about it being word-perfect.

That’s because a vlog is very different to a blog.

That was the first thing that I knew was going to be a bit of adjustment for people.

The second thing is, let’s be honest, you’re getting to see me in all my insane glory, and not everybody’s going to like me.

They’re just not, and that’s fine, I don’t mind. It really doesn’t bother me, because the people who don’t like me can simply not watch me, and the people who do like me are going to like me all the more, because I’m really being myself and they’re actually getting to know me properly.

I anticipated getting a few comments off people when the vlog first went live, I was expecting it. Sure enough, the first week or two I had comments flooding in from people, and the majority of them were really positive, saying things like, “Oh, it’s so nice to see you on camera!” or “I’m so proud of you for doing this!” and “It’s so nice to be able to get to know you properly and see the person behind all these words.”

These are the sort of comments that I was hoping for, and I was really pleased to receive those comments, that positive feedback, so thank you to those of you who said it.

There were also a few…not negative comments, but certainly comments that were more along the lines of, “Well I’m not really sure about the way you’re doing that, maybe you should do it this way.” Or, “I didn’t really like what you said today, I don’t think you should talk about that.”

And that’s perfectly fine. Everybody is entitled to their opinion and everybody has a right to express that opinion. I have no issue whatsoever with people coming to me and saying, “Ooh, I think you’d do better if you did this way instead of that way.” Sometimes I’ll go, “Do you know what, you’re right. Thanks. Brilliant advice!” and other times I’ll be like, “That’s not really me.”

When that happens it’s a case of, I’m doing things my way, not because it’s ‘my way or the highway’, not because I’m right and everybody else is wrong, but just because there are certain things that work for me and certain things that don’t. I have a certain way of doing things, that’s my methodology. That’s my zone of genius. It’s what I do and it’s how I do it.

There are always going to be people who don’t like those elements of it, people that don’t like my method. And it’s totally fine. They are more than entitled to have that opinion, those thoughts and feelings, there’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m in no way offended by them.

The fact they’ve reacted like that is actually very helpful to both of us: I know they’re not my kind of client; they know I’m not the kind of writer they want to work with. For whatever reason, there’s something that’s not quite clicking between us.

The Bottom Line…

When you put yourself out there online, when you use content marketing, when you use any kind of branding that involves you as a person, even if it’s nothing more than a photograph of yourself, you start something. It doesn’t matter how big your content is, whether it’s a Tweet, a blog post, or a vlog, if it’s yours, if it’s something personal to you, and by personal I literally mean it’s your person doing it, so you’re saying it, it’s your photograph, it’s something you’ve written, that’s you in a sense. People are either going to love it, be kind of indifferent to it, or hate it.

The people you want are the people who love your stuff, like seriously love your stuff, cannot get enough of it, they are your ideal clients. They may not all be your ideal clients, but you’ve certainly narrowed down the pool from all the people who are looking at your stuff, reading you, and watching you, to just the people that really love your stuff. That’s a big chunk of people you don’t want to work who have been automatically filtered out. And they’ve been filtered out in a really polite way, in a really nice way, in a really positive way that doesn’t ever require you saying to someone, “I’m really sorry, but we’re not a good fit.”

You never have to have that really awkward conversation where you say, “I’m sorry, I can’t work with you because you’re just not right for me.”

It’s never a nice thing to have to explain to somebody that you can’t work with them. I will admit I’m guilty of always finding a less offensive way of saying it. This way you never have to have that conversation with people, you avoid any kind of friction where that is concerned, because they have already decided whether they like you or not. They’ve done that all on their own without any prompting from you. You’ve not had to make them fill in a questionnaire, apply for your services, or go through any kind of screening process or conversation, asking them annoying questions that they don’t want to answer, about the manner in which they work, and what it is they want from you.

They will get a sense of what they’re going to get from you just by reading your stuff, and watching your stuff, and if they don’t like it, they won’t ever ask to work with you in the first place.

Awesome.