How to Build a Cult-Like Personal Brand on Social Media

The most valuable thing you could build on the internet is a cult-like personal brand. And there is nothing even close. If you make content, building a stronger personal brand should be your number one goal.

So, the million-dollar question really is this. Is there a repeatable blueprint for building a cult-like personal brand? And the answer that may surprise you is yes.

Now, I've studied hundreds of the top cultlike personal brands in the world. And it turns out there are a bunch of common patterns across all of them. So, in this video, I'm going to walk you through a four-step playbook for how to design your content strategy so that it builds a cult-like personal brand.

If you care about personal branding, this will be the most valuable video you ever watch. By the way, I'm Callaway. I have a million followers.

I've done a billion views, and content is all I do all day long. All right. Now, before we go through the four-step framework for how to adjust your content to build a cult-like personal brand, first we need to define what does cultlike actually mean?

Because the term cultlike is a bit mushy. It sounds cool, but in order to reverse engineer how to actually build one, we need a more objective definition for what cult-like behavior actually looks like. So, here's how we define it.

There are three main differences between a regular personal brand and a cult-like one. And these differences really are variations in behavior. Cult fans just behave differently than regular ones.

And that's why cultlike brands grow so fast and drive so much revenue. So, in order for us to actually build a cult-like audience, we first need to figure out what are the behaviors that a cult-like fan actually exhibits. So, then we can make content that drives those behaviors.

Now, for each of these differences, as I describe them, assume we have two fans in a room. They're twins, exact clones of each other. On one side, you've got a regular fan of a normal personal brand, and on the other side, you've got a cult fan of a cult-like personal brand.

So, let's break down those three behavior differences between the fans so that we can really understand what cultlike behavior actually looks like. Okay. Now, the first main difference is what I call some versus all.

And this refers to what percentage of your content does the fan watch and how aggressively do they pursue going to watch it. With a regular personal brand, a casual fan falls into the some category. And this means they watch some of what you put out.

I like to think of this type of content consumption as defensive. They're letting the content come to them. Now, with a cult fan and a cult-like personal brand, the consumption patterns are completely different because they are consuming all of your content.

You are appointment television for them. Saturdays at 11:00 a. m.

, they do not miss. They go on offense to seek your stuff out and are willing to go down a rabbit hole in order to find it. They know your inside jokes.

They watch every minute of what you say. You see the difference? Some versus all.

Cultlike brands have fans that watch and consume every single thing you do. And I like to think of this as a proxy for depth of fandom. Cultlike personal brands are just way deeper with their cult fans than regular personal brands are with theirs.

Because that's the first big behavior difference, some versus all. And I'm telling you, once we get through all three of these behavior differences, it will be like a light bulb moment for you in understanding what cultlike behavior actually looks like. All right.

Now, the second big behavior difference is watch versus share. And this really is the biggest reason for why cultlike personal brands seem to grow so fast and be everywhere compared to normal personal brands. With a regular personal brand, a casual fan will just watch the content.

They may give you a little bit of a longer leash when they're watching. They might hang on for an extra second to see what you have to say, but their primary action is to watch and then bounce. With a cult-like personal brand, a cult fan is actively looking for reasons to both watch and share your content with others.

They want to go on offense to help amplify you. They like you so much that they want to help you grow, spread your messages, and share the secret that you exist to others. And this share rate is the number one reason why cultlike personal brands seem to grow so much faster than regular ones.

If there was a K factor or a viral score potential of your personal brand growth, it would be because of this dynamic, the watch versus share. And this concept really applies to the breadth and reach potential of your personal brand. So the first concept we covered was depth.

This one is breadth. Okay, so that's the second big behavior difference. One group just watches, the other one watches and shares.

Okay, now the third big behavior difference between a regular fan and a cult fan is think versus buy. And this really is where the conversion and monetizability of your personal brand comes in. With a regular personal brand, a casual fan will see some piece of content, come across an offer or product that you're selling, and then think about whether or not that product or offer is for them.

In other words, they're thinking, not buying. And they're spending time thinking, not because they don't have the problem that your product or offer can solve, but because they aren't sure if they trust you enough that your solution will solve their problem. With a cult-like personal brand, a cult fan will typically just buy immediately.

And this is a result of them already having max trust in you and commitment to your ability to deliver value to them. In other words, they don't think, they just buy because they already trust you so much. So, think of this third piece.

this third behavior difference as the monetization potential of your personal brand. So now we've covered all three aspects. Some versus all, which is the depth potential, watch versus share, which is the breadth or reach potential, and think versus buy, which is the monetization potential.

Those are the three core behavior differences between a regular fan and a cult fan. So what does all this really mean, and how does it help us adjust our content strategy to build the cult-like personal brand that we want? What this really means is that in order to build a cult-like personal brand, the behavior of your viewers and what your content needs to drive is to create someone that consumes all of your stuff, watches, comments, and shares, and is willing to buy immediately anything that you sell.

Those are the variables or fan behavior attributes that we need to be true in order to convert a regular viewer into a cult-like fan. Now, if you want to build a cult-like personal brand, all you have to do is create that behavior change at scale for as many people as possible. Okay, so that was part one.

We wouldn't be able to do the content strategy until we were clear on what the behavior change needed to be. Now we know we need people that want to watch everything we make, share everything we make, and buy everything we make. And yeah, that sounds obvious, but understanding that is really important to the whole picture.

Okay, so now from here, the big question is this. Is there a way to engineer the content we make to drive that behavior change? Of course there is, or else I wouldn't be making this video.

There are four things you have to do to your content that when you do them will create this behavior transfer way more often. But before I go through that four-step framework, I just want to quickly define the difference between the two types of cult fandom and which one you're actually going for. Hearing this will make you feel less anxious, I promise.

There are two types of cult fandom. Peak fandom and category fandom. Peak fandom means you are a person's number one favorite creator or personal brand in the world.

Period. Across all categories, you are their number one. Think of someone like Drke or Taylor Swift or Steve Jobs.

There are people in the world that those people are their absolute number one favorites, bar none. Now, I know that Taylor Swift is a huge Callaway fan. So, Taylor, when you watch this video, just ignore this next part that I'm about to say.

But for everyone else that is not named Taylor Swift, you are not going for peak fandom. You're going for category fandom. Category fandom means that you're a person's favorite creator or personal brand in a specific category.

So, for example, I am a cult fan of Childish Gambino for music. I'm also a cult fan of David Senra for podcast. I'm also a cult fan of Tiger Woods for golf.

For you, if you're watching this and your name is not Taylor Swift, presumably you're building a business through content. So, all you need to do to build a cult-like personal brand is be number one in a category in the viewer's mind. And the reason category fandom works is because humans see the world in topic category buckets, almost like folders in their brain.

And they make room to be cult fans of different people in different categories. They can hold top fandom across all those buckets. So you're almost better off being first in a niche category than being third, fourth, or fifth in the overall ranking in someone's mind.

And this is because when people have specific pain points, they often go to the topic folder in their brain, remember who they think of as their favorite in that category, and then seek those people out proactively. So, if you want to build a cult-like personal brand that actually prints money for your business, all you have to do is be the top number one favorite person they think of in that specific category, and you win. So, let me just give you a specific example of this delineation in practice.

I'm going to use myself and my personal brand so it makes more sense. The space or category that I'm playing in is content strategy and content marketing specifically right now with video content. Short form video for social media, long- form video on YouTube.

That is all I do. It's a specific narrow slice on purpose. Because my only goal to try to build this cultlike personal brand fast is to become your number one favorite creator or personal brand for that category, video content.

Now, if I am your number one favorite creator or personal brand across every category, amazing. you're a true diehard fan, but there not going to be that many of you because when you open it up to peak fandom, I'm now competing with Tom Brady, Kendrick Lamar, Jennifer Anderson, there are just so many people that are excelling in all different types of domains. It's hard for me to top the rank of that leaderboard in your mind.

But when it comes to my category, video content, content strategy, social media, I'm trying to be the number one most valuable or most helpful person that you think of immediately. And the more people that have me, Callaway, as the number one person they think of for this video content problem set, the bigger and deeper my cult personal brand will be. And why does it become more cultlike?

Because when I'm number one in that category, people will seek out my stuff, watch all of it, share it with their friends, and buy anything that I sell. And those are the three behaviors we needed to drive to create cultlike fans. Okay, so hopefully all that made sense.

We're not going for peak fandom. We're going for category fandom. And it's an important distinction to make because if you can define your category more clearly, it becomes easier for people to know which folder to put you in.

This is why personal branding around a word or a topic is so valuable. Okay, so let's just recap where we've been so far before I go through the four-step framework for how to actually shift your content to make all this work. So far, we've covered two main things.

First, we broke down what a cult-like personal brand actually means. What is cultlike behavior and the three differences between regular viewers and cultlike ones? Then we talked about the difference between peak fandom and category fandom and why what you're going for if you're a business owner trying to build a business online is category fandom which makes it easier as long as you define your category.

Okay. So now the third piece and probably the one you wanted most are the four tactical shifts that you can make to your content and to your content strategy to help facilitate those behaviors. In other words, how do I make my content in a way that more people become cult fans quicker?

There are four components. direction, comprehension, effectiveness, and the X factor. Now, let me break down each of those specifically, tactically, and how you can engineer them into your content.

Again, remember, all we need to do is make content that drives these three behaviors. A, the viewer proactively seeks out our videos to consume all of them. B, the viewer actively wants to share all of them.

And C, the viewer trusts us enough to be able to insta buy anything that we sell. Okay, here we go. The first content ingredient or content shift is direction.

And when I say direction, what it maps to is the topics, insights, takes, opinions, lessons, learnings. It's the meat of the content. It's what you're making content about.

And I start here because direction really is the core of everything. In order to build category fandom in a specific category, you need to talk about topics that are of value to people in that category. It sounds simple, but what does of value actually mean?

Of value means useful. the topics, thoughts, takes, lessons, tips, they have to actually be useful to the people who have problems in that category. For example, if you're trying to build a cult-like personal brand in e-commerce, are the topics you're talking about and your takes, opinions, or lessons actually useful to people that have pain points in e-commerce?

The more useful the information is that you share, the more cult-like your personal brand will become. Now, let's go a step further. What does useful actually mean?

Useful means tactical walkway utility that is nonobvious to the viewer. Are you sharing something they hadn't known or heard before that they can immediately apply to their life or business to solve a painoint? These could be tactical tips, but they could also be emotional frames or mental constructs.

There's a lot of things that fit into the category of tactically useful. But now, when you're assessing direction and how to fix your content strategy, this really is the question. If you share a 100 pieces of content, what percentage of the hundred fall into this bucket?

Onarget, non-obvious, tactically implementable, and useful. The higher this hit rate and the more often you post, the more people that are going to a seek out your content and b trust that you know what you're talking about when it comes to solving pain points in that category. And it makes sense, right?

If I'm an elephant in the desert and I'm super thirsty and I go to a watering hole and that watering hole has had water there nine times before, well then I'm going to be pretty confident that the 10th time it's going to have water and so I'll feel good about going back to it again. But if I go to that watering hole three times and only once it had water, well then I'm not going to be as confident. I'm going to be hesitant to go check it out.

It's the same thing with content and personal branding. The more often you give somebody value that is non-obvious and useful, the more often they will associate you as the person that can solve their problems. So the first component of how you're going to shift your content strategy is that you're going to increase the ontarget hit rate of topic and direction in the content you make a higher percentage.

I call this value density. You want the quantity of the value content you make to be higher. How valuable or useful is everything you make and how often can you make things?

That's all that matters. The more often you do this, the faster you will build a habit in the viewer's mind that they can trust you are a person of value and the quicker you will build that cult fandom. All right.

Now, the second component of how to shift your content to build a cult-like personal brand is comprehension. And what I mean by comprehension is the degree to which your messaging actually sticks in the viewer's mind. Are they actually understanding what you're saying, or are they just a glazed over water sack staring at the screen?

It's kind of ridiculous to even say this, but most people are watching content and not actually absorbing what is being said. They're not understanding the words. Air is being blown through the speakers, hitting their ears and face, but nothing is happening in their brain to process the meaning of the words.

And when this happens, you can be on target, directionally useful, valuable as much as you want. But if nothing sticks, it's just coming in one ear and out the other. So component number two in how to adjust your content to increase this cultlike personal brand stickiness is to adjust the way you say things so that the comprehension goes up.

And the way you do this is by improving how you frame your points. I talk about this concept specifically a lot in many of my other videos because it's so critical. But in short, the way to improve your comprehension, shorter words, simpler sentences, clearer examples.

You basically want to dumb down your points into the simplest possible form so that the most people can absorb them at the highest rate. For example, if I asked you to eat a chicken breast, would you eat more if I handed you the entire chicken breast with a spoon altogether, or if I cut it up into bite-sized chunks and fed them to you one at a time? Of course, the bite-sized approach is always going to be easier to eat more and absorb.

So, with content, you need to figure out how to deliver your messaging into smaller chunks that you can give to somebody in a bite-sized way so they absorb more of it. This is a critical second piece. The more people can actually absorb and understand what you're saying, the more they're going to like you because they can start to apply that value in their life.

Okay, so so far we've covered two of the four components for how to change your content or improve your content strategy so that you can drive more of the behavior change from regular viewers into cult fans. The third component is effectiveness. And the good news is this one is pretty simple.

At this point, the viewer has now watched all of your content and absorbed all of it at a high rate. Great. Point one and two solved.

Now the question is, how effective was the tip or lesson that you actually shared? Whatever it is you told them or gave them, are they able to implement it and actually unlock the value or improvement that you promised? For example, let's say you're trying to build a cult-like personal brand as an accountant.

You want to be thought of as the number one accountant personal brand for small business owners. So, you make content to give useful tips to CEOs about how they can change their bookkeeping to increase tax savings. And you say it in a clear, simple way they understand with great examples.

Awesome. Now, when they go to apply the tips or lessons that you shared, are they effectively able to save money on their taxes or not? Because if yes, this will build a reinforcing loop in their mind that you are someone that gives them value to solve problems in that category.

And that's what we want. Remember, all we need to do to build cult fans. It's really simple.

Three behaviors. A, they proactively seek out all your content. B, they want to share your content with others.

And C, they trust you enough to insta buy anything you sell. If the things you tell them to do actually do work, they're going to watch everything you put out. They're going to share it with all of their colleagues and friends, and they're going to insta buy anything you sell that promises a bigger result.

So effectiveness is a critical piece in this equation. The things you say have to actually work to help them solve their pain points. And when I'm talking about this, it can seem like I'm only talking to educational style creators.

This applies to everything. If you're a musician and the product is the music and the promise is how it will make them feel, does it actually make them feel the way they want or not? Right?

That's the equivalent to a non-educational business focused content example. Okay. Now, the fourth and last content shift is what is going to get a lot of you nodding your head.

And this is probably what you thought of or what you envisioned when I said cultlike personal brand. So far, we've covered direction, comprehension, and effectiveness. And a lot of this has to do with the topics you're talking about and how well the person can understand what you're saying and apply them in their own life.

If you make content just following those three things at a high volume consistently for a long time, you will win. Guaranteed. You will build a cult likelike personal brand over a decade, I promise you there's no way you'd lose.

But typically with the biggest cultlike personal brands, there's something else beyond the consistent value, the ease of understanding, the effectiveness of the implementation. There is some X factor. And that X factor is likability.

And this one is the mushiest and hardest to define objectively, but I'm going to try my best. Likability is one giant soup that contains things like personality, rz, juice, sauce, taste, quirks, humor, and visual aesthetics. It is the miscellaneous icing on top that makes you you.

Typically, people that have super strong cultlike personal brands, especially they grow them fast, have a high degree of likability to go along with the three things I already mentioned. They say useful stuff and people just like watching them. Now, as someone who is introverted, monotone, and by all accounts has a mild case of hand Tourette's, you would think that someone like me would have about as hard of a time establishing likability as anyone.

And hopefully, if you've watched the video this far and you're still watching, I've grown on you at least a little bit. So, how did I, despite all the headwinds I just mentioned, build some level of likability? I'll tell you, and hopefully this will serve as more of an objective formula for how you can take inputs and improve your likability.

There are three things that go into likability when it comes to content. If you want to increase yours and level up the X factor, try to do these three things. The first one is your look.

I don't care what anyone says. The visual packaging, the aesthetics, the way you look, the vibe visually, it matters. It 100% matters when it comes to building a cult-like personal brand.

And it matters not because I have a black background and golden lights. That's not what is the answer. It matters because I look different than what you would expect to see in this category.

And I look different in a positive way. And that difference is registering in the subconscious brain of the viewer. You don't know why you like this look, but you like it.

And the reason you like it is because it's different than what you typically see for this type of category. There's a reason that most traditional salespeople wear suits despite how uncomfortable they are. And the reason is because wearing a suit looks different than a schmuck in a hoodie selling something doortodoor.

The psychology holds the same. Now, I wouldn't wear a suit to sell cuz that's not my vibe. But the reason they're doing it in their category is because it looks different.

People's subconscious mind get intrigued by difference because it releases a small amount of curiositydriven dopamine. So, one way to increase that subconscious liability and pull more people towards you is to level up your look. Now, this is why it's mushy.

Look can mean a lot of different things. This what you're seeing is my interpretation of what a better look looks like that fits my vibe. Whatever your vibe is, invest in upgrading the quality and I guarantee likability will go up.

It could be your clothes, your background, the camera quality, the lighting, your posture. All of that fits into this one bucket, which is your look. Increasing the look will increase likability.

Now, I will say this, your look alone will not get you to a cult-like personal brand. And the other two aspects of likability that I'm about to go through matter more than look, but I started with look because it's one that you can visually see and it's easier to change overnight. Okay.

The second factor in how to increase likability is confidence. And what really is confidence? You can hear in my voice that I know what I'm talking about.

Not in a cocky way, but in a I'd hate to go against that guy because he really knows his way. And that confidence comes from the fact that I actually do know what I'm doing. When you have a stable level of consistent confidence, your aura and likability goes up.

It just draws people towards you because they trust you more. Now, to have this type of confidence, you can either be a con artist or actually know what you're talking about. I recommend the latter.

So, if you want your confidence to go up and improve that likability through confidence in your content, spend more time actually mastering the skill or the topics that you're talking about. You really shouldn't be building a personal brand around some topic unless you have a deep foundational knowledge set of that topic. So that makes it easy because when you've spent more hours than most people on it, it's easy to be confident because you do know what you're talking about.

Okay. Now, the last piece of liability is actually the most important of all. The first two, look and confidence, matter a ton, but this one actually matters the most.

And it is an authentic interest in the topic you're actually talking about. And this authenticity is like an invisible magnet that will just draw people to you. Now again, authenticity is a very mushy word.

What does that actually mean? What it means is that you act the same way alone that you do on camera and that you would in a group of people in public. So an authentic interest in the topic means that you would be spending time on this topic whether someone was watching or not.

For me, I am obsessed with business. I love storytelling. I love psychology.

I love explaining things to people. You can tell this is not an act. I actually like this.

My look, my vibe, my confidence, my delivery. This is who I am 247. It's not a character.

It's actually me. And when you're able to fully surrender into an unapologetic version of how you actually are, whether the lights are on or off, it makes it way easier to signal that you have an authentic interest in the topic, and it will draw people to you. So, those are the three ways you can increase likability as an X factor.

And again, these are a little bit less objective. I try my best to like break things down into variables that you can actually change. So, those are the three things I would try to change to increase my likability.

My look, which you can change quickly. my confidence, which only comes from a long time of proof, and then my authentic interest in the topic, which hopefully you already have. Now, to zoom back all the way out, over the last 10 minutes, we just covered the four content shifts, the ways you want to change your content strategy to drive more cultlike fans.

And the reason those four things, direction, comprehension, effectiveness, and likability, help drive more cultlike fans, is because when you do those things, people want to watch your content more, share your content more, and want to buy from you more. you're exuding more value that they actually understand, that they can implement, and that they enjoyed watching. When you do those four things, people will gravitate towards you.

They will become cult fans. If you can do that at scale, you build a cult-like personal brand. Now, this is important.

If I were to make a pie chart of those four factors, it would look something like this. Direction is 30%. Comprehension is 40%.

If they don't actually understand what you're saying, the direction doesn't actually matter. Effectiveness is 20%, and likability is 10%, the icing on top. All you have to do is make content that satisfies those four things as I've explained them consistently at a high volume for a couple years and you will build a number one category cultlike personal brand in whatever category you want.

Just follow this formula, this playbook, and it'll work. It's very simple, but it's a lot of hard work executed consistently over time. And if you study all the great personal brands, this is the exact same thing they did as well.

All right, guys. That's all I've got for this video. As a recap, we covered a ton of ground in this one.

I hope it was clear. I try my best to take things that are abstract and break them down into variables that you can actually execute. So, please leave a comment and let me know if this was clear or if you didn't really like it.

This is a summary of the video, three main sections. First, we broke down the core behavior differences between a regular personal brand and a cult-like one. And as a reminder, those three differences were A, cult fans will seek out all your content to watch it.

B, cult fans will actively share all your content with others. And C, cult fans trust you more and will insta buy anything you sell. So mapping out those behaviors was super helpful to figure out what types of content we needed to make to drive those behaviors to get people to become cult fans.

Second, we quickly explained the difference between peak fandom and category fandom. And if you're watching this and you're a business owner, how you're pretty much going for category fandom makes it way easier. Except you, Taylor, keep going for peak fandom.

Third, I walked through that four-step framework for how to actually shift your content and content strategy so you can build more of that cult-like behavior faster and grow yourself into a cult-like personal brand. And those four components, of course, were direction, comprehension, effectiveness, and likability, the X factor. The truth is, all you have to do is make content across those four attributes at a high volume consistently for a long time.

And in 12 to 24 months, you should have a cult-like personal brand in any category. It really is that simple. It just takes a lot of consistent work.

And as always guys, if you're a business owner and you're trying to improve your content, you want to grow your business faster, you know content is the way to do it, that's why I made this channel. So make sure to subscribe. And also, if you're not already a member of Wavy World, it's my free community for entrepreneurs.

You should be. There's 27,000 people in there. We've got trainings, playbooks, lessons, tips, all sorts of stuff.

People are in there helping each other, doing content reviews. It's free. There's really no reason you shouldn't be in there unless you don't want to grow faster.

So I've got an invite link for you below if you want to join. That's Wavy World. And until the next video, we will see you guys then.