Lilian Sue PR and Publicity Coach

What is your professional role?

As a PR coach and publicist, I'm dedicated to inspiring creative entrepreneurs to gain the confidence they need to learn how to launch successful PR campaigns. Through strategic coaching sessions, my in-depth PR course, workshops, and campaign services, I help clients push past limiting beliefs and mindset blocks, to gain clarity and perspective on what their goals are, how to incrementally build a strategy to help them achieve their goals and support their energy, mindset and self care.

What is your top personal value?

Authenticity is my top value in how I manage my business and how I've built my career. Every single day, I ask myself the question, how can I show up and add value to my audience, while being true to my own values and beliefs on how I want to work with people? The second question I ask myself is, have I done everything I can to show up and add value today? I share educational tips and tricks, bust myths and also share my own experience as an women of color with a chronic illness who happens to be an entrepreneur who pushed back against strict cultural tradition to live my best life, because it's important to me for people to know exactly who I am, why I do what I do, and how I understand where they are in business, and that's why I'm willing to fight for them.

What do you do when you aren't working?

I love reading, writing, traveling, cooking and baking. Currently, I'm self editing two different books, one is a nonfiction PR book, the other is the first of what I hope will be several adult contemporary romances. My plan is to take them both on separate press tours around the world and do speaking opportunities and workshops on public relations and publicity, to help promote the book. I find baking and cooking therapeutic, and I bake two types of Christmas cookies every holiday season to rave reviews from family and friends.

What is the number one goal you are trying to achieve in your professional life?

To make a positive impact on an international level, helping to empower women and creative entrepreneurs through education and personalized support to become the global industry leaders they're meant to be, by learning how to make public relations work

What is the definition of the word Brand?

Brand goes far beyond the logo, the tagline or the colors you use for your visual identity. Brand encompasses not only the visual side of how you want people to see you, but also the story that accompanies it and helps to build both recognition and trust.

What is brand awareness and why is it important to the brand story?

Brand awareness is all about sharing your story in ways you want to that reflect your values, your morals, and get you in front of the right audiences. When it comes to your brand story in the awareness stage: sharing what you do isn't enough. There are thousands of brands and entrepreneurs who do what you do, you're not unique.

What makes you unique is why you do what you do and how you do it, because you want people to learn how to trust you, you want to build that credibility, so show people who you are, why you do what you do and why they should care.

Which platforms must a brand have in their digital footprint?

When it comes to digital platforms, I believe that a website is a must because it acts as the central hub for audiences to learn more about your brand story, your recent projects and events, and it's one of the few owned media properties that a brand has control over regarding how they want to share their content and the type of content they want to share. An email newsletter is also key to developing loyal audiences of subscribers who are the first in line to stay up to date on new products, new services and receive the exclusive invites for events, giveaways etc.

When it comes to social media, I believe that the platforms brands should have as part of their digital footprint will depend on two things:

1) Are their target audiences present and active on the platforms?

2) Do they have the bandwidth, the time, the energy and resources to incorporate a new social media platform?

What one thing must you do on Social Media when telling a brand story?

Being successful on social media is about two things: consistency and diversity.

Consistency is about honoring your time and energy on how often you can A) post on the platforms and B) engage with your audiences on the platforms. Just because one brand is able to post multiple times a day doesn't mean you need to follow suit. Does it make sense for your brand to post multiple times a week?

Diversity is about diversifying your content. Audiences respond differently to different content. You may not get a response if all you're doing is post written tweets, or feed images. Diversify it with videos, live video, reels, quote images, polls, and more to really gauge audience engagement.

What is your favourite platform to tell a brand story and why?

On Instagram, I frequently talk about the reasons why I became PR coach and publicist. In recent months, I started sharing more about how I rebelled against cultural traditions, pushed back against a chronic illness and physical mobility limitations to run my business and that got one of the largest responses to date from my audience because they resonated with my story, and they understood why I always push for clients to honor their energy and their mindsets because it's what I do for myself.

What is a common mistake you see brands making in the brand awareness part of their story?

Too many brands focus on the selling part of their business, diving into the features of what their product does when that's not what audiences want to know. What you sell doesn't matter if audiences don't know who you are and why they should trust you. You have to answer those two questions first before diving into how your products and services can solve their problems.

Which brand gets the brand awareness part right?

Mealshare is a phenomenal social enterprise who has been dedicated to getting the awareness out about why and how they're partnering with restaurants to end youth hunger. On social media and their website, they share their brand story front and center on how their Buy One Get One formula with partner restaurants gets a meal to a youth in need every time a patron buys a Mealshare item.