Week One: So far I’m still breathing

Starting From Scratch

Just the though of trying to figure out what angle I wanted my personal brand to be narrowed down was extremely terrifying. Within only a few days, I’ve learned that it is not as hard as I thought it was. The exercise in class when we had to come up with five words,really made me think what I want to be known for and it created a nice ease to a direction I wanted to take myself. My five words were: curious/open-minded (the two go hand in hand), trustworthy, motivated, fearless, and energetic. This is what I want to stand for and I believe they are some of my strongest attributes.However, with the exercise, we also had to pick one word which describes what we want to work on. This take any thought at all, I immediately picked the word, “cultured.”

Right now, my love for the world is more wanderlust than a mission. I’ve never been out of the country and my first time is going to be to a resort in Mexico, which I’m extremely excited for, but the world I really have a passion for seeing are the small villages in Africa, or the slums of India, the forests of Russia, and more… generally places people do not want to normally visit. If I am going to create the best brand for myself, and my desires lie in the oceans, lands, and atmospheres of the Earth, I want to be trusted enough to know what I am talking about.

Everyone Has a Brand, Some On Purpose and Some By Default

Whether you realize it or not, you already have created a persona for yourself based on what you post online. Think about it, you have those friends on Facebook who always post clever statuses/pictures, and some who post more human relations stories -those people are associating themselves with a personality they want to be known by (even if it is subconsciously). If you know what you want people to know you by, flaunt it. Besides, always going with the default options for anything is boring. In the video above, Irish motivational speaker, Connor Cunneen, says, “Your behavior creates your brand. How you behave is what people say about you, and what people say about you is what your brand is.” Exactly.

Let’s think on a larger scale. Apple, is what most people associate with being innovative, the future, and edgy. I would think they are getting their brand across how they are intending. They come out with products so often, because they want to be the first and the ones that are breaking limits for technology. That’s their behavior that I’m picking up from them. An exercise Cunneen demonstrated, had the audience write three words they want people to say about them after they have interacted with them. I really enjoyed how he challenged them to keep that paper with them at all times, as a friendly reminder to stay faithful to their brand. He brought the personal brand to a whole new level by trying to get people to actually live the brand they want to be.

Pump Out the Right Content

Every site has a curator. The curator’s job is to decide what’s important enough to be shared with everyone. If you run your own social media accounts, you’re the curator. The key is to not over share. The more you share, the less of a focus you will have and people don’t like clutter of information they don’t care about. Think in terms of Facebook. We all have those friends that share every picture they laugh at, or every story they cry at, and in reality, we don’t want to see that all. I know when I see my news feed being conquered, I go to their profile and take them out of my news feed or un-friend them. Don’t be that guy.

RSS Will Murder My Brain

I’m not familiar with RSS, the only site with that format I know is Reddit. Even then, I try not to read some feeds because it’s too confusing, and all over the place. We had to set up an account for feedly.com which is what we are using to organize media we want to know. I don’t have much to say on this topic, because I’m overwhelmed with confusion… get back to me next week.