Kim Higdon: Logophile with a knack for marketing.

Melissa Balkon of Strong Design Studios asked me to help her refine her brand. We started meeting in person, once a week to just chat about things. What unfolded, was a nearly year-long project that entailed examining every single aspect of her business to define processes, workflow, sales funnels, financial analysis, and of course, her entire brand and the visual and verbal elements that this entailed.

The Goal:  

Strong Design Studios was looking to refine their processes and get a solidified vision of her brand down so she wasn’t tempted to constantly redesign her own webpage, as this was wasting time and was a signal of a larger problem. Melissa had a very strong idea of what her brand was, but needed someone to help her guide her through the process of fully understanding her market position and what she offered her clients that was different from everyone else.

The Process: 

Through guided discussion, I helped Melissa to explore the competitive landscape, her own personal reasons for starting her business, her personal and professional goals, ideal customer analysis, existing customer interviews, positioning statement exercises, and much much more. From these discussions, Melissa was given weekly “homework” assignments where she would research or create on her own time, and I would do the same should we be at a place where content or copywriting was needed, such as in the development of her tagline and final positioning statement verbiage.

Once the foundation was set for her brand, we were able to begin the marketing materials that would ultimately be the customer-facing portion of her brand, and needed as much attention as everything else had received. This process was infinitely smoother given the intimate knowledge we now had of her brand, goals, and customers.

The Big Idea: 

The underlying concept behind every part of Melissa’s brand was “craftsman bungalow home”. We came to this brand concept because her use of strong, but simple design aesthetic, her customers’ small businesses that often get wrapped up into their personal lives, and the warmth and comfort associated with being home. This style of home was also the first home ever built that had any sense of style, but was still affordable to the everyman, similar to Strong Design Studios’ offerings. This concept played through in everything from the design of the website, to the verbiage that lives on it, to the materials and customer interactions Melissa has on a regular basis.

The Good Stuff: 

So there you have it. If you’re interested in how English Moon can help refine your brand through messaging, get in touch with us!

Readability is one of those things that’s often misunderstood and thus, ignored. But it’s fundamental to getting your customers’ attention, and subsequently, their action. Whether it be a click, a sign up, or a dollar, readability will get you there, not just words or design alone (or even together, for that matter).

So what is readability? Readability is how easily text can be read and understood. 

The problem of readability comes up often in overly clever marketing campaigns. If your catchy headline is so laden with word play and pop culture references that it becomes unreadable to most of your audience, it doesn’t make it a good headline. No matter how clever it is.

So being aware of how readable your copy is, is the most crucial step. Beyond that, there are a few key points to keep in mind when assessing the readability of any text:

• Adding more words, doesn’t make your existing words any more readable. In fact, the more text you add, the less readable the rest of your copy becomes. Why? Because people want small nuggets of information that can be quickly digested. Bogging down your page with endless amounts of information just makes people want to read less of it. Which is why it’s important to understand the main points you want to get across, and succinctly discuss those and only those. If you have more you want to say, consider other avenues of communication such as on follow-up correspondance.
• You probably all remember from some class in high school that the average person reads at a 6th grade reading level. Coincidently, this is the level a newspaper is written at. To test your text for readability, I’d recommend using this tool: http://www.readability-score.com/. It’ll give you an average score (or grade level) based on a number of different measurements. Use this score wisely, as your audience may be or less advanced than your score, so adjust accordingly.
• Adjusting for readability is simple when you know what makes up your readability score. Scores are based on the complexity of your words and sentence structure. Lower reading levels require shorter sentences, and basic words. So if your audience is quite broad, with a variety of backgrounds, you’ll want to make sure your text uses simple sentence structure (one subject per sentence, lots of periods instead of colons, semicolons, commas), and plain language (words free of jargon or industry-specific terminology). If your text is very specific to one industry, your score may be higher due to the nature of the language you use, but that’s OK since jargon makes sense in this situation.

We’ve all done it. Chuckled at seemingly strange client feedback. Scratched our heads at the ridiculous requests we’ve received. Been bewildered as to why they brought in yet another writer/designer/developer/you name it to “help out”.

There’s no such thing as a bad client. Only a client that hasn’t had an opportunity to be a good one. And that’s your fault.

It’s easy to overlook the fact that we expect a lot from our clients and they may just not know how to be a good client. That’s why it’s an unspoken part of our jobs to teach them how. No, that doesn’t mean putting together a client bootcamp series. What it means is that it’s on your shoulders to communicate with them in a way that allows them the opportunity to be that great client, without expecting them to know how to right off the bat.

Keep in mind that buying and critiquing creative work is a learned skill, that even the most advanced may need a refresher course on. New tools and theories are created all the time, your process may have changed, or they may have different goals than in previous projects. Over communicating is never an issue when it comes to client work.

So just how do we go about communicating in a way that allows our clients to respond in a constructive manner? Here’s a few quick tips:

1. Give them options. 

Never leave a question open-ended. You’re the expert here, so you should have some idea how to fix the issue at hand, no matter what it may be.

For example:

“I noticed we have a page we mapped out in the site architecture that doesn’t seem to have any existing copy that I’m working from. Looks like it’ll need to be created. Do you need suggestions on a copywriter to hire or do you have one that you work with internally?”

By framing your question in this way, it tells the client that you have a solution to the problem, in the case that they don’t. If you had only asked who usually writes their copy, you send the message that they should already someone and may scramble to find someone on their team to throw together something for you to use. You also are sticking in the fact that this is something outside of your scope of work, which allows them to start understanding what exactly you do compared to others in the creative field. As clear as this may be to us, it’s not as clear to those outside our industry.

2. Give them explanations. 

I’ve seen it a thousand times. You hand off a few versions of a logo/headline/page design for the client to choose. But while you see the difference between them and understand your decisions for doing what you did, your client just sees one is blue and one is red. They like the color blue. They pick the blue one. You liked red better and don’t understand why they didn’t pick the one that was obviously superior.

Unless they’re designers themselves, they don’t know how to critique design. You need to tell them what to look at. Discuss the differences between the two and the benefits of each decision. Then remind them of how your design decisions align with the goals they set forth. Then, give them the criteria by which they should choose from.

Want to teach them how to be better clients even faster? Don’t give options. It’s a safety net. You worry that sending your work out into the void to get dissected an analyzed will hurt, so you offer multiple variations in an effort to thwart the blow. But really, if you really think about it, I’m sure there’s one you secretly hope the client will choose, right? Just send that one, along with explanations, and see how it goes. At least you’ll have the others in your back pocket to keep conversations going.

3. Tell them how to respond. 

Things you should never end an email with:

“Thoughts?”

“Let me know what you think!”

“:)”

All convey a lack of confidence. Plus, at this point, it’s no longer about what the client thinks. This is about goals and how your work is aligning with them. Thoughts and opinions should have been fleshed out in early stages of the project, during discovery. Any new thoughts or ideas must be handled in a way that doesn’t risk derailing the entire project.

You should be telling your clients exactly how to respond to what you’ve just proposed. Effective endings to email:

“This option best meets our goals for this reason: XYZ”

That’s it. If there’s points of contention, great, but at least you presented your opinion in a way that leaves no room for interpretation, opinion, or even discussion. If the goals have been met, what’s more to discuss?

Content and copywriting. Are these just a matter of semantics? No, not really. By definition, content is anything that you company creates with a marketing purpose. This can be videos, blog posts, white papers, email marketing, etc. They’re generally backed by a marketing strategy, or a desired action you’re hoping will take place, whether it’s a click, interaction, or lead capture to encourage further marketing communications. In contrast, copywriting is the writing that helps to accomplish these goals and inspire a desired action.  They’re the calls-to-action, the enticing language used to accomplish the goals set forth in your content. Together, this is a potent combination. However, without the pairing of these two, it’s like writing a novel to sell toilet paper. There’s content there, but is the writing doing what it should be? Probably not, unless the novel is particularly moving… if you catch my drift.

So who does content and who does copywriting?

Glad you asked. In the world of marketing, sadly, a lot of times these professions have been split apart. Content marketers decide what needs to be created and what the outcome should be, while copywriters fill in the blanks with wondrous words that will spark the desired action. This may work for some, but it doesn’t work for me. Splitting these two jobs only does one thing: create a disconnect. In order to fully understand who you’re writing for and how to get them to take a desired action, you have to really understand the product you’re packaging. Otherwise, you could end up doing a phenomenal job of expertly packaging complete and total crap. The same is true of the reverse. Great content strategy without great copywriting will simply fail to get your readers’ attention.

Good content strategy needs to work alongside good copywriting, and in my humble opinion, if you don’t have the ability to think through the content strategy, you can’t be a good copywriter and if you can’t articulate what your content needs to say, you’re  not going to go far in strategizing.

Strategic copywriting

This concept is one that I’ve been noodling on for a while. Content marketing has always been an interesting concept to me. Coming from the world of good ol’ copywriting, this profession seemed to appear out of no where and seemed to do things very similarly to copywriting, but gave it a spiffy new title. In an effort to understand both sides of the coin, I  read up extensively and attended meetups on the subject and even requested a definition from a self-proclaimed “content marketing expert”, only to get an unsatisfactory response. It seemed to be part design (“move this copy block over to the right so the reader knows there’s an action that can be taken.”), part writing (“this should say ‘our’ instead of ‘your’ to create a sense of family.”), and part marketing (“let’s add a call-to-action to action to this page so we can get them into a lead funnel.”)

So, with all these disparate professions coming together, did we really create a brand new position in most advertising agencies? Or are we just renaming what copywriters have always been doing? I vote the latter.

Throughout my career thus far, there’s never been a time where I didn’t consider every aspect of my written words when writing them. Where will they be placed? Who will be reading them? What action do we want them to take? What follow-up communications will they be expecting from us? How can we keep consistent messaging throughout the funnel? Yet, somehow, copywriting seems to have been dropped from the vocabulary of many a “content marketer”. These professions seem to have been split and these invaluable content marketers now have to rely on copywriters to create the foundation of their marketing strategy. Why? Because in a digital world, content is everything, so traditional marketing is being replaced by content marketing, and even in traditional marketing, copywriters were always needed.

So where does this put copywriters? In a really, really great spot. If they can add “strategy” to their list of credentials. Why? Because, sadly, quite often a content marketer can’t be a copywriter, but a copywriter can quite often be a content marketer. The difference? That oft sought after skill that everyone attempts to master, but few seldom do: the ability to write.

For me, it’s easier to think of content marketing as strategic copywriting. The idea that every word is crafted for a bigger purpose, and having a complete understanding of every aspect of said purpose. This is where good copywriters tend to shine as they have a very strategic, marketing-centered mind, even when writing something as small as a headline on a single website page. Being involved in the full marketing cycle, up to the creation of those tiny, customer-facing words, helps a copywriter go beyond just creating content and  delves into the world of strategy, solidifying their place in the organization. Because strategic copywriting involves the creation of your content along with the strategy behind it, it’s a much more powerful tool than content marketing or copywriting alone can provide. By thinking of copywriting in this way, it becomes quite clear how valuable this can be.

So flex those marketing muscles, you copywriters. You have a talent that’s difficult to learn and what very well might be an innate skill, making you more valuable than you probably know.

What say you? Do you have individuals at your organization who are able to do both? Will these two jobs always be split? Is there a reason they’re split? Is it demanding too much of someone to have both the knowledge of writing as well as the knowledge of marketing? Let’s discuss!

Take an inside look at what we do here at English Moon. BounceU is an indoor trampoline park that’s the birthday party destination and they needed a little assistance with some website copywriting.

The Goal:  

They were looking for a little clean up of their simple website copy that conveyed important messages about safety and cleanliness, without losing the fun, exciting vibe that their more than 50 locations are built upon!

The Process: 

For a smaller project such as this, you’d think we’d expedite our process, right? Definitely not the case! Even if we were only hired to write a headline, a deep understanding of the tone, style, and mood of the brand is always required to ensure everything we create is effective, works within existing brand frameworks, and gets the message across as intended. For this project, we had the client complete a questionnaire about the brand, keywords, current messaging, target market, and business goals. From here, we felt comfortable enough to move forward and help them with their copywriting needs.

The Big Idea: 

After getting a deep understanding of their brand, the voice behind it, and the direction they were looking to take their website, we were able to polish up their website to quickly convey their crucial information in a way that was easy-to-understand. Behind every word was a sense of wonder and excitement, much like seeing through a child’s eyes. And the copy reads in a way that captures that youthful spirit.

The Good Stuff: 

Chances are, you’re the only one handling your design process, right? It’s not like you pass along an empty InDesign file to your client and tell them to make it look pretty, so why do we rely on them to provide the content within the design? Sometimes, all it takes is a nudge to help them understand that a copywriter can be a huge help in the process, not just for you, but for them as well. Many clients may not even have thought of outsourcing writing about their company. For most people, they think they’re the only ones who can possibly understand their industry and their clients so no one else can communicate to them effectively. Arming yourself with knowledge, and a few copywriters you’d recommend, can help educate your clients and turn copywriting into just another part of your process, not the annoying thing that sometimes holds up website launches for weeks, months, and sometimes forever– causing your designs to crumble and die.

Stop letting your clients kill off your designs! Here are a few tips for keeping them healthy and thriving with wonderful content:

1. Get them on the phone with a copywriter!

This isn’t a sneakily placed “hire me” sign at all. What this means is that if you never have luck trying to convince a client to hire a copywriter, maybe they should be speaking to one directly who can better sell the process. I don’t claim to be  good at selling design, nor would I want to convince a client they need design work when I know they do… I just don’t have the background and confidence to tell them what they need. I will, however, always recommend someone to reach out to based on my suggestion that they could use a little help. Generally, I’ll frame it in how it will improve *my* work, the work they’re already convinced they need. They want their full money’s worth, right? So telling them they’ll get their best work from you if you have the help of design/copywriting is akin to saying you’ll need a pencil or a mouse. They just may happily oblige!

2. Work copywriting into your process itself.

Maybe you find yourself struggling with getting clients to accept the idea of hiring and managing another person, so why not build it into your offering? Many copywriters will welcome the lax nature of being a contractor for a design firm or agency and will often negotiate an hourly rate that you can easily mark up and bill just like you would any other hours you put into a project.

3. Set up timelines.

So your clients just isn’t interested in using a copywriter (and you’ve tried putting them in touch directly with a copywriter who can discuss the benefits of their services and they still won’t budge), now’s the time to start setting up client timelines. Just like you have deadlines you’re expected to follow, set up timelines for them to follow as well. Sound intimidating? Cut it out. Really, all you’re telling them is that you want to provide them with what they hired you for, and in order to do so, you’ll need to complete the project with solid content. If you don’t have it by a certain time, you’ll have to focus on servicing other clients in the meantime and will have to come back to this project in X weeks/months. The urgency this creates will either get your client’s butt into gear, or really light a spark under it and force them to consider a copywriter who can take this load of their plate. They hired a professional for their design work, so why wouldn’t they hire a professional for the writing as well?

4. Get better at copywriting.

That’s not to say you need to become a copywriter, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. Us copywriters don’t have any formal training on the subject. There. I said it. There’s no degree program (that I’m aware of) for copywriting. So how did we get to where we are today? By learning it ourselves. Reading up on it, doing it, critiquing it, getting critiqued and putting ourselves out there. None of that involved thousands of dollars and years of schooling, which means you can do it, too. Sure, it may not be your favorite thing in the world but that doesn’t mean you can’t study up on it and become proficient enough to help guide a client’s copy or even take a stab at writing some yourself. If nothing else, maybe you can use it as placeholder text while you’re waiting and your client may just love it! You never know until you try it. Start here.

Hopefully, armed with this information, content will no longer be the bane of your design’s existence and can become a welcomed addition to it.

I recently gave a talk at HOW Design Live on the subject of personal branding. What I noticed whenever I mentioned to someone what my topic was about, no one seemed too interested. In fact, one person I met in an elevator even had the gall to reply with, “oh… I don’t need personal branding. I have a job.” Thankfully, I left my filter at home and was able to respond with, “sounds like you need personal branding more than anyone.”

Why should you even care about your personal brand? If you’re a freelancer,  you already know why. But what if you’re working in-house or as a part of an agency, think you don’t have to worry about this stuff? Sure, you can ignore it and continue to plug away at your day job but what happens if it’s gone tomorrow? A strong sense of who you are, what makes you buy-able, or even hire-able, can hedge against uncertainty, and even the most secure jobs should be treated as uncertain.

So how would you define personal branding, Kim? Good question! 

People’s perception of you.

The same thing applies to companies. A company can tell you what to think of them over and over and over, but their own experiences and perceptions they form around the brand are what makes the brand. If I asked you to think of the brand, Dove, we’d probably all have a different experience with the brand, but this combined experience makes the company what it is. Just because it may not be exactly aligned with what the company is hoping you’ll think of doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, what we’re all thinking of is what they’re trying to forever understand and appeal to.

So how does this apply to ourselves, you ask? It’s important to understand that everything you do, say, share, think helps people to form this perception. Think back to high school, what were you known as? That was early personal branding. People took what they saw, heard, experienced and formed an opinion and you probably reaffirmed it, whether for good or bad. In our professional lives, and in today’s social world, your personal brand is sometimes your entire career. Which is why it’s important to understand how you can use the tools available to shape and mold it to meet your goals. While you’re not in control of this perception, you can influence it.

Understanding personal branding will result in a shift in your thinking and help you to become more aware of how you present yourself and what you can do to get the most out of what you’re probably already doing.

If you’re advising a company on their marketing or their design when it comes to their brand, you’re probably talking to them about things like their audience, their position in the market place, their content strategy, etc. They have products and services, they have strengths and weaknesses. Guess what? You have all these things, too. As much as we resist, if we want to do big things with ourselves, we have to start thinking of ourselves in the same vein.

We have a target audience. We have a position in the market place. We have content. We have products or services.

It’s hard to wrap your head around, but the beauty of personal branding, is you’re probably already doing a lot of things you should be, it’s just a matter of being more deliberate so you can achieve whatever it is you’re hoping to. Another perk? You’re human (I hope). You have the advantage of being a physical, easy to understand entity. Companies are fuzzy. They have buildings, departments, lots of people, websites, retail locations, experiences. They’re hard to wrap your head around. When they speak, who’s really speaking? How do I process their message? It’s tough. With you, you speak, and it’s just you speaking. You have something to share, and it’s coming from you. There’s no confusion here. Easy peasy.

That being said, everything you do, say, think, or share is advertising. It says something about you that helps people to form a perception to create your personal brand.

One of the most eye-opening tasks I was given in college was to write a paper on my outfit. I gawked at the thought. I was so punk rock. I thought I didn’t care what anyone thought when I got dressed in the morning. But then it dawned on me that that’s what I was hoping to advertise. That I was different. Unique. I had on clothes no one else was wearing because I took a ton of effort to find the clothes most people weren’t wearing. Thus, that’s the impression I wanted to give off because that’s how I wanted to be treated.

When it comes to figuring out this whole personal branding stuff, you may not even be listening anymore because the thought of “being famous” isn’t what you’re after. Good! You shouldn’t be. It’s not about being famous in a “celebrity” sense of the word. If that’s all this was about, I’d tell you all to go make sex tapes since it would be easier. This is about being famous in the sense of being known for something. So when someone is having a conversation and a service or passion you’ve vocalized loud, often, and in attractive ways comes up, you’re mentioned. That kind of famous. And it can happen.

In a connected world, we’re giving off impressions constantly. . Not only do you have the concept of “7 times before a message sinks in” but that’s outdated, but you have an un-captive audience.

Which leads us to developing your personal brand. The first step of which is to find your strength in the market, like in a company brand, and do something with it. For you, your position or core competency, the thing that makes you worth buying from/hiring/loving/whatever your goals are. To find yours, you need to dig deep and figure out what it is about you that makes you so awesome. If you just want to be known as a “designer”, good luck. I know lots of you folks, but I only recommend  some of you folks. Why? Because someof you stand out more than others. I’m sure your designs are all great, but I can’t remember you from one another. Usually, this distinguishing factor isn’t in your designs, though it can be, but it’s something quirky or unique about you wrapped into your design. So ask yourself: What could you see yourself doing every day for the next 5 years?

It’s a scary thought. You don’t want to limit yourself because we crave change and excitement and new challenges, but appealing to everyone means you’re appealing to no one. These constraints do the opposite of pigeonholing us. Constraints actually encourage creativity and understanding because it allows people to easily know how to categorize you in their minds. If you just said you’re a designer, you’re going in the designer bucket along with everyone else. So get specific. Dig deep. Challenge yourself. What is it that you do better than anyone else? Or what can you offer that no one else can?Thankfully, 5 years isn’t forever. It’s just long enough to show you’re committed but not so long that there’s no hope if you want to shift directions.

Should you worry if you’ll make money at it? Sure, it’s only natural. But I’m a firm believer that if you’re good enough at something and passionate enough about it, you’ll find a way to make money at it. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this thinking, plenty of people have written books on the subject.

Now it’s time to understand what your current perception is. The best way to go about doing this is to simply listen. How are you introduced on the phone? What do people refer to you as when talking about you? You can go about understanding your perception in any number of ways. Get creative. Have a blog? What types of articles get the most traffic? Which tweets get the most replies? There’s a ton of useful insight to be gleaned from what you’re already putting out there. Combine the various outlets and see if there are any patterns. If there are, you’ve found your current personal brand. If it seems random, haphazard and all over the place, you’ve found your lack of personal brand. Now, cross-check. How does this align with your previously identified positioning strategy? Is there tweaking to be done? Should tweaking be done? Sometimes uncovering some aspects of your personal brand can be enlightening, and even inspiring, so modify as needed but don’t be opposed to new ideas.

Think of this next step as your packaging. What makes you likeable? What is it about you that people are drawn to? You all have friends, I hope. What do they enjoy about you that they want to be around? This can be anything. You don’t have to have a flamboyant, over-the-top personality to have a good character. You just have to know what your character is because once you know this, you can frame all of your content moving forward with this aspect of your personality. It’s the flavor!

So you have a rockin’ personal brand that’s perfectly aligned with your current perception and you fully understand your quirky character. Now what? It’s content time! The only way people will ever know you exist is if you produce and regularly disseminate content! Now, that doesn’t mean you need to become a book author overnight. Luckily, content now takes the form of 140-character status updates, short video clips, Facebook updates, etc.

So put together an idea of what types of content make sense for your brand. If you’re interested in being known for your amazing copywriting skills, video may not be the best avenue to showcase your talents, but articles, whitepapers, and workbooks might be. Luckily, there’s a simple little exercise you can work through in your head as you’re identifying your relevant content types, or even as you’re thinking of what to post on your social media profiles:

Simple. And luckily, you’re already running through this in your head, whether you think you are or not. It’s that little voice that’s telling,  ”you no one will think this is funny.” I hear it all the time. You’re assessing your audience and determining the content isn’t appealing to them and thus, won’t result in the intended action: laughter.

As much as it may seem like it, stellar personal brands don’t happen over night. The beauty of our own brands is that we can continuously tweak, test, learn, and start again. We don’t have to worry about ROI or impressing the boss. We have it easy. Understanding, developing, and seeing the results of our personal brands can be a constantly evolving thing and if we treat it as such, we can do great things with it.

Thanks once again to everyone that came out for my presentation on applying the principals of branding to yourself, also known as, personal branding. If you attended, these slides will make a lot of sense to you. If you missed it, they will be absolutely useless. Stay tuned for a lovely writeup on my topic which will explain what the heck I meant with these slides. But in the meantime, enjoy! And kudos to Strong Design Studios for designing these suckers!

Don’t forget, if you were at my presentation and didn’t get to pick up one of my free workbooks, just drop me a line and I’ll send you one.

The second installment of the personal branding series covers the difficult task of letting go of your, “but… I’m a unique individual who can’t possibly be boxed up and marketed!” mindset. It’s hard. Very hard. But if you want to be known for something, and thus, become successful at being known for that thing, you have to let it go, man. Anyone who you admire in your professional field has most likely done it, even if it’s not readily obvious (which means they’re *really* good at it). So now’s your turn.

Ok, now that you’re convinced, I’ll explain how to do it.

By now, you’re probably familiar with how companies work and how to package them up nicely in an easily sale-able package. They have people that work in them, a core competency (a specific factor that’s crucial to the way they do business), and they have a product or service that they offer. For example, Starbucks’ core competency is convenience and accessibility and their product is coffee. They want to make it so darn easy to get coffee from them that you can’t imagine getting it anywhere else, and they do unbelievably well at this.

Now, how to use these concepts for you. The “people” part is taken care of in this instance, so you’re left with figuring out your core competency and your product. I’ll make it simple:

Your passion is your core competency. Your content is your product.

Confused? It’s easy to think your output (your writing, designs, photography, etc.) is your product but it’s not. Most of the people who will be hiring or recommending you to hire, will be talking about something OTHER than your output. Think about the last time you recommended someone. Chances are, your recommendation went something like this, “you should talk to Jane Doe, she’s very reliable and her designs are unbelievably creative.” Jane Doe is known for being a reliable, creative designer. Notice the recommendation didn’t just say, “she’s a designer…”

If you keep this in mind, it becomes more clear how you should be packaging yourself for sale. Figure out your passion (the thing you could see yourself doing for years to come) and then wrap it in content (whether it’s facebook updates, Tumblr posts, blog posts, etc.). For Starbucks, their passion isn’t coffee, it’s accessibility. Which is why they’re able to expand their product offerings to food items, bottled water, etc. If they just wanted to provide you with coffee, they’d find themselves at a dead end, unable to expand and grow without huge shifts in how people thought about them.

Now that we’re on the same page with how to get in the right frame of mind to start tackling your brand, our next installment will discuss how in the world you go about learning what it is that you’re passionate about. Don’t worry, it seems like it should be obvious, but it’s often the hardest part of this process. To compare it to a business, this would be the part where they would need to determine their position in the market place. It’s scary, but you can do it.

Welcome to the first installment of a miniseries on personal branding leading up to my upcoming presentation at HOW Design Live in Boston! If you aren’t planning on attending my session, that’s cool, but you really shouldn’t miss it. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re probably just the audience for my talk, I promise.

Whether you’ll be there or not, this series will help you to understand the importance of personal branding (if you don’t already know), how to figure yours out, and what the heck to do with it. As the title of this post suggests, this installment will discuss why you’re probably already doing a great job of branding yourself, you just may need a little assistance in taking it a step further and doing something powerful with it.

Before we begin, take a second to open up a few tabs with your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr profiles wherever that lovely mug of yours appears. Seriously, do it.

Now, here’s where your own brilliance comes in. Take a look through your posts/updates/articles/etc. and find the ones that received the most interaction. This can be comments, likes, retweets, @ replies, and take a look at what exactly it was that received the most interaction from your audience. (Yes, you *do* have an audience on these websites even if you think they’re all just your friends.) Notice anything?

Chances are, you’ll start to see a pattern if you take the time to study it. The pattern will probably be that posts, updates, and tweets about certain topics will tend to garner more interaction than others. Why is that? Well, it’s because *that’s* your personal brand. Surprised? You should be! Chances are, no matter how futile your efforts to be known for something, your brand is what other people know you for! And they like it! And they want to interact with it! So give them more of it! Don’t worry about sounding annoying. Think about the people who’s updates you love to see? Are they because they update about everything in the entire world or because they talk about a topic you care about?

So spend some time looking through what gets the most interaction from people in your networks and DO MORE OF IT! So what if it turns out that your gardening posts are the most popular? All this means is that your friends/family/colleagues/random creepsters think you’re doing something interesting and want to know more about it. Sounds like a good problem to me.