Every morning, seven days a week, I do five miles in 29-32 minutes on my Exercycle. It’s not enough exercise. So this morning I enrolled in North Myrtle Beach’s Boot Camp I hope to be in the best shape of my life by next July 19 when I will be as old as Bruce Springsteen.
Then I read this advert for an online class on branding yourself. By the end of the class you and your art will become a brand. Nowhere does it ask for work samples. Actual talent might be an impediment to successfully branding yourself.
Yes I know that’s another word for marketing but it sounds so today. I can picture myself taking a cattle brand and doing my own tattoo as I’m my own brand.
Hell I am a brand, or was. Pia Savage, LLC. Has a nice ring to it. No depth but a great tone.
I became a bit caught up in revising and revising and throwing out entire books because as I learned more I liked my work less. Maybe I just wasn’t branding myself correctly. The Pia Savage part was working. My blog, well, it went through stages. In the past two years I haven’t been focusing on it.
I must find my brand, and have it visible and not in some private area where I would feel more comfortable. My energy needs to be publicly displayed for public consumption. I will no longer be a bloggerslashwriter but a compilation of chakras, chants, colors and cravings I won’t hesitate to shout out.
Instead of taking the time to perfect my product I should be branding my product. My product will be amazing. I will have the best pitches, stationary, email, resumes, handshake, vocal tone, web presence–surely that part must be the easiest. There’s only a blog or several, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter (if only I cared enough to remember my password) and by the time the class ends I’m sure there will be at least ten other social networks I will just have to join.
Product? In the number one blog on Technorati that I’m not going to link to I read you shouldn’t spend more than 20 minutes on a blog post. I’m betting that writing a novel has the same formula.
This sounds much less fearsome than North Myrtle Boot Camp. Or not.
The ending of this post blew me away. Perfect little story.
I really don’t like my post nor have I liked most of my posts recently or longer. In keeping with my new philosophy of branding myself I can safely say it’s just a minuscule part of the much larger brand
Yeah, it’s a little funny that the Vargas girl with the pseudonym on newspaper covers would need to brand.
The Vargas girl. Like that. But how many people know who Alberto Vargas was?
I’m impressed with you run. That whole branding thing drives me crazy. Especially when you read blogs by people my age, most of them who have done nothing in their whole life yet they know everything and need a brand? I think they maybe need to do something first.
Eh, I’m just a bitch.
You were the first and only real brand as a blog that I’ve ever really known well. Branding when it was real not something that you took classes for. lol
Branding drives me crazy when done by people of any age. I never thought of myself as a brand. Just liked the pinup
I like to write but that’s not enough anymore. Need a platform and what better platform than a known brand?
I do think you have a brand… just be careful when ironing, unless you want another one! 🙂
I dislike these so-called “rules” of blogging that some arbitrary individual gets to come up with. Why him? Why her? Why not me? Or you?
I’m a big believer in, “it’s your blog, do what you want.” Sure, that means I’ve lost readers because I didn’t follow their mile-long list of rules (and yes, I’ve seen some and have lost actual readers based on their lists), but I’d rather people read my blog because they like the content, not because I followed the rules.
I followed enough of those growing up: I’m way past the point of following those rules just to fit in with the “cool” crowd.
Actual talent might be an impediment to successfully branding yourself.
Best line I’ve read all day, week, maybe month.
Does web presence include being every third blog on BE? 🙂
Funny Sage 🙂
TC: I do agree about not following rules as I’ve been a rule breaker my whole life. Mostly unintentionally.
I might have not been clear. This is about life, not blogging–think Martha Stewart for an old school brand; Rachel Roy for now. The only brand I have to begin with is a blog and a pinup so…I’m going to brand my blog but…
Bone: Thanks and shut up! in a good way. You know how embarrassed I was by that. It just happened. All of life should be like that. No work just glory. unfortunately no money Forgot about it. Can see already this branding thing won’t work though I’m desperate so…..
My most disgusting experience with people’s concepts of branding happened when I was undercover for an expose about a direct marketing company that looked pretty damn much like a pyramid scheme (my friend ultimately wasn’t able to make the case for the story, which sucks because those fuckers were guilty). We were driving towards the turf, and passed a Korean Barbecue. One of them said
“Barbecue is the sort of word that I really wonder where it came from”
I was totally going to break out some facts at them, specifically that it came from the word barbacoa, which means “sacred fire pit” in the indigenous language of at least one Carribean tribe, until the other one said:
“Maybe they were being creative, bro”
This yuppie fuck actually assumed that the word “barbecue” was branding, because that’s how his salesman proto-brain came wired. It was the moment that I decided that I desperately needed to bring the company down. I… haven’t really followed up on that, unfortunately.