personal branding

photo credit: Adam Foster | Codefor

Fashion, my dears is not just about wearing clothes. It’s a whole lot more.

Everyday you get dressed you are affecting how well you get stuff done in the world, what you are saying about yourself, and showing others how much of a truly interesting person you are. Let me explain:

1) The Function of The Fabric
Of course clothing first has it’s function: Swimming suits for swimming, windbreakers for keeping out the chill, and hats to keep the sun out of your face on a bright day. Since the human animal gave up most of it’s protective furriness a long time ago it needed to layer itself in the skins of the critters it hunted instead. Eons later we’re still gallivanting across the world doing a number of things in a number of climates and environments if not so much hunting. However it’s not all about covering our bits from the elements. The clothing we choose to wear day to day must not only protect us but also enhance our movements, activities, and even the roles we perform right? Ballerina’s don’t leap elegantly in jeans. Eskimo’s don’t hunt in their skivvies. Navy seals aren’t stealth in orange tulle.

Same goes for you whether you are a receptionist, stripper, or housewife. The first order of the day when you get dressed is – “will I be able to [chase after a two year old in these shoes?] [walk down to the file room in this skirt?] [grip that pole with this feather boa on?]“. Usually this is all automatic and subconscious, which brings me to the next point:

2) Communicating Your Message
Your clothing is talking about you. Are you doing a good job of putting words in it’s mouth? Or are you just letting your outfit babble on about you to everyone who lays eyes on you?

When you are a single girl and on the market you want to show some leg, a little (or a lot) of cleavage, and accentuate as much of your bodacious feminine bits as possible. You don’t dress in a suite and tie and you don’t wear a ring on your left hand. Why? Because it’s sooooo much easier to let your clothes speak for you instead of shouting out to the streets “ATTENTION MEN! I’M A HOT, SINGLE WOMAN! COME TALK TO ME!”. You also know that men are visual creatures and are looking for the female in her most feminine form.

Conversely when you return to the office the next morning your best professional bet is to tuck that man magnetizing cleavage away and lengthen that skirt for decidedly less leg. Otherwise instead of seriously discussing that business deal with you your male co-workers brains will be scrambled with sexy static as they stare at your halter top.

What you wear is going to say things about you even when you just want to stay mum and get your work done. So get the message right. Then you may ask: “What do I want my clothes to say about ME anyway?”. Well how awesome you are for a start, which leads us to the final point:

3) Expressing Yourself!
This is where you can leave the obsession to follow trends behind – You don’t have to keep up with the mad dash of who’s-wearing-what-now. Why not? Because YOU are your own person! YOU have your own style. I like to call it “signature style” since it’s how you stylishly leave your mark on the world. Sometimes people won’t remember your name, or what you said, but their vision of your style and charm will be emblazoned on their memory if you are genuinely dressing for yourself.

You get to be you and expressing that with fashion is genuinely fun and satisfying way to show the world. What this means is wearing your favorite colors, shapes, patterns, where you want and when you want in a stylish way. Cause you know your body and what makes it look great. It’s you showing off your sexy arms in tank tops while your best friend accentuates her long legs in shorts. Looking and feeling blithely fabulous in high heels when the IT shoe is ballet flats. Or vice versa! Whatever YOUR style happens to be.

So, what are you wearing today?
Why?
What does today’s outfit say about you?

Leave your fashionable comment!

Also feel free to follow me on Twitter (@365daygirl) for more fashion fun! :)

-Apryl keepin it really Real :)

So, this hot guy is Curtis. Curtis Mock, Guru in the Business of Fitness (Summer, bookmark his site! You’re hot personal trainer boyfriend could learn a LOT from this guy). I am using him, or rather the “brand” of him as an example of awesome social media “practice”. It is an art form and a science, one of which every business owner and professional today is wise to put into habit. Get that? TODAY. Not yesterday, like your good ole dad’s day of cold calling.

Apart from his rockstar “personal brand” Curtis is real and genuine about interacting with his audience, his fellow business colleagues, and I’m sure his clients. Do you notice how his authentic concern for YOUR success effortlessly comes through? You just want to eat this guy up don’t you? He’s informative, takes time to explain something, and he’s damn funny to watch and listen to. He shares his realness, his story, and his desire to help YOU be awesome. You WANT to leave a comment because he wants to read it! He wants you to share YOUR story. You WANT to ask him a question – cause you see him answer others questions. He is actually taking the time and interest to “interface” with you via the media at all our fingertips.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been on a blog and wanted to be part of the discussion, be heard and answered and then get nothin. Or even a youtube video. The “I don’t have time to respond” is not an excuse if you want to build a business or be a personality on the web. In fact it’s total bullshit. Social media is there to facilitate conversation and hopefully start the foundation of a relationship, be it friend or business partner (actually it’s usually both!). The beauty of it is you can use it to reach customers, business partners, and real friends, across miles and miles of land.

Curtis does not live anywhere near me, which could have been considered unfortunate a little while ago (and perhaps a little now since I can’t like pat his butt or anything physically flirty *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*). But thanks to the internet I get the pleasure of both receiving his awesomeness as well as sharing my own in the form of actual real communication. This is both because we are awesome at employing these tools and networks.

He is a perfect example of why it pays to jump into this whole social media ocean. In in we will either sink or swim. For those who have said there are not real connections to be made in this day and age, in business or personal, I say you are letting yourself sink. For the rest of us, we are happily learning how to dog paddle ;)

Exhibit A: amusing spam comment this very blog! Click on the photo for the full size.

Click play on the video below to “lemme esplain”:

Meanwhile in other social media adventures….
my facebook and unused @catthegirlguru twitter profile was gettin spammed by my auto news tweets. *sigh* I turned them sh*ts off for now… They were putting like stock quotes on my facebook…*sigh* that’s not very friendly.

I am really enjoying twitter now! Thanks in part to this chick and @silran666 aka “The Magical Mexican”. We are going to have a pow wow at her lovely little cookie shop next week! I’m so excited!

-Happy real life and web-ness!
Aprylcat

Numbers…data…numbers…letters…comments…posts…tags…spam…tweets…email…letters…numbers…Oh. My. God! There’s that fried brain feeling again :P

So I’ve been learning a ton about social media, personal branding, even tweeting! It’s fantastic! But…still a lot of work.

My flickr account has fallen by the wayside recently as I answer emails and make comments, upload my videos on youtube for 5 hours, record videos for my dragon boss and my “working projects”, and sleep.

And then today, I check my blog and lo and behold I’ve got 83 new comments! 90% of which are total gibberish. Into the trash with you! Perhaps there is a better spam filter out there but I don’t know where to find it. Recommendations?

It’s been AWESOME talking with REAL people on the web. Especially women on the web. Right here in town too! Such as Summer and Stacy and @Ghennipher and Tami. As well as getting questions about my 365daygirl adventures from real folks in interent biz.

Meanwhile the Magical Mexican and the Russian Photo Babe are still super fans and keep poking me to see if I am okay and still producing content for them to ingest ;) Love you guys!

I’m curious, how do ya’ll keep up with all this stuff? I’d love to hear your blogging/posting/tweeting/vlogging/facebooking strategies and how you keep it all in check with your real work!

-Aprylcat

Blogging about something actually interesting in the first challenge, day to day. I mean, if I treat this thing like twitter I could ramble on about just anything I do in way more than 140 characters.

However, I’d rather not bore every friend I have on the planet, real or virtual, with what I had for breakfast each day.

So, then it is a matter of choosing a topic of interest, and that, takes time to think about. Which then brings us to the second challenge: Time to produce.

Strangely in this Information Age of faster than light communication, the time it takes to produce something may still be about the same. Then there is the time to market the piece or the time it takes a person to find it, read, and THEN decide if they want to comment which also means some of us must take a moment to think up just want we want to say right?

*Phew* sometimes I am actually tempted to type about my cheerios…

Meanwhile, I am reading about Tigergate and how mr. Woods let his own personal brand go to utter crap. I feel almost superior to that guy in my newbie personal branding skills, even though I totally blow at golf.

I’ve been occasionally plagued by nightmares since I was a child. In fact, I can recall quite a few of them even today in my middle age. One in particular involved a giant, brightly lit pastry shop full of all manner of goodies that I was forced to choose from while suffering from not-so-surreal-stomach-pains. Upon waking I promptly puked all over the side of the bed.

This night however was strange in that I don’t actually remember the visual images that spawned the horde of nightmare spooked anxiety. It seemed more about how I felt in the world rather than watching some horrid dream about disease or violence blossom before my inner eyes. Specifically I how I feel in the winter wonderland that has just graced our doorways yards, and streets.

I feel simultaneously clutched by claustrophobia and lost and alone in the cold white vastness of the season.

This is not unlike how I sometimes feel about the web actually. The big, world wide, usually friendly, web. As I sit down and type out a piece of my story on a white background, I wonder how much of it will actually get heard, how much will just get swallowed up by the vastness, or how much will just get piled on top of all the rest of the content out there as millions of readers slide right over it unknowingly.

I really hate to add to that pile, what one of my internet guru friends calls the “echo chamber”. Millions of digitized voices all saying the same thing over and over, in blogs, videos, comments, etc. It’s this popularity contest that we as social media “personalities” both strive for and I think in our hearts probably abhore, if we are REAL anyway.

This preoccupation with getting large numbers on the web reminds me of one of the musings within the book The Little Prince :

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he like best?” “Does he collect butterflies?”. They ask: “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father make?” Only then do they think they know him.

But on days like this I almost fear that I am too small a blip on the screen…a very childish fear I am sure, but one I cannot help have while being so sensitive to the world, web and real.

Producing regular content is a lotta fun…and a nice challenge…and sometimes a GODDAMN PAIN IN THE ASS!

*deep breath* phew! okay. lemme esplain…
See, I love creating content. Producing content that you folks want to and/or enjoy seeing is a interesting and welcome challenge. Learnin a whole lotta good stuff here. What bugs me is the finishing, uploading, and maximizing part…all the crap I gotta do to make sure it all gets out there and loads and has got all the tags and shit that takes forEVER and I’ve already just spent 2 hours making some decent stuff. Here’s the breakdown.

Joy: Recording a fun vid for youtube.
Challenge: Timing it just right
Pain in The Ass: uploading it for 1 to 2 hours each time :P

Joy: Writing an inspired and witty blog post for wordpress
Challenge: formatting in an nice readable way.
Pain in the Ass: getting photos, finding links, adding tags, categories and THEN publishing it…phew!

Joy: Taking a random self portrait for flickr.
Challenge: making adjustments in photoshop
Pain in the Ass: adding color changes, filters, getting rid of bullshit, sizing, saving and THEN uploading to flickr to then add titles, descriptions, tags, and send it to my groups.

Joy: Feedback and suggestions from REAL friends and new interesting people.
Challenge: working the lovely constructive criticism I get from you folks into my processes in a timely manner.
Pain in the Ass: spam, skeazy internet stalkers, and poopy comments.

Joy: Meeting new people virtually and in the “real” world.
Challenge: finding those new people on facebook so I can add their “friendship”.
Pain in the Ass: not hearing from some of them for weeks…*sigh*

Joy: sharing stuff from the REAL world
Challenge: linking stuff from the REAL world to the virtual world
Pain in the Ass: lighting…

Joy: The Internet (”that muppets video made my day!”)
Challenge: The Internet (”um…what’s the code for bullet lists again?”)
Pain in the Ass: The Internet (”oh no you did NOT just go down Internet!!!”)

Joy: ideas from my ever creative brain.
Challenge: producing from my ever creative brain.
Pain in the Ass: making sense of my ever creative brain.

Really though I am not stopping. It is ultimately too much fun and super interesting. Besides your continued feedback makes it all worth it in the end so I get back to drawing table again.

Oh yeah…coffee with this guy, my friend and biz mentor.

Got an awesome recommendation on a book too: The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

I hope this isn’t a dry blog site. Generally I have too much personality for that. MY problem however involves how I dispense all the interesting info I got stuffed in my brain in a timely manner.

Today I uploaded two videos about beauty and it took me about 10 takes for each one of them! Total NEWB! Thing is I wanted to get it right AND I wanted to make sure youtube didn’t reject them again due to length (I’m a talker when I get going). The time limit thing is really rather smart of youtube cause 30 seconds on the web is like 1 hour in real life. So I get to make it snappy. Getting my videos under 10 minutes is a welcome challenge though.

As I recorded I also wanted to make sure I was actually sharing relevant information in an interesting way. Storytelling is no problem for me. Sharing amusing anecdotes about my life? Piece of new york cheese cake (with cherries)! Providing valuable information in a nicely structured manner that is UNDER 10 minutes? Uh….workin on it.

What really helps is working and being with a guy who’s fantastic at business. Successful business men are all about THE POINT and whether or not it matters to them. THE POINT must be delivered quickly cause they have IMPORTANT things to do – like running a company, securing an investment, etc. etc.
THE POINT must also interest them. Otherwise, they got a whole host of better things to do that will make them money, power, that sort of thing. Their time is precious so they carefully invest it only in things that will RETURN that investment.

The Businessman mentality I’ve noticed applies to just about everyone that jumps on the web. We are all RICH with our access to information. Our ATTENTION however is very precious, and so is our time. So me getting to THE POINT and GETTING YOUR ATTENTION in 10 minutes or less is a very cool learning experience indeed.

Speaking of time…I gotta run…late night dinner with a hot biz guy :)

I have a question for you web users out there: How much does your use of your devices and your web profiles to express your interesting little self COMPARE to how much you use all that to screw around?

Folks be forewarned – I am one opinionated little missy but I say this all out of LOVE: *steps onto soapbox

Ahem.
Being in this here Information Age is a real challenge. An exciting one mind you – at least depending on how you look at it. I think those of us that are thriving within it know just how to rock the social media. Everyone else may just be cluttering up the net with virtual chatter. People we love too! It’s so freakin sad sometimes! I know it bums me out when I read more about a friend’s Farmville status reports then their actual life! Let me be a little voice of sense and reason here okay? Just because you are awesome at growing pixelated vegetables doesn’t mean all your friends care to know… each and every time you get a new sprout or rutabaga spouts up from the virtual ground. Does Oprah rock at Farmville? Hell. If. I. Know! Thankfully she doesn’t share those precious little updates with her fans on her web profiles.

what the hell is that??

I know I’m gettin on my high horse here but I just find it ridiculous reading about stuff that DON’T MEAN SHIT! So instead let me tell you how you can share somethin REAL and how it’s really not all that hard.

Things to Post: Links
This is the easiest type of content to post and it can still be unique to you. So go ahead and post links to all sorts of great stuff:
*Movies
*Events
*Clothing
*Toys
*Software
*Music

Things to Post: YOU-ness
You can also share the unique and weird stuff about YOU:
*Your wacky philosophies
*Your silly adventures
*Even your wisdom
*I suggest postin little 1 to 2 line blurbs in most things and then spilling all the juicy details in a big wordy blog post. NOTE: formatting things with headers and bolded text is FANTASTIC.

Things to Post: Comment Lovin
Share the love okay? Tell your friends you are thinking about them or compliment them or somethin. Believe me they need to know and it’s just super nice and cool.
*Wall Comments
*Blog Comments
*Share a link just for them
*Refer some cool resource
*Tell them their photos are cute and you want to see more
LOVE LOVE LOVE!
SHARE SHARE SHARE!

And THROW SOME MUD ON THE WALL. Do not get all preciously perfectionist about it. Otherwise you won’t learn anything and nothing will progress into something truly valuable. Chances are you won’t say, post, or upload the most perfect thing at first. But you will learn if you practice and allow yourself to get some golden feedback :)

Take me for example. I’ve decided to put my goofy ass out there and produce content at the most basic freakin level possible with this whole project.
*I’ve uploaded the most amateur photos from my sorry ass little webcam.
*I wrote my first blog posts on the generic little wordpress template EVERYONE starts with.
*And I’ve posted my videos with the lamest lighting I have available – including the creepy blue glow of my laptop.

All with the intent to show you fabulous people what this whole journey starts out like. And I have learned every step of the way and produce better content each time! Half the time it’s from people that are just wanting to be helpful and lend their expertise:
“Can I show you how to not take Myspace photos?” -says Anomaly Boy who is a genius with Photoshop.

Let me get back to Oprah here – she’s nearly Queen of the Universe right? Her first Twitter post was all in caps and Shaq had to be the well meaning jerkface to tell her that she was SHOUTING on the web. Maybe a tad embarrassing but INSTANTLY fixable. Just by pressing a button.

So Here’s Your ACTION List:
1. Do.
2. Screw Up.
3. Learn!
4. Make something Prettier next time!

Or you could be one of those fortunate souls that produces something brilliant your first try and everyone wants more more more!

Either way it’s easy as pie :)

Okay I’ll get off my soapbox here and get back to work.