Personal Branding for Chaotic People
By: Victoria Morton
Tags: Personal Branding, Identity, Marketing, Careers, Social Media

1. Redefine professionalism

Start by getting rid of the unhelpful expectations. “Professionalism” isn’t about the absence of tattoos and swearwords, or adhering to ridged hierarches. It’s about mutual respect, accountability and integrity. With this new definition, allow yourself to lean into any form of self-expression that feels natural to you. You’ll be far more successful (however you define that) being the most complete version of you than you will be anything else. Unapologetic authenticity is magnetic (yes, even to employers).

2. Detach your purpose from the process of achieving it

Your dream job probably doesn’t exist yet, so don’t build your personal brand around one. What you do and how you do it should evolve and if Disney’s Soul taught us anything, it’s that passion isn’t what you do all day. It’s a state of being that can be driven by anything (or everything!). There’s a reason you get up in the morning, and it’s not your pay cheque. If nothing comes to mind immediately, try playing with these statements:

I believe [_____] and I’m on a mission to help achieve this.

[Ex. the planet must come before profit / all people deserve dignity / adults should have more fun]

I love [_____] and I’m building a life filled with it.

[Ex. community / joy / problem solving]

3. Consider making a separate entity

The hyper-specificity allowed me to connect with people I hadn’t previously been able to with my personal accounts.

If the idea of personal branding feels inauthentic, it may be from the pressure to narrow your interests. This feeling is what led me to creating @MotherDeckerVic, a hyper-specific educational parody account about presentations and pitch decks. Through that account I also channeled my thoughts on digital marketing which segued into DECKER, the umbrella brand for all my side projects.

It’s all just me, but projecting my work through a curated separate entity freed me to do whatever I wanted on my personal accounts — which is great, because I’d hate to deprive the internet of my thoughts about Baby Yoda and vaccines.

Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce and I have a ridiculous PowerPoint Stan account. Who will you make?

4. Teach yourself the basics of photography and design so your brand can evolve with you

(If you’re already a pro in this area, skip to #5)

Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels

I like to think we’re done with overly planned Instagram feeds, but cohesive visuals can still make or break the credibility of any brand.

If marketing yourself is directly tied to your success (ie. public speakers, coaches, etc.) I highly recommend hiring a pro, at least to get you started. But learning the basics of mobile photography (emphasis on composition, angles and lighting), editing apps and graphic design will allow you transform content you collect from everywhere life takes you, without Frankenstein-ing your brand.

Ps. mastering colour is the best low-resource/high-impact place to start and Claire Kennedy shared how she built hers here.

5. You don’t “find” yourself, you create yourself

Social media has democratized the attention economy, which means the future belongs to anyone with the guts to put themselves out there.

It’s a self-sabotaging mindset to think you’ll wake up one day knowing exactly who you are, what your future holds and how to tell people about it (and wouldn’t life be boring if you did?). So, embrace this as an infinitely iterative process and get yourself out there.