Personal Brands Be Yourself or Create Yourself - The Writers For Hire

PERSONAL BRANDS: BE YOURSELF OR CREATE YOURSELF? Marketing is about image – and in this world of social media marketing, personal branding is paramount. But how do you walk the line between being yourself and creating yourself? It’s a question that’s been plaguing marketers (check out this blog on businessgrow.com). And you know what? No one wants to buy into another slick marketing campaign – there’s real value by just marketing you as you. Being Yourself Good marketing copy reflects a true representation of you. Don’t hold anything back – really think about what defines YOU. Are you brutally honest? A real nice guy (or girl)? Smart and aggressive? By being yourself in copy, you’re more likely to attract customers that are a good match for you. Like attracts like, plain and simple. What’s more – being yourself is often a better way to get attention. Perez Hilton, gossip blogger, has one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. There are lots of celebrity blogs out there, but Hilton’s success lies in one thing: his personality. He’s brash, he’s bold, he’s downright mean. And people love it. The problem a lot of businesses or businesspeople have is that they try to attract EVERYONE in their copy. You just can’t do it (see my previous blog on finding an audience). You need to position yourself, and accept the fact that not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say, and not everyone is going to buy one of your widgets. So instead, try attracting clients and customers that ARE interested. Clients that are a lot like you. There’s a couple of ways you can do that. Some ways to express your personality and build your personal brand through copy include: 1. Always using an easy, conversational style. Skip all the words you used in college, people appreciate simplicity. 2. Finding the appropriate tone. What are you like? Are you hip and cutting edge? Honest and old fashioned? Friendly and forthcoming? Tone will help you connect to clients on a personal level. 3. Be transparent and honest. If you don’t work with small businesses, explain that to potential clients. If you don’t think you can deliver on a particular project, let them know. Finding the right client match means that both parties should be honest, open, and communicative. 4. Don’t try to people-please too much. Of course, clients should always get what they want †¦ within reason. If you’re an expert, then be the expert – if you can tell off the bat that a potential client isn’t a good fit with your personality (are they too demanding? Not open to new ideas?), then you might be better off passing on that client. You’ll often find that clients who don’t mesh with your personality won’t make lasting relationships. Personal branding is all about creating and maintaining relationships. The best way to create lasting relationships? Just be yourself – you’ll get along with your clients much better. Creating Yourself Now, there’s nothing really wrong with projecting an image. Ed Schipul, author of http://eschipul.com blog, is one proponent of creating a brand. Creating a brand often means putting your true personality aside and trying to appeal to what you think people want. If you want to branch out and grab high-end customers, you may need to completely rewrite all of your marketing materials, get a flashy web designer, and move into an upscale office. That’s creating a brand: you may feel more comfortable in jeans and T-shirts, but the clients you want to attract are more the suit-wearing type. Now, I would contend that â€Å"creating† an image isn’t always the best way to go – especially if you’re running a business or social media enterprise. Why? Well, you’re likely to attract the wrong kind of clients and develop the wrong kind of relationships †¦ which can lead to a lot of frustration on your part. Often, when you’re not being â€Å"true to yourself† in your branding, you may start to feel dishonest. You may feel like your business and your clients are running you – not the other way around. Maybe all your energy and passion gets sapped because suddenly, you’re not doing what makes you happy, and your business has taken on an entirely different direction. Before going out and â€Å"creating† a persona to brand yourself, ask yourself: 1. What’s more important – owning your business and being true to yourself, or letting your clients tell you how it is? 2. What’s more important – providing a great product or service, or providing a great brand? 3. What’s more important – developing a large client base to sustain your in the future, or making a sale now? Developing an image isn’t a bad thing – but when it starts to overshadow good business practice, like making a good product, delivering a great service, honesty, and your own personal happiness, that image can certainly hurt you. What do you guys think? Do you work to create an image, a story, or a brand that matches up to your target audience? Or is settling into your natural personality a smarter way to go?

The Lottery by Marjorie Barnard †Short Stories

The Lottery by Marjorie Barnard – Short Stories Free Online Research Papers The Lottery by Marjorie Barnard Short Stories â€Å"Discuss the way the discourse of the story enables the reader to understand the relative power and the roles of men and women in society.† The Lottery by Marjorie Barnard tells the story of Ted and Grace Bilborough set in either Australia or New Zealand in the post depression years of the 1930’s. This short story is able to compare the major differences between male and female genders and the effects of a patriarchal society on these two characters lives. By analysing this short story in the modern day we are able to realise just how marginalised, poorly treated and represented females are in the story and society and the complete power that men possessed in the 1930’s. We are able to recognise how women are silenced and how marginalised they are, even in their own marriages. In the beginning of the text The Lottery we learn about the character Ted Bilborough who is a very dull and boring male, who lacks any emotion. He is very concerned about his social status and the way he is perceived by others particularly among his fellow men. He is seen by others as being ‘a good citizen, a good husband and a good father.’ Ted does anything to keep up his appearance of being an all round good ‘chap’; never refusing to ‘wheel the perambulator’ in fact he quite happily ‘flourished the perambulator’. Teds appearance to others and his social status are very important to him and this helps the reader to understand men of the 1930’s through the way they are represented as controlling and self obsessed. Typical of the patriarchal system of the 1930’s that is, a male dominated society. Although perceived by others as a good husband, Ted is very far from it, showing no interest in his wife or her needs or helping her with any form of domestic duties. Ted doesn’t acknowledge anything that his wife does. ‘All she had to do was stay at home and look after the house and children. Nothing much in that. ’He sees the work that Grace does as invisible work. Her work is unimportant. The ideology of a housewife is that she is expected to do such things; it wasn’t real physical labour or important work. Females’ work doesn’t compare or come close to that of males. This is what is said to be believed and followed in the 1930’s. When Ted realises that he doesn’t know what the other men are talking about he feels his assurance threatened. Ted believes showing any sign of weakness is unmanly and instead assumes a ‘hard boiled manner’ to seem naive and unaware of what is going on around him, so that he always maintains control. He keeps a cool manner as to act un- fazed. To show any emotion would be a form of male weakness. Although Grace is the one who has won the money, he dismisses this idea. ‘He’d always expected in a trusting sort of way to be rewarded, but not through Grace.’ Ted straight away assumes and thinks it’s his money to spend, as does his male companions. ‘What are you going to do with it, Ted?’ All his thoughts now dwell around how Grace was able to buy the lottery ticket and win the money. It becomes an annoying trait of his character how obsessed he is by the money. Ted throughout the text keeps dwelling on the idea of how Grace could have possibly found the ‘five and threes’ to buy a lottery ticket. All the details revolve around money and how his wife could have possibly found enough money from the limited household allowance to buy a lottery ticket ‘When you budgeted as carefully as they did there wasn’t five and three pence over.’ Ted also finds the concept of Grace having anything of her own money hard to believe. His wife shouldn’t have money to spend on herself because that money should be going towards the house. If Grace had any money left over that would mean Ted had been giving her too much for the housekeeping. It was typical of men of that generation to control the purse strings. As the bread winners they dispensed money to their wives, an allowance as it were for their domestic duties. For the first time Ted finally was forced to acknowledge all that his wife does around the house. Fleetingly he thinks of the things that Grace does around the home. She always had ‘newly washed trousers for him laid out for tennis, the children’s neatness, the tidy house.’ But he only took interest because Grace now finally had something of her own. Ted was faced with the fact that she now had money, something of her very own that he had not provided. Ted assumes and straight away thinks that Grace had deceitfully spent his money on lottery tickets. He would never have assumed that Grace would have found the money from selling her mother’s ring. Ted does not know his wife at all, and is unaware of her feelings or what she does in a day. ‘He remembered charitably that she had always been a good wife to him.’ He completely doesn’t understand her life; Ted is portrayed as a hegemonic. As long as Grace did what Ted expected of her, to take care of all the domestic duties then Ted was not concerned. The way in which the story is told in the third person helps us to fully understand and get to know Ted Bilborough. We believe that Ted is the central character as there is only slight reference to his wife Grace. The reader feels as though he is the most significant figure, because he possesses social and economic power. Having the financial independence allows him to be in total control. The authors more focused and fuller portrayal of Teds character at the expense of the lesser and marginalised character of Grace is a successful and deliberate technique the author uses to parallel the male and female gender roles of the wider society of that time. These stereotypical characters portray the beliefs of the society in the 1930’s.The power source and bread winner Ted, manages the money, he goes to work, he has companions and socialises, plays leisurely sports and he dictates how the money is spent, giving his wife a household allowance. We learn about the leisurely activities a nd the worldly life that Ted lives. He gets to enjoy a social game of tennis, goes to work and socialises with companions other than children. These are things which his wife Grace misses out on, she isn’t given any opportunities to do so because she is the domestic housewife who doesn’t venture past the house and lives a static life. Because Grace is not in paid employment she has nothing of her own, this therefore reinforces the idea that she and her opinions do not matter. Women of that era were seen as appendages of their husbands. What the reader comes to understand about Grace is only from what we hear about her from Ted, She is ‘Mrs Bilborough’. Ted being the dominant character was not ready for the idea that his wife might actually take the money for herself. That Grace might actually take control and take some form of power over her husband. She now has money which is a symbol of male control; she is no longer dependant on her husband because she has gained financial independence. The patriarchal ideology of the 1930’s, the males being the dominant power figures is evident in the story from the way that females characters live a very controlled and closed life. In the 1930’s Grace would have been seen as a particularly horrible wife and mother, abandoning her husband and children for a selfish life. But by reading the story in the modern day we have a different approach to Graces character and the reasons why she called her ticket ‘The Last Hope’. We see the life that Grace was living was unbearable and dull. She didn’t feel equal in her marriage and felt stifled. Her marriage was a paternalistic relationship where by Ted treated her like a child, more like his daughter rather than his wife. This ‘Last Hope’ is her last chance, because Grace feels unfulfilled in her current life. This was her last chance for freedom and independence her last chance for a better life. For the 1930’s Grace would have been see n as a very shocking woman. Not only because she was planning to take off ,but in view of the fact that this was just after the Depression, her lack of putting the money away for her children’s future or some other conservative way of spending the money would have been seen as particularly selfish and foolhardy. But ‘Grace had character, trust her to handle a couple of cub reporters’ and this is her way of discovering herself again. The relationship between Ted and Grace and the general discourse of the story clearly identifies the different roles of men and women and the way they behaved in the patriarchal society of the 1930’s.It was considered that the mans role was to be the provider and the women’s role to be the housekeeper. Men are seen as the logical, rational, stoic, authority figures that have complete control not only of their children but equally their wives. This typical scenario would have gone on indefinitely if it had not been for Graces lottery win which changed the dynamics of the relationship. This change in dynamics also changed and diminished the binary opposition to a point where Grace almost became equal and was able to exercise some dominance in the relationship. 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