I was pretty psyched to start Christina Farley's Master Your Marketing course , hosted by Writer's Atelier. Even though I consult on branding efforts myself, it's always hard to be objective. I like to walk through someone else's process and suggestions to identify where I don't effectively see my brand.
Since I narrowed my focus to writing and outreach, it's been difficult to express that in a way that also captures buzzwords people (and search engines) need to hear. So I call myself a Storyteller and Outreach Nerd, changing buzzwords depending on my audience.
Content and copywriting has always been part of the Outreach Nerd work, and recently I've separated them in efforts to write more and spend less time on social media. I still love that work and will continue, but I find freelance writing a better fit with my new-ish role as primary caretaker of two young boys, and also need to learn more about building a platform for writing fiction. I'll soon start to query for my novel series The Blue Dragon Scribe Shoppe, and need all efforts at the ready.
Christina sent us a worksheet to prepare; just for ourselves. I worked on it and vowed to keep an open mind regarding my brand(s). I can't go into great detail on what was involved - after all, teaching is part of Farley's livelihood - but as someone who divides her personality into twitter accounts, the graphic representation of my interests juxtaposed with my brand truly helped focus my many ideas within each current opportunity.
Farley and Writer's Atelier also offered incredibly easy viewing of the video course. I could wait until I had the time and focus to watch as well as return to segments that I wanted to review. She just uses an unlisted YouTube video with corresponding visual aids.
As someone with only a few hours a week devoted to her work plus any stolen time during my boys' naps, knowing the topics to prioritize and how to use my strengths is one of the most valuable time management tools to master. Much of what I got from Farley's first course has already helped me understand where to put my focus and what I want my brand to
