What T-Shirts Teach Us About Personal Branding

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Ever know people who have a collection of T-shirts?  People who wear them constantly?  Chances are those shirts say a lot about their personalities.  If you’re a person fond of his/her t-shirts, you know they say a lot about you (or just realized they did now that I’ve got you thinking about it).

T-shirts are actually a great way to easily understand that important, elusive, yet over-discussed topic of personal branding.

Think about t-shirts.  The purchase says something about you.  The contents say something about you.  Where you wear it, when you wear it, all say something about you.

A t-shirt is a giant signal saying “this is me!”

Which in many ways is what personal branding is about – making a statement about yourself.  T-shirts are the same thing, just informal and at times with obscure LOL-cat derived humor.

So look at people you know who are t-shirt fanatics.  Look at yourself for that matter.

What do they communicate about themselves – and do they communicate it in a good way, a bad way, or a neutral way?

When do they communicate it, and what can it teach you about timing?

What other other things are “t-shirt like” in that they’re common things that tell people about who someone is?

Ask how you – and others – may react to various t-shirts you’ve seen.  How did you judge people?

These little moments of analysis teach you a lot about how t-shirts are, really, personal branding.

Now, how can you apply that knowledge to things beyond your latest teefury purchase?  Well, just ask what you learned, and then ask what it teaches you about making the right impression and communicating the right side of you . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

HBO, Netflix, And Bad Relationships

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Well the whole “Twimance” causing a stir on the internet isn’t the only confusing relationship.  Closer to less good-looking is the fact that HBO won’t be partnering with Netflix.  Considering they have some major properties, this isn’t good for Netflix, which is having it’s own problems as of late – and though I have confidence in them, they are in a rather rocky industry.

But hey, HBO has their own streaming, right?  And then there’s Crackle.  And Hulu, and . . . well we’re up to our armpits in various streaming services all of a sudden.  Of course they don’t all carry each other’s stuff, or in the case of some anime, everyone carries it (Really, do THIS many services need to carry “Queen’s Blade?” Wait, nevermind.)

So it’s some not-quite-walled gardens, battling it out.  This misses a larger factor near and dear to this cable-cutter’s heart.

Namely, after awhile, some people may not give a damn about series if they have to go through a lot of rigamarole to get them, or get a specialty service they don’t want, or watch something drop off of a service.  It’s like taking all the annoyances about cable and adding brand new ones.

So at some point do people stop caring about The Hot Thing?  Or waiting for the DVDs?  Or pursuing alternate media (I can just read Game Of Thrones, even if it lacks the awesome of Dinklage).

I see this as a possible danger because in trying to keep up with big things, you have to face all these service annoyances.  If you get cable, you face cable annoyances.  Really, at some point people may just not care and buy eps on iTunes, get DVDs, or just give the hell up (which in a way I kind of did). There’s enough media out there that the Big Thing is only big because others say so.

I see this re-dilution of media access actually being bad for the media companies.  It looks bad, creates ill will, and diminishes interest.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

Promoting Professional Geekery #48 – Use Your Progeeky Viewpoint On Geeky Events

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(For more Promoting Professional Geekery, see this Roundup of past columns.)

Geek events are great for careers – they let you attend career events, network, etc.  You know I’m a big backer of going progeek at conventions and more.  I kind of write about it obsessively.

But there’s also a way to help people who do the events to make it pay off for their career no matter what they do.

That may sound odd – after all running a Hetalia game contest or a panel on the history of Star Trek may not sound that professional.  But it’s really all in perspective – you can help people see the professional potential in what they do.

See, running a con, running a fannish event, running a club, takes a lot of skills and abilities.  A lot of events are like businesses, or seminars, or other supposedly “professional” things.  The experiences of doing them could be valuable to careers – as long as people know how to leverage them and portray them to clients and employers.

That’s where you come in with this professionally geeky potential – helping people see the opportunities.

See you, the progeek, can look at these events and help people realize how to use them.  It just takes a little perspective, training your eye to see the opportunities out there.  For instance:

  • If people work together at a well-run con, they should act as references for each other.  It’s literally like working together.
  • People who do specific geeky events should put their skills on their resumes (and note their hobbies in more details).
  • Geeks who publish various progeeky/geeky things should put them on their resumes, LinkedIn profiles, use samples, etc.

You can probably think of many more opportunities right now just looking at that list.  For that matter, you can probably think of a few friends who should be sprucing up their resumes right about now.

This is because you have the experience to see the professional, and thus progeeky potential in people.  So start taking that unique viewpoint into fannish groups, cons, gaming teams, and more.  Start looking for the professional potential – and helping people realize it.

It’s all around you.  Trust me, I know . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/