- Create Your Rainbow
- Posts
- Crafting Personal Experiments In Public
Crafting Personal Experiments In Public
My personal branding playbook
Happy weekend friends š
Welcome to Create Your Rainbow - a newsletter to help unleash your community's creativity. š
My hope is to bring you insights, teachings, and inspiration for your journey. We get a little vulnerable at times. If youāre here, thank you for reading!
If thereās one thing I love talking about, it's brandingāpersonal, consumer culture, memes, internet sensations, core aesthetics, and how to authentically reach an audience.
Hereās the highly anticipated playbook Iāve used for the past two years (and why a little pivot is good for the soul).
Crafting Personal Experiments
The life and death of the brand.
This week a wave of creators were talking about the topic of personal branding, and since I get asked about it often enough, letās go through some actionable steps. My favorite piece on personal branding came from Amanda Natividad, who wrote about personal branding for employees.
Letās start by acknowledging this issue will NOT be about growth tactics or engagement on X (formerly Twitter šŖ¦), I donāt write that content.
What I have talked about a lot is personal branding and how I use it to create a network, build culture, and ultimately, a clear brand for myself.
Each week, the top image represents the topic and this weekās image comes directly from last year when I started looking for work for the second time since being in the āweb3ā (overused term imo) space.
~Be Hyper Online~
My journey into the NFT space, in retrospect, felt like how I entered any space Iāve been part of. I sort of just slide in, observe, adapt, adopt.
I had good reason to delete my previous Twitter account and start a new one in January 2022. I went through a traumatic experience that led me to quit the platform around 2020.
When I started a new account, I had a pretty firm grasp on what I needed to do because I had 3 goals:
Recognized: The noise-to-signal ratios on platforms as huge as Twitter or Instagram, or Tumblr are tough to wade through! [Public awareness & credibility.]
Revered: I had plenty of time in solitude over the past few years since coming out to get to know what I wanted to be known for. [Trust & faith as an expert.]
Remembered: When someone has a need for community, they think of me (or people like me) first because we don't shut up about it. [Being recalled in someone's mind.]
Friends have often asked how I have the confidence to speak about these experiences. I'll be honest, it takes a while to live in that truth. It takes courage, strength, and a lot of āI donāt care what you thinkā mindset.
The key here is to work towards being absolutely comfortable in the level of confidence in who you are.
Being ~hyper online~ doesnāt mean being glued to the Internet 24/7, it means knowing exactly where to look in order to curate exactly what you need to craft your vision.
Personal branding is all about figuring out how to tell your story, why youāre telling it, and the mediums used to tell that story.
Being consistent the whole time gives steroids to your already unfair advantage. š
How To Tell A Story
In this step, youāll want to be a master detective. Iāve been an observer my entire life, literally ever since I fell in love with comics as a kid. However cringe it sounds, I have Batman tattoos to remind myself to seek out knowledge, to find the clues, to peek behind every corner.
Embrace the cringe, be weird, be authentic, whatever it is that makes youā¦YOU!
Itās for this reason queer folks are some of the greatest storytellers, we are transitional, weāre insanely good at crafting a narrative.
If you take a look at my Pinterest boards, youāll see an entire story of images and aesthetics Iāve collected since being in web3 used to craft an identity. Hereās the trick, though, learn to read between the lines.
When someone posts something online, thereās always a reason, a motive, narrative. Humans are always about that journey. Even (especially) if itās delusional.
Know Your Why
Yes, the story you tell is about sending signals about who you are, but more importantly, itās about what other people get out of it.
This will take multiple pivots, experiments, and SO much learning, but each time youāll get closer to figuring out who you are and why youāre curating a specific narrative. This is whatās called Ikigai.
The graphic above is the Western version of the Japanese Ikigai, and itās fairly self-explanatory. Iāve added a Notion worksheet you can duplicate to help work through each of these aspects. However, if you want to work through the Japanese version, which is much more personal, including how to work toward self-actualization, Iāve included that as well.
The Mediums
Once you find your Ikigai, you're set. That will tell you which mediums to choose and which paintbrushes to pick up. Last week, I talked about how community members are the paintbrush for the canvas of future cultures.
This week we're going deeper because you, as the paintbrush, need to find the paint you'll use.
Branding and marketing experts might choose infographics, mind maps, tutorials, or carousels.
Writers and community builders might choose to write threads, blogs, or newsletters.
Curators are all over the place and it can definitely get exhausting. Slow down in order to speed up. We need to find the right sources for info and make tell our story through them.
This is a critical step because here you'll decide who you're speaking to. At first, I was speaking to other women who were just entering the web3 space, getting them up to speed on how to build community. Now, as we've all grown together in public, it's time to experiment and make some pivots.
Curating An Identity
After youāve determined your goals and values, itās time for the fun part, or at least I find this the most fun part.
Visual signals create an identity that an audience recognizes from a mile away. This is what creates stickiness. So many people excel at this part in the web3 space but neglect all the stuff above.
A visual identity goes well beyond just buying a PFP and calling it a day.
Itās why you absolutely can change a PFP and still be totally recognizable.
This is about the colors you use, the emojis you use, the types of graphics, and how people perceive you. If youāve been following me since the very beginning, youāll know I used to use the š but something about it just didnāt feel right, so I shifted to the š and it feels so much more representative of what ārileybeansā stands for.
Pink, sparkly, bright, welcoming, loving, caring. I lean heavily into the pink, rainbows, and sparkles, and it works because itās the one thing I can be consistent with and get right time after time.
Other ways to stick in peopleās minds: gifs, emoji reacts/replies, memes.
Stay consistent in visuals, experiment with aesthetics that make sense for your values, purpose, and measurable goals. Making a moodboard for yourself is so helpful.
Beyond Visuals
Beyond visuals, an identity is character. Itās how you show up in DMs and on calls with peopleāno one will recommend you to others if youāre a jerk or unhelpful.
Youāll often hear the phrase ādo things that donāt scale,ā and that could not be more real. Itās often been said that real relationships and partnerships are built 1:1, and that can be time-consuming, but it doesnāt have to be. Use the tools at your disposal, like Notus, to make life easier.
So Whereās The Pivot
Over the past two years, even before I was active on socials, Iāve primarily been focused on the NFT space and building communities.
Hereās a tipāyou can pivot a focus while maintaining values, integrity, and goals. Wild concept, I know!
In that time, Iāve seen a ton of āmetaā shifts, from DAOs, onchain and offchain governance to Ordinals and web design to AI, Barbie and recently, aliens š½ļøš
My focus at the moment is on the future of play, infrastructure as cultural change, governance, and creation within these fields:
Consumer marketing
Community building
Content Creation
& Curation
Reply to this email or send to [email protected] if youād like to partner up!
My sources of inspiration: Zora, Optimism, Boys Club, Bankless, Cloud Scouts, Rosieland, Are.na, Glasp
My two favorite playlists of the moment:
Your weekly source of all things upcoming with our lovely Scouts. Learn more at our website!
Have you minted your Cloud Scouts badge to access our community of explorers? š±
Troop Chat! š
Sign up for all sessions here. All are welcome to join us!
This week I presented the workshop I held with SheFi for Scouts who came to Troop Chat, and we also worked on a community BINGO card!
Every other Thursday, we come together for Patrol meetings, feedback sessions, activities, and troop updates.
Exploring Spatial Worlds! šļø
On off-weeks for Troop Chat, Event Coordinator Scout Sarah takes us on adventures to explore virtual worlds in Spatial and other platforms. Sheās our very own Ms. Frizzle! This coming week we hold our fourth exploration in Spatial event spaces. All in preparation for creating our own virtual spaces for learning, gathering, and deciding together.
Do you have a community that needs expert explorers to act as tour guides? Contact Sarah linked above and learn how!
Meet us by our campfire in Spatial and sign up for the event series here.
Join us again by the campfire this week š«”
Weāre on Charmverse!
Not a fan of Discord or group chats but still want to keep up with everything happening at Cloud Scouts?
Join our Charmverse space to read up on how the future of digital-native scouting is curating peer development and what work, collective decisions, and collecting skills looks like at the edges of the Internet.
Where to next?
Want to partner with Cloud Scouts? Send me a DM on Twitter or reply to this email for a chat.
When youāre readyā¦
Hereās how I can help you š¤
If youāve enjoyed this newsletter, here are three ways to support the work I spend many hours per week researching and writing. If you or someone you know would like to work with me directly, spend an hour with me.
Reply