Personal Branding: Coaching. Part 4

Posted on 14/06/2022 by Michelle Stohs

The last topic dealt with the challenge of not only being attractive and appealing to the target group in the short term and on an ad-hoc basis, but also paying attention to one’s community/target group in the long term and being interesting and appealing at the same time. This last post is to round up the input on the topic of personal branding for visual arts and musicians once.

In the coaching you will find further and above all very practical and detailed information that will give you an even deeper insight and through which you will be personally challenged to tackle the creation of the marketing of your person and to handle it yourself. The aim is to get to know yourself – to be able to classify your personality in order to develop your personal brand based on your insights and to extract it from you.

Knowing your personality is the first step to success

Knowing your personality, being able to name and describe it, and above all knowing how to use it or bring it to the surface in a targeted manner and in the right place, is already half the story. Because personality is about our own character traits, qualities and peculiarities, some of which we can develop and acquire throughout our lives. At which moments and in which places can these be combined and used in a purposeful way? To be able to answer these questions, click into the coaching and register – without obligation and free of charge.

Recap

As a short conclusion, we would like to go back to the topics touched in order to give a brief overview and to summarize the key points. First of all, it was about the fact that the own personal brand is becoming more and more important nowadays and therefore the requirements are increasing. Personal branding is about presenting oneself, one’s strengths and thus giving the ‘audience’ the opportunity to be inspired and captivated. What is your passion and how do you want to be perceived by others from the outside? All these answers to those questions take time – your brand and identity you can thus (within a certain framework) further expand, develop and thus consolidate. This process is worth an adventure! And the most important thing: stay yourself, stay authentic – just completely individual.

The representative study results of last year’s 2021 survey can also be helpful. In this context, the focus was on the target group’s perception of the artist.

As the description and title of the series of topics and during the blog posts repeatedly advertised, you have the opportunity to sign up for a free coaching. This explores the individual topics in more depth and guides you through the process of finding your own personality as well as the creation and creation of your own personal brand. You will have the opportunity to enroll and sign up for the tutorial and will be guided to answer the following questions for yourself:

What skills do you want to build on and expand?
What components make up your personality?
How and in what way do you want to promote your personal brand?

Journey and get involved in defining and developing your own brand.

Stay tuned.

More about Personal Branding…

Personal Branding: Coaching

Posted on 30/05/2022 by Michelle Stohs

For way too long, going out to party and feeling the music together was a dream that seemed far in the future and always brought up old memories. But slowly, we as artists are able to step back into the starting gates and share our mixtapes with the dancing crowd. Corona has especially hit artists, but slowly the possibilities are opening up again.

In today’s blog, I’d like to share with you some practical tips based on study results from last year and get you excited about a coaching on the topic of personal branding for visual artists.

Why is it no longer possible without personal branding?

Whether it’s a job interview or convincing others of your idea, you should be aware of what makes you unique. How do you stand out from the crowd? And here we are in the middle of the topic…

Although we are often taught to just go with the flow and adapt or fit in, today’s market is more about sticking out while authentically bringing your personality to the forefront. The trick in doing so is to present yourself without bending over backwards.

Without self-marketing, you won’t get far these days, because with the help of personal branding, your own values and euphoria become tangible and approachable.

Where do I start?

Which archetype can you identify with and which puzzle pieces of your personality do you want to shine through? You can make a difference and have the potential to inspire others with your positive attitude and dynamism.

And as they say: “Step by step”. It only gets exciting when the artist can’t be seen through directly but keeps revealing new traits.

Personal branding is more than building your own website or social media presence. Many artists get lost in self-promotion or have a difficulty in connecting the work with their own character.

What does your target audience actually expect and how can they be inspired – who do you want to reach? More about these questions at the next blog post and the upcoming coaching…

Stay tuned.

More about Personal Branding…

4 questions that will make your personal branding project go down the drain.

Posted on 23/02/2022 by christian zich

E-Mail-Ratgeber und Personal-Branding-Canvas gehen in die falsche Richtung.

After we have briefly clarified the essential principle of personal branding in the last article, many are probably already in the starting blocks, scratching their hooves and finally want to get started. Yay, there’s the Internet. If you surf for a while, you’ll come across a few email guides or personal branding canvases relatively quickly. Of course, these offerings are free, but in my opinion they lead you in the wrong direction from the start.

Before I solve the puzzle, briefly on the questions in the canvas or email guides that I personally find problematic:

How do others perceive you? You are supposed to answer this question with friends and acquaintances. Hand on heart, who do you ask? But not the one with whom you don’t get along or with whom you fell out years ago. And this brings us to the first trap. A key insight from social psychology is that people prefer to surround themselves with people who have similar attitudes, views and values to their own. The potential for discovering serious opportunities for improvement and deficits is marginal. In this case, a comparison with product development is allowed, because you get much more interesting input from non-customers than from long-term, loyal customers. I sometimes see the latter as very generous in overlooking certain bugs, while this is not the case with the former. This was one of the most interesting learning effects during my time at Siemens.
In combination with the question just discussed, you then find the hint that you don’t have to take every opinion to heart. What a wonderful invitation to pick out only what fits into one’s own world view. Or, to put it very harshly: a guide to deceiving oneself.
then it usually goes into a self-analysis of one’s strengths, weaknesses, reason whys, benefits, etc. If you have a canvas in front of you, then you can delightfully write something in each column. And when the blackness level of the sheet increases, you eventually put the pen aside and are quite proud of having accomplished a lot. Yuppidu, your own personal brand is almost in place. Let’s move on to the final spurt of self-analysis.
What image do you have at the moment and what image would you like to have in the future? This question may make sense for artists who can position themselves autonomously. But if you are a self-employed person looking for customers or a future employee, your image must not only match your job profile, but also your customers. Just as the strengths, benefits, etc. must fit the customer’s requirements profile and not just exist in the customer’s own imagination.

Navel gazing as a personal branding tool? Does that work?

The catch in all of these questions is the navel-gazing itself. If you are completely honest with yourself, this approach can lead you in the right direction, but I have my doubts about that. Therefore, respect to anyone who can objectively assess themselves with these questions. Nevertheless, these approaches are very popular because they don’t hurt. You look at your personal branding canvas and decide: I’m great, and I have to change a little bit, too. But in doing so, you give away a great opportunity to seriously do something for your own competitiveness. To stay with my metaphor of the journey: DomRep-all-inclusive or couch surfing in Africa? Am I leaving my comfort zone or do I really want to get significantly (!) better?

Is there another way? Yes, of course, in marketing there are so many tools with which you can gradually – even without a consultant – approach a authentic, credible and competitive core of your own personal brand. And, which tools are these?

As always, you should stop just when it’s most exciting and that brings us to today’s cliffhanger. The next post is about reference points that you should definitely consider so that you’re running in the right direction right from the start.

Stay tuned, more stuff is on the way.

More about Personal Branding…

Personal Branding, a journey?

Posted on 22/02/2022 by christian zich

Personal branding is one of the topics that are becoming increasingly important and interesting in the age of information overload and endless opportunities for self-expression on social networks. This article is about the core of personal branding, the creation of uniqueness

Why one-size-fits-all? Isn’t everyone unique?

During my two management positions at Siemens – a long time ago – I had to read quite a few applications. After the HR department had already sorted out those who didn’t fit the picture at all, the following picture emerged: all applicants had good grades, had completed their studies on the fast track. In addition, they were highly motivated, goal-oriented, team players and, of course, ideally suited for the position. All of them were convinced that they were unique. All of them were convinced that they were clearly different from the masses. The candidates also demonstrated this eloquently in the interviews. And yet, each offered something similar and thus they were all interchangeable.

And that brings us to the topic: how can you escape this interchangeability through personal branding? Through big mouths and great internet presences?

The easiest way with the least effort is to optimize one’s social media accounts and launch a one-pager with meaningful content. Doesn’t hurt and is done with a manageable effort. With this short-term oriented approach, you definitely reach your goal, and may be invited to an interview (customer/employer). At the latest then you have to “let your pants down” and this can – depending on the competence of the partner – go in the pants or also work. Then, however, the probationary period or the first project approaches and, at the latest during this period, the “Moments of Truth” are already on the mat in the morning and accompany the test person throughout the day. Nevertheless – as examples such as Thomas Middelhoff and Billy McFarland show – you can hold your own for quite a long time even as a “Potemkin village”. But at some point, the charade comes to an end. The only thing that remains is long-term orientation.

In the long term, genuine uniqueness based on clearly recognizable results is the more promising strategy.

What can this look like? In the case of a musician, this would be a distinctive musical style; in the case of a professional, the ability to deliver better results in less time; in the case of a manager, a superior leadership style that combines increased efficiency, employee motivation and superior performance. Easy to say, but how do you create such uniqueness? Acquire knowledge, build competencies, acquire/deepen skills and get a grip on your own hubris. Sounds like a lot of work, blood, sweat and tears? Well, that’s the catch.

But now the good news, the journey to your own competitiveness is fun. Each milestone is another step toward true competence and competitive uniqueness. And it’s amazing what you learn about yourself in the process and how you successively become more efficient, better and more focused. As a side effect, so to speak, you achieve your goals much more effortlessly and easily.

What are we waiting for? Let’s pack our bags and get going.

Stop. What are we packing in our suitcases? We’ll talk about that next time. Stay tuned.

More about Personal Branding…

Personal Branding for musicians.

Posted on 01/11/2021 by christian zich

Personal Branding für Musiker. Ein Artikel auf Delamar.

Already in August this year I wrote an article together with Thorsten Sprengel from delamar on the topic of self-marketing for musicians. Shortly after my vacation – end of September – the article was published. Since I already have my own opinion on the topic of Unique Selling Points of musicians, the actual topic was no problem thanks to my study (https://christianzich.com/category/personal-branding/).

A challenge, however, was the search for good examples. Mr. Sprengel gave me this task right at the beginning of our cooperation. O. k., I thought to myself, it won’t be easy; but I’ll do it. It shouldn’t be that difficult to find a few highlights in the vastness of the social networks. Far from it, I was really surprised how boring musicians are positioning and marketing themselves most of the time.

There’s particularly little to learn from the superstars. Their accounts are perfect, mostly without surprises, corners and edges and thus somehow stainless steel brushed, but boring. The superstars have so many followers because they were already famous in the pre-Instagram era. They are interesting not because of their content, but simply because they have a very high profile. Nevertheless, I found some examples. More about them on the following page:

Selbstvermarktung auf Instagram, Erfolgsgarant für Musiker? https://www.delamar.de/musikbusiness/selbstvermarktung-auf-instagram-61098/

Stay tuned, more stuff is on the way.

More about Personal Branding…

Personal Branding for Artists – the entire study.

Posted on 21/10/2021 by christian zich

Personal Branding, die Ergebnisse der Umfrage/Personal branding, the results of the survey

After publishing all the results of the Personal Branding Study for Artists last month, it’s time to summarize all the posts in one place, or comment on the links.

The 9 parts of the entire study:

Stay tuned, more stuff is on the way.

More about Personal Branding…

anding…

Personal branding for DJs.

Posted on 21/10/2021 by christian zich

Last week on Saturday came a very special gift from the professional association Discjockey e.V. (https://www.dj-magazin.de/) A few copies of the current DJ magazine, packed with interesting articles. Of course, I was especially pleased to see the publication of my article on personal branding for DJs.

Based on my study (Personal Branding for Artists – the entire study.), I worked out many tips and suggestions during the summer on how to market yourself better as a DJ. More will not be revealed, reading it yourself is fun.

Stay tuned, more stuff is on the way.

More about Personal Branding…

Personal branding, the results of the survey. Part 8.

Posted on 25/05/2021 by christian zich

Why unfollow an artist on Instagram? The eighth and final part of the survey results on personal branding for artists.

What are the reasons for unfollowing an artist?

We are entering the final spurt. An empirical study on social networks would definitely be incomplete without asking why people unfollow. Let’s jump in.

No surprise to me personally, the main reason for unfollowing is that the artist simply posts too much advertising. Number 2 is also obvious – if you review the previous results. Apparently, fans and followers on Instagram expect a permanent stream of new, creative ideas from an artist. If he/she no longer delivers that, he/she is almost certainly uninteresting.

Diagram What are the reasons for unfollowing an artist?

A little surprise for me is number 3, but understandable. Numbers 4,6,8 also indicate that loss of authenticity and closeness to fans and followers will lead to termination and virtual friendship. The logical conclusion from this is that artists – especially if you are successful – should remain genuine and continue to interact with their fans and followers at eye level and without artificial distance.

Surprising for me also that the loss of the “certain something” of an artist lands relatively far behind in the ranking. Personally, I had expected this to be a more significant reason for unfollowing.

This brings us to the end of this series on personal branding for artists. But an end is also a beginning. A beginning for every artist who can now critically scrutinize their own Instagram account and optimize his or her own unique external image. Good luck with that, I personally will now start to actively distribute the results of this study in the social networks and dedicate myself to the exciting possibilities of artist marketing.

English translation of the questions:

01 too much advertising or sponsored posts.
02 the content of the artist bores me, because he posts the same thing over and over again.
03 the artist has a strongly differing opinion from me and expresses it constantly
04 the artist does not seem authentic anymore
05 he/she posts too much
06 the artist is too arrogant
07 the artist simply gets on my nerves
08 the artist is too aloof
09 the artist becomes increasingly uninteresting for me
10 the artist has lost his/her “certain something”.
11 she/he posts too little
12 there is too little interaction between the artist and his/her followers
13 the artist is too distant
14 other reasons

Stay tuned, now it’s really getting started.

More about Personal Branding…

Personal branding, the results of the survey. Part 7.

Posted on 21/05/2021 by christian zich

What character traits make an artist attractive? The seventh part of the survey results on personal branding for artists.

Personal Branding for Artists. What are the right character traits for an artist.

Last week I was so busy with personal branding on my own behalf that I didn’t even get around to publishing the next results of my empirical study. In the last two article we were focusing on imagery.

But now we’re back in the loop. Let’s take a look at what character traits an artist needs to show in order to be attractive to fans and followers.

As you can see in the chart, there is one front-runner: artists should be humorous. This means, of course, that candidates who take themselves and their art too seriously cannot appear so attractive. English translation of the questions below.

Behind this front runner, there is a plateau with 3 rather heterogeneous character traits. Unsurprisingly, if you look at the other results, in 2nd place is creativity. Has a lot to do with the work of the artists, boredom should not arise. A surprising 3rd place was taken by the characteristic of an artist to make fans and followers think. An exciting challenge, which can be seen in the actual work (music, painting, etc.), as well as in the self-presentation of the person (private life, travel, hobbies, etc.). The 4th place is also a surprise for me personally, because the fans and followers expect a person with weaknesses, a normal person. Here you can excellently show the stony path to being an artist yourself, as well as the ups and downs of your private side (if you want to).

The perfect character: approachable, humorous, positive thinking, and being more normal than excentric

Rank 5 is an excellent complement to rank 1. What could be better than the combination of humor with a positive world view? Conversely, this means that artists who enthusiastically whine, lament and are too serious tend to have a harder time.

Number 6 also complements number 4 excellently. An approachable artist who also shows weaknesses puts him at eye level with his fans and followers, combined with the subliminal statement “look, I’ve remained a completely normal person”. This is a great way to communicate credibility and authenticity.

The next surprise is 7th place. I would have expected the participants to prioritize these qualities of an artist significantly more. Now this does not mean that the activity itself is devalued, only other character traits are prioritized higher.

Places 8, 9 and 11 also landed surprisingly far down the list. This means nothing other than that the fans and followers what of the artists do not expect a mental striptease and that also the interaction with the fans and followers is not valued as highly as one would assume in view of the character of Instagram.

Also a surprise is the second to last place. If you look at a lot of artists’ Instagram accounts, you realize that they might take their art far too seriously and thus could have a lower level of attractiveness.

English translation of the questions:

I like humorous artists
I like creative artists
I like artists who make me think
I like artists who also show weaknesses sometimes
I like artists with a positive way of looking at the world
I like approachable artists
I like artists who show what they can do
I like artists who openly show their feelings
I like artists who engage with their fans
I like artists who always surprise me in a positive way
I like artists who are attractive
I like spontaneous, impulsive artists
I like artists who like to party
I like serious artists
Miscellaneous

That’s it for today. There will be more next week.

Stay tuned

More about Personal Branding…

Personal branding, the results of the survey. Part 6.

Posted on 21/04/2021 by christian zich

Which photo makes fans and followers curious? The sixth part of the survey results on personal branding for artists.

Personal Branding for Artists. An empirical study. How to create curiosity with a photo?

Last week we looked at the question which categories of photos the participants in the survey like the most. But this is only one aspect of visual communication, because an artist should not only entertain fans and followers, but also actively promote the artist’s activities or events. Therefore, it is only logical to also ask which visual content arouses curiosity/interest. For this reason, two photos were explicitly selected from the portfolio of the artist Federika Rubartelli: number 6 and number 13 (many thanks again to Federica Rubartelli [https://www.instagram.com/federikamusic/] for the permission to use the photos).

The results were partly sobering, partly positively surprising. Let’s start with the sobering results. Picture number 13 unfortunately only moved from last to second to last place, picture number 6 from seventh to fifth place. However, these results have to be put into perspective a bit, because I think that the artist’s fans will react differently to both the announcement of the podcast (picture number 13) and the announcement of a series of events (Number 6, Kicks by Federika) compared to the survey participants, to whom the artist was more or less unknown.

Now to the surprising results: image 16, which shows the artist in a club while djing, has once again landed at number 1, number 9 has moved up one place and – surprisingly – image 8 has made up a lot of ground and landed in third place. However, the gap to number 2 is quite clear and the distance to 4 and 5 is relatively small.

Also surprising to me is the performance of image number 10 in this second round. It slipped from second to fourth place. Image number 15 even slipped from a middle position to last place.

The conclusions in a nutshell: as long as it is obvious that the artist is concerned with his/her art, a picture triggers not only liking but also interest (e.g. image 16).

On the other hand, beautiful photos that are not recognizably related to the artist’s activity trigger less curiosity than those in which the artist is shown “in action.”

To sum it up in one sentence: fans and followers want the 100% perfect, they should be beautiful, appealing, and at the same time include the artist’s activity.

That’s it for today. There will be more next week.

Stay tuned

More about Personal Branding…

christian zich

Personal Branding und Marketing 4.0

Tag Archives: socialnetworks

Personal Branding: Coaching. Part 4

Personal Branding: Coaching

4 questions that will make your personal branding project go down the drain.

Navel gazing as a personal branding tool? Does that work?

Personal Branding, a journey?

Personal branding is one of the topics that are becoming increasingly important and interesting in the age of information overload and endless opportunities for self-expression on social networks. This article is about the core of personal branding, the creation of uniqueness

Why one-size-fits-all? Isn’t everyone unique?

And that brings us to the topic: how can you escape this interchangeability through personal branding? Through big mouths and great internet presences?

In the long term, genuine uniqueness based on clearly recognizable results is the more promising strategy.

Personal Branding for musicians.

Personal Branding for Artists – the entire study.

Personal branding for DJs.

Personal branding, the results of the survey. Part 8.

Why unfollow an artist on Instagram? The eighth and final part of the survey results on personal branding for artists.

English translation of the questions:

Personal branding, the results of the survey. Part 7.

What character traits make an artist attractive? The seventh part of the survey results on personal branding for artists.

The perfect character: approachable, humorous, positive thinking, and being more normal than excentric

English translation of the questions:

Personal branding, the results of the survey. Part 6.

Which photo makes fans and followers curious? The sixth part of the survey results on personal branding for artists.

The conclusions in a nutshell: as long as it is obvious that the artist is concerned with his/her art, a picture triggers not only liking but also interest (e.g. image 16).

To sum it up in one sentence: fans and followers want the 100% perfect, they should be beautiful, appealing, and at the same time include the artist’s activity.