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It’s been you all along, and it’ll be you all the way. Learn to play up your strengths, embrace your flaws, and pursue your passions. Be gentle when your mind, body, or soul are tired. Value your time and surround yourself with those who do too. Above all, give your dreams the same respect you grant to others’. This is the starting point of all great brand builders: self-empathy.Laura Busche
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If you would not spend time looking at it, do not ship it. One of the best quality assurance rules of thumb is to avoid publishing content that you would not consume. Simple, yet so hard to execute on. My audience deserves my very best. Repeat that to yourself every single day.Laura Busche
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Do not confuse location with direction. Location is where you are, direction is where you are going.Laura Busche
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Design is your silent storyteller. The visual aesthetic you share with the world tells a story about the values you uphold. When your audience is not ready or willing to listen, a strong visual can capture even the most evasive of minds. Design is not ornamental or secondary: it can propel your stories far beyond the spaces you initially planned for.Laura Busche
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I would love to tell you that being a content manager is easy. Straightforward. That you will be able to focus on what is most important and leave everything else aside. But a lot of it is learning to create something compelling in the middle of an absolute whirlwind. Learning to use a huge list of tools that need to be sharpened every day. It is about zooming out when you need big picture thinking, and zooming in when the details need to be ironed out. Managing content, business expectations, and human beings: all at once. .Laura Busche
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You can practice your grumpy face a million times, you can make a dog surf, you can explode in laughter like Chewbacca mom, and still not “go viral”. You can, however, secure incredibly valuable exposure by spending more time on distribution.Laura Busche
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Some creators shy away from systems because they seem overpowering and rigid. However, in reality, strong systems are the only way in which you will ever have time and space for flexibility. This is true for content production, business, and many other areas of life.Laura Busche
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Scale yourself. Go beyond what you can do and what you know. Look at your content machine and make it work nonstop, seamlessly, and at scale with or without you.Laura Busche
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I cannot stress this enough: content creators need to stop comparing their work with that of total strangers. Furthermore, we need to stop seeing ourselves as content consumers and realize that, as producers, we need time and distance from what is already out there in order to create truly innovative work. If you are always exposing your mind to others’ work, when will you gain the strength to create your own? Find a balance between inspiration and creation, and make sure that the first is indeed inspiring. What might start as a journey to gather ideas can quickly become a shortcut to discouragement. Know when to stop.Laura Busche
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We are faced with the incredible challenge of creating high quality content for a crowd of skimmers. The faster you understand this, the more effective your content tactics will become.Laura Busche
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Content sparks our connections with others, our own selves, and the world. What we decide to share is a powerful expression of where we stand and where we want to go. An essential part of the human spirit, this constant information sharing is what ultimately builds the bridges between us. Every image, text, sound, or video that you have released into the world carries a part of you that others can relate to. If actions reveal our priorities, the content we share explains them.Laura Busche
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Everyone is either building an audience or being an audience these days. Someone, somewhere in the world is thinking up content that will appeal to you as you read this. You are someone’s target audience.Laura Busche
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Human beings are complex information consumers: they have active needs, passions, and preferences. They lead different lifestyles – some that you will never be able to empathize with unless you dive deep in qualitative and quantitative data. And that is precisely the point of persona research.Laura Busche
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Personally, I believe in tools that close the gap between professionals and beginners, understanding that – push comes to shove – this is a world of beginners.Laura Busche
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I faced people from all walks of business who fully disregarded design (though they were completely influenced by it). I also met fine artists who drowned in their own work and the dense creative universe in their minds. Then I met designers. And instantly fell in love. Let me tell you why. Designers are familiar with critiques. They not only tolerate them but actively look out for them. They honestly believe in iterations and learn to edit down their work. They embrace simplicity and create beauty based on requirements other than their own. Design education teaches you to run away from assumptions and to have the stomach to scrap your work often. I’m bringing this up because it’s time to bridge the gap between design and business.Laura Busche
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So, you don’t have money to invest in your brand? You do have money for damage control, right? Here’s the thing: anyone can make your brand inferior in your absence.Laura Busche
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Research conquers doubt. It aligns everyone around the incontestable. Research is the key to clarity–in startups, enterprises, and life itself.Laura Busche
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Brands play in an exciting sandbox of symbolic meanings.Laura Busche
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People change, and so do their aspirations, and so should brands.Laura Busche
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Make sure you test your brand story’s recipe with whomever you’re cooking it for.Laura Busche
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Lean brands are the result of continually testing assumptions.Laura Busche
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Do everything in your power to make customers go confidently in the direction of their purchase intention.Laura Busche
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Brand and product don’t compete. Brand is product, and everything else conforming to the unique story that consumers create when they think of you.Laura Busche
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Products shouldn’t just work well, they must unfold well.Laura Busche
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People relate to people, and if your brand feels like people, they’ll relate to you, too.Laura Busche
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Positioning is finding the right parking space inside the consumer’s mind and going for it before someone else takes it.Laura Busche
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Your brand story’s “happily ever after” involves open wallets.Laura Busche
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All human aspirations are opportunities for brands to build relationships.Laura Busche
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Everything and everyone represents at least one brand. Therefore, to brand or not to brand is not even a question.Laura Busche
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In today’s saturated marketplace, you’ll go nowhere selling a “bunch of features.” We are in the business of disrupting the market with brands that matter.Laura Busche
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What is the “Once upon a time” of your brand story? Ask yourself this: “How does what I’m building help consumers close the gap between who they are today and who they want to be tomorrow?Laura Busche
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Text, images, and video are the paint swatches of 21st-century artists – with a single catch: this form of art has to communicate, engage, and sell.Laura Busche
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A brand is the unique story that consumers recall when they think of you. This story associates your product with their personal stories, a particular personality, what you promise to solve, and your position relative to your competitors. Your brand is represented by your visual symbols and feeds from multiple conversations where you must participate strategically.Laura Busche
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If building a disruptive, dynamic brand is not in your plans, neither is profit.Laura Busche