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Personal Branding & Strategy

Marketing & Visibility | Personal Branding & Strategy

20 Easy Instagram Post Ideas To Boost Your Personal Brand

Coming up with new and exciting posts for your Instagram feed is not always easy, especially when you are building a professional personal brand. Before you begin planning your next batch of posts though, make a list of the main…

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Personal Branding & Strategy

3 Steps for Updating Your Personal Brand in 2022

As we navigate a pandemic that has affected a number of sectors, it is more important than ever to stand out in your field. Now is the perfect time to update your personal brand in preparation for the new year….

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Personal Branding & Strategy

Personal Brand Affinity Basics & How To Improve

Everyone has brands they keep coming back to, the brands they truly resonate with. This is brand affinity at work. Brand affinity isn’t just linked to products either, it can also be a service provider or even an influencer. If…

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Marketing & Visibility | Personal Branding & Strategy

Using Visual Content To Tell Your Brand Story

Stories have the ability to inspire, motivate, and touch your audience – humans love stories! Words are obviously an integral part of telling an engaging story, but images can further enhance its effectiveness. Images help your story to stick in…

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Open post by ashleyrufino with ID 17852348568670195
We’re co-working again on February 18th and we’d love to see you there! 
If you’re tired of working alone, come work with us…
Bring what you’re working on. Work quietly or talk it out. Stay for an hour or stay all day. 
📍 @etherealconfections | Woodstock
🕐 10am-2pm
Well save you a seat! 

Comment “COFFEE” for the link to register for free!
Open post by ashleyrufino with ID 18070566014147387
“I need more visibility!” 
I’ve said it a hundred times. you probably have too.
But what if that’s not actually the problem? 
The Wrong Kind of Attention - Part 1 of 5.  This is part of a 3-week series on visibility strategy for creative entrepreneurs: stop chasing the wrong kind of attention, understand the visibility trap, and make sure your photos aren’t sabotaging everything you’ve built. #creativeentreprenuer #visibilitystrategy #personalbrandstrategy
Open post by ashleyrufino with ID 17847015975642268
Anyways…
Open post by ashleyrufino with ID 18088581545028261
I want my platform to be a place where people don’t have to guess what I stand for. I think a lot of us were trained into palatability.

Speak softly. Keep it positive. Don’t scare people. Don’t lose clients. Don’t “make it political.” Be marketable. Be digestible. Be the kind of woman people feel comfortable around.

And for a long time, that script worked. It kept doors open. It kept the peace. It made business feel safer.

But I don’t want safety that comes from silence.

Because silence is not neutral when people are being harmed in plain sight. Silence isn’t “staying in your lane” when your lane is built on other people’s displacement, fear, and erasure. Silence is not professionalism when it’s really avoidance.
Open post by ashleyrufino with ID 18037868129727990
I spent years trying to become the kind of person who could focus on just one thing. The kind with a clear elevator pitch and a recognizable niche.

Spoiler: compartmentalizing yourself is exhausting.

I tried to organize myself into neat lanes. To choose the right focus. To quiet the parts of me that wanted to make, build, and explore in more than one direction at once. I thought clarity meant narrowing. I thought maturity meant choosing one version of myself and letting the rest go.

None of that has ever actually worked.

The years I spent trying to consolidate, simplify, pick one thing? Those were the years I felt most stuck.

I still don’t have a neat answer for what I do. Quite possibly never will, but I’m learning that accepting how I’m actually built beats trying to force myself into a shape that doesn’t fit.

When I started to allow myself to work in layers instead of lanes… that changed the game.
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Ashley Rufino is a Chicago personal brand photographer, coach + educator for female founders & photographers.

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