1/ Branding for SWers (Thread):

Branding. We throw the word around all the time. It’s a buzzword. Some of us aren't exactly sure what it means and others think they kinda get it but aren’t exactly sure how to pull it off.

2/ In this thread, I’m going to break down what branding is, how to do it, when to do it and how and when to rebrand.

What is branding? What does it mean? Do you need to do it?

So what is branding, anyway?

3/ I swear to god I used to think when I was new in business that it boiled down to fonts, colors, etc that you could consistently use in your online and printed materials, and while, yes that’s a part of it, it’s a small part of what your “brand” is.

4/ Let me clarify something before we move on. I am so tired of the word BRAND.

5/ For all intense and purposes, and for the sake of clarity, I’m going to use that word over and over again (guh) in this thread, but I think looking for your “brand”, especially in the first year or two of your business is putting the cart before the horse.

6/ Seth Godin, marketing guru, puts it perfectly: "A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another."

Let me explain it this way.

7/ Your brand, in the simplest terms, is CONSISTENCY. Having a consistent message, tone, and point of view. Having consistent imagery and content. Having a consistent voice. This is really all branding is.

8/ I want you to try to remember that as we go through the rest of this thread because for creative entrepreneurial types, it’s very, very easy to get caught up in the fun, artsy parts of our business.

9/ Next thing you know, we’re procrastinating on doing money-making activities and fretting over which shade of pink to use on our website. We’re going to try to curb this natural urge to be perfectionists and to procrastinate. Believe me, I’ve been there too. PLENTY OF TIMES.

10/ Since branding is all about CONSISTENCY, it can really be developed over time. You can start with a solid direction but you won’t really know if that’s suitable and enjoyable for you until you’ve been working for a while.

11/ If you are in your freshman year of SW, I would suggest reading through this, but not putting the emphasis on brand until you start to really learn what type of content, voice, and tone you enjoy (and makes you money).

12/ So, the argument can be made, do you even need to “brand”? Well, after you’ve been in business for a little while, you sort of can’t help it. Branding can also be looked at as “delivering what my audience expects to see from me.”

13/ You can either gradually do it on purpose, or you can let it happen organically. Neither is correct, but I’d personally rather control how clients view me and my business as much as possible.

What branding is NOT:

14/ Branding isn’t font, color choices, web design, etc. I swear when I was a baby SWer, if someone came to me for branding advice, I would have hit them with advice like “ well, I like fuschia for you and Playfair Display”.

15/ I know I’ve told this story on my Twitter before, but my second year in business, I paid $750 for a branding consultation that boiled down to a SWOT analysis (stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Obstacles, and Threats - a common brand report in corporate marketing circles)…

16/ …and some font recommendations. While I would never encourage anyone to not pay for business advice if that’s what they thought they needed to do, I can assure you that the branding piece of this business is not that serious. You can do this for free on your own.

17/ It’s going to take time, patience, and reflection, but you can.

The moving parts you’ll need to nail down.

Over time, we are going to figure out everything from tone to voice to color to content to social media.

18/ I wrote at length about Twitter marketing and Content Strategy in my other threads, so we won’t be covering those in detail here. We will return to the concept of voice and touchstones that I referenced in the Twitter thread.

19/ Much like the content strategy thread, we are not tackling our branding in one sitting. It takes professional marketing teams 2 - 6 months or longer (according to a quick google just now) to develop a brand.

20/ Please don’t think you have to have all of this figured out tonight, or by next Saturday. If it takes a college-educated corporate marketing team half a year, it’s is okay if it takes you that long, or longer.

21/ So, again OVER TIME, branding includes but is not limited to the following:

Your brand identity - If your brand itself is the consistent repetition of an emotional or philosophical idea, your brand identity is the face of your brand.

22/ Typography, color, packaging and messaging.

Your Point of View - Tone, voice, brand ideals.

Your

First steps to figuring out your brand, no matter how long you’ve been in business.

23/ Okay, so maybe you’re just near the beginning of your business, or maybe you’ve been doing this a few years and you want to tighten up your branding. Where and how do we even start this process.

24/ Grab the notebook I keep telling you to grab or power up your laptop and let’s get started. If you went through the Twitter thread with me (linked in pinned thread), you already did the first two steps. If you weren’t here they are.

25/ Set a timer for five minutes and write down a few things that resonate with your SW character. With my previous persona they were wine, coffee, opera, red lips, black lace. Not revolutionary, but that’s what they were.

26/ Maybe it’s a specific fetish, maybe it’s cooking, maybe it’s your home city, maybe it’s your red hair. Focus on things that make you a little bit different from everyone else.

27/ (Not that mine were in any way unique, but it just goes to show you that you can build a successful brand from … not much.)

Next, set your timer for another 5 minutes and write down EMOTIONAL words that describe your SW character.

28/ Is she funny, sadistic, sweet, accepting, radicalized, spoiled? If we were talking about my current account - this one I’m on now - I would say funny, open, inviting, a tiny bit irreverent.

29/ If I was talking about my previous persona, I would say hedonistic, seductive, sensual, rebellious, sweet, accepting. I’m always trying to be funny, though, because I enjoy my own sense of humor, so that stands for both accounts.

30/ These two lists are more than enough to start your branding process on the right foot. An important note though, especially for FSSW (like me!), don’t automatically assume that “fancy” is a good brand. There’s a lot of fancy going around.

31/ Aim to be DIFFERENT, not to be fancy.

Let’s take things a few steps further. In your notebook or on your laptop, write on these questions:

How do I want my clients to perceive me?
What do I want others to remember about me?
What are my strengths?

32/ (Always play to your strengths!)

Consider external perceptions:

How would peers describe me?
What does my body of work say about me so far?
What feedback have I gotten about my work from clients and colleagues?

33/ Take the answers to these questions and use that information to answer the following:

Who am I (in this business?) - combining how you want to be perceived with how you are perceived
Why am I here? What legacy do you want to leave?

34/ What can I offer to clients and/or community? - what makes your content/service unique
Where am I going/what do I want next? - what are your mid range/long term goals financially and for your business

35/ While I love our community, and it’s wonderful to find a place to slot in, I’m going to keep coming back to this point in almost everything I teach: Don’t be afraid to stand out and be different.

36/ I would even go so far as to suggest that it is your uniqueness that will make you the most money, once you know how to promote and present it.
Let’s go a little further.

Determining Your Goals.

37/ To really start nailing down “brand”, you’re going to have to figure out where you are headed with your sex work business. This is one solid reason to wait until after the first year or two before even thinking about branding.

38/ It’s *probably*, although this certainly going to be true in every case, not going to be perfectly clear to you until after the first year or so what type of work you enjoy, if this is just a vehicle for the next phase of your life, or if this is a career for you.

39/ All options are perfectly okay, of course! But, the time you put into a brand that you plan on retiring after a couple of years is completely different than the time and planning you will put into a brand that you plan on sticking with for the foreseeable future.

40/ So ask yourself now, in detail, where do I see myself with this persona in a year or two? (making a ton of money is assumed, and therefore not a good answer here, sorry) Will I be putting my energy in to slip creating, camming, FMTYs? Will I be known as a writer?

41/ An activist? A porn actor? Having an idea of this NOW is a good start to figuring out your brand. We are going to start as we mean to go on.

42/ This is not a discussion on the whorearchy by any means but a worker whose goals include FMTYs as a travel companion would have a markedly different branding plan than someone who wants to be known as the Queen of Mommy Domme clips.

43/ Both of these folx would have a completely different branding plan than someone who wants to be known mostly as an activist. I know you get what I’m saying here.

44/ It in no way implies that you can’t do a variety of things, or be a FSSW and an activist, but if you are a FSSW and an activist that is a definite point of view for your brand.

Pinpoint your Unique Value Proposition

45/ So we’ve talked voice, “touchstones” (really need to come up with a better name for that), perceptions of ourselves and how others perceive us. We’ve talked long term goals and how that affects our brand now.

We’re going to get familiar with UVP now.

46/ It stands for Unique Value Propostion. What is it about you and/or your character that is the most unique? What do you do better than ANYONE else? Yes, blow jobs can be an answer. Anything can be the answer here.

To wit, answer these questions:

47/ A) what benefit you offer people
B) who those people are
C) how you solve their problems
D) what makes you different from others like you.
If you’re having trouble answering these questions, try to think about what you enjoy about your job.

48/ I understand fully that this is a mark of privilege (assuming that you enjoy sex work), but let’s say that you’re a cam person. You enjoy the banter and taking the piss out of guys in your cam room and they enjoy it too.

49/ Let’s say you’re a FSSW, as I spent most of my career. I most enjoyed providing a non-judgemental space for men in midlife and older to misbehave. This became an integral part of my brand over time. These are powerful clues to develop a brand.

50/ From here, you can figure out your audience and what you do better than anyone else.

Craft Your Story Arc

A great way to enrich your brand story is by developing your story arc.

51/ This can be as true or as fictional as you like, although I tell my coaching clients that a half-truth is always easier to tell than a full lie. As I’ve mentioned before, we work in a world of smoke and mirrors. Sex work is really intimate show business.

52/ It’s good to understand the value of telling a compelling story arc as part of your branding.

53/ I’m not going to share specific details of my previous persona’s story arc, but let’s look at it this way - romanticize the details of your life and craft them into a story that suits your brand.

54/ Imagine that you are being interviewed and the journalist asks “so tell me how you got to where you are.”

Remembering that we are doing this branding process over the course of months, take your time as you hammer out the arc of your story.

55/ Your clients and customers will want to know relevant details that build your character story and give color and depth to your character.

Looking at your real life story (a half-truth is easier to tell than a full lie), weave a tale that leads to your persona.

56/ Were you a lingerie model? A young professional turned SWer? A lifelong kinkster who eventually began creating content based around your passion? Is this a second career for you? A third?

57/ The more interesting, yet believable, you can make your story, the more you can mine it for additional touchstones to incorporate into your branding.

Hopefully obvious safety note: Change all details that would lead people to piece together your actual identity.

58/ I never told clients the area I lived in, where I had attended school, or any names of previous employers. I alluded to the types of jobs I had, the general areas I had lived in, etc. Your safety always comes first.

59/ Determining your story will create a brand narrative that clients will become attached and relate to. Good questions to ask yourself: What obstacles have I overcome? What desirable goals have I reached or am in the process of reaching?

60/ How have I changed for the better through this process?

Establish Your Character Personality

We touched on this briefly when we discussed tone. Let’s expand on it. This is where authenticity starts to come into play.

61/ While we work in a world of intimate show business, we want our personas to remain a little authentic. Why?

To prevent burnout. It’s impossible to be in this business long term and constantly play a part that is completely foreign to who you really are.

62/ This job is straining enough without having to play constantly against type. You want to bridge your real personality and your SWer branding, as much as your feel comfortable.
To build credibility. Like, here’s the thing.

63/ Clients will buy hook line and sinker into the fantasy, but when you can allow a little transparency as far as personality, they really begin to trust and like you.
Longevity.

64/ If this is a long term career for you, eventually you are going to need to find a way to meld your persona with your actual life. This does not mean compromising privacy or doxxing yourself.

65/ It means that if you are funny in real life, allow yourself to be funny in your work. If you’re politcal, be political. Anything else is draining and too hard to maintain.

So when we looked at tone of voice previously, what did you write down?

66/ Now, let’s look at your real life personality traits. How do people in your real life describe you? How do people in the world of sex work world describe you?

Writing Your Brand Statement. Let’s take all of this and write a brand statement.

67/ After all this work, we’re finally going to have something concrete. It’s a brand statement. Just one or two sentences that you can refer to internally to keep yourself on course with your content and social media strategy.

68/ You can make it exciting or boring (exciting is better). The best example I ever found about this was online and about Santa Clause. I’m going to paste it here.

Please observe:

Santa Claus is the CEO of a non-profit organization that gives gifts to children globally.

69/ With decades of experience in supply chain management and manufacturing technology, Claus has helped turn Christmas into the modern celebration that it is today.

Versus:

70/ Santa Claus is the jolly, grandfatherly figure behind the single biggest gift-giving operation in the world.

71/ Known for his spectacular flying reindeer and wacky chimney delivery system, Claus has become a loved cultural icon who’s turned Christmas into the modern celebration that is today.

72/ You can imagine what brand statement is more compelling, inspiring, and is a better starting point for focusing your further brand work on.

You can’t be all things to all people.

73/ I’ve touched on this a lot, but it’s important to understand that in business, and in defining your brand, you don’t want to try to be all things to all people.

74/ You want to be yourself (your SW character) and you want to be that consistently enough that your people find YOU.

What if you’re othered in any way?

I’m not going to paint marginalization as a positive thing, ever.

75/ But in this one instance, I would say if you are “othered” in any way GOOD. Play up your otherness. Allow it to make you stand out. I drew attention to the fact that I was fat as much as possible. Marketing myself as “rich, luscious, a delicacy.”

76/ I probably tweeted “my pussy is a delicacy” at some point, btw. I drew parallels to fattening foods, to Rubenesque bodies, etc. I never played it down or apologized for it. I reveled in it and drew attention to it.

77/ Less fat now, though by no means skinny, I’ve taken to drawing attention to my age (over 40) on my current account. A woman with a past who’s seen some shit. The vodka auntie who dated inappropriate men in her youth but remains independent.

78/ The one with allll the good advice and stories. This is deliberate, I’m just saying, even though I swear on my dogs life that all my stories are true. I don’t have anything to hide anymore since I’m mostly out in my real life. It is, however, branding.

79/ We’re all doing it, all the time. Monetize your uniqueness.

Visual Branding

We’ve got a good start as to the concepts behind the brand. Now it’s time to focus on the visuals.

80/ Taking your notebook and looking over it, touchstones, voice, et al, let’s think about tangibles. Not a bad idea to start googling things like “sophisticated color palettes for websites” or “rebellious fonts” if that suits the narrative you’re going for.

81/ You may have a color scheme in mind already. This is a subject for a thread all on its own and I’m not sure I’m qualified to write it. But, I want to give a couple of pieces of advice on this.

Don’t

Use your favorite colors

82/ Use curly script fonts (they’re hard to read and sometimes look dated)
Automatically go for red, black, or purple as your colors (we SWers love these colors)
Pick visuals without research.

Do

83/ Do some research on color psychology and how it applies to your brand personality (are you fun, a femme fatale, a rebel?)
Do some research on basic color theory (to help pick complementary colors for your site)

84/ Understand basic typography (what types of fonts to use where: serif, sans serif, display, etc)
Look at complementary brands to see what they are doing as far as visuals

Borrowing Credibility of other brands

I’m not talking about other SWers here.

85/ Although I’ve repeatedly told you that while it is okay to look for inspiration from other SWers, it’s NEVER okay to copy them. It always comes back to bite the copier in the ass. Don’t do it.

I’m talking about larger complimentary brands.

Listen, full disclosure.

86/ Cancel me - I stole the green for my “luxury” companion logo straight from Rolex. Just like, eyedropper tool… bloop.. And next thing you know I was using that green.

I really like Rolex green.

I obviously can’t legally recommend you doing the same.

87/ Colors and fonts can be copyrighted and you can get in legal trouble for using them. Cocacola red, Starbucks green. All copyrighted.

What you can do, however, is observe the types of color palettes, fonts, and visuals they use.

88/ Going to make some quick recommendations here, just to get you started.

Are you “luxury”? Check out hermes and Veuve Cliquot.

Are you rebellious? Take cues from Jack Daniels and Harley Davidson.

Are you funny? Check out Ben and Jerry’s.

89/ Now, I’m not saying to model your sex biz off of a hippie ice cream brand, but I am saying that checking out their color palettes, font choices, social media profiles, etc. can give you CLUES about your own brand.

We’re talking about brand archetypes here.

90/ And it’s a valuable bit of info that’s good for you to know about your brand. Google brand archetype quiz and go to Kaye Putnam’s website.

91/ It’s a quick free quiz, which in exchange for your email, you’ll receive a small kit with great info about compatible brands, fonts, color schemes, verbiage. I love this resource and recommend it to everyone.

92/ Since branding is all about consistency remember, weaving common color and visual themes throughout all your content is a key way to train your fanbase what to expect from you, and every time you deliver, they become more attached.

93/ Having a strong consistent online persona. Once you have the beginning of your brand figured out with the above moving parts, we begin our quest for total world domination. Kidding, almost.

94/ At this point, if you haven’t done so already, go to every platform you can think of and reserve your business identity. Even if you don’t think you want to use it right now, or ever. You are creating a placeholder.

95/ In business, I like to plan for both the worst and best case scenarios. By this I mean, what if you become super well known and you haven’t created a tiktok account yet and in six months some other bitch is on tiktok under your name using your brand equity for views?

96/ No, can’t have that.

Go on and reserve your name as the account on each platform you can. Try to make the usernames the same or at least as similar as possible. No “MistressJaneDoe” on one site and “LilMissPerkyboobs678” on another. Namechk .

97/ com is a good resource for checking username availability on most (vanilla) sites. Make sure to reserve your identity on each adult platform as well. After you reserve each name, Put a similar (or the same) profile and header picture on each account.

98/ You’ve reserved your space there and increased your brand equity. Good job. Now you have those if/when you’re ready.

Teach people what to expect from you and deliver over and over again.

99/ I’m going to return to this over and over because I want this to be the main takeaway from this entire thread - branding is nothing more than consistency. Consistency in visuals, tone, message. That’s all it is.

100/ From that you train your fanbase what they can expect from you. If they like it, they stick around. When they stick around, you continue to deliver on your brand promise. They eat that up. And the beautiful symbiotic relationship continues.

101/ Live your brand, in all aspects of your business. So, how does this work in all areas of business? Let’s say you’re a FSSW and you take in-person appointments. Or, let’s say you blog, create clips, and do phone work.

102/ Since you’ve trained your fan base and client list what to expect, it’s important you deliver on your brand in all aspects of your business. If you’re smart and dominant, play that up. If you’re demure and proper until behind closed doors, play THAT up.

103/ I can’t stress enough, that the more you deliver on your brand promise, the more loyal your client and fan base. People come back to you when they know what to expect and you give that to them again and again.

104/ My visuals borrowed heavily from those of Dita von Teese (red lips, winged eye, black hair, fair skin, vintage vibe) in my photos. I carried that over to my in-person work as well. It helps.

When is it time for a rebrand? Ah, we sex workers always want to do a rebrand.

105/ I know this because I threw that word around too like beads at mardi gras. Let’s talk about what a rebrand actually is and whether or not we want to be doing them regularly.

Short answer, no we don’t.

106/ In the marketing/advertising world, companies rebrand on average once every 7 to 10 years. It’s a massive process that takes months (or more) of planning.

107/ While I understand there are circumstances where a small business (like a single sex worker) might want or need a rebrand, they are few and far between.

108/ Don’t shoot me because I’m saying this with love, but I think our obsession with the rebrand is more about perfectionism and procrastination. I’d rather spend those weeks making money then going through all the bullshit I just wrote above again.

109/ When should you do a sharp rebrand? When you’ve been outed and you need to protect your identity, for one. I can’t think of another instance where it’s absolutely necessary.

If you want to change your persona name, fine.

110/ But understand that you may be losing brand equity in the process. And understand that you are going to have to go through all the above steps above again to start completely over. It’s a lot of work, and I’d rather see you getting money.

So what do we do instead.

111/ We take a page from pop music and think “Eras” instead.

So, I don’t know your music taste, but I know mine and it’s pretty shit. I mean that. If you’ve ever heard of BTS, Madonna, or Taylor Swift you’ve seen the art of the “era” as opposed to the rebrand first hand.

112/ Instead of creating an entirely new brand, allow yourself to express and play with your creativity by remaining your character by doing launches and releases throughout your career.

113/ This plays hand in hand with my content strategy thread and the launch/ release/press tour cycle and how we can apply it to our jobs is too much to get into in this already too long thread. Another time. But you can see what I’m saying, I hope. You’re still your character.

114/ You just have a new temporary project that’s launched that you are promoting. Remember when Taylor released Reputation and “the old taylor couldn’t come to the phone right now because she’s dead”? Yeah I hate that song too. But then she came back with Lover and Folklore.

115/ Still Taylor, but exploring her creative process. Think of your content in the same way. Eras. Not rebrands. This will build credibility as your brand stays around for a long time. This builds brand equity.

Colors, fonts, styling, visuals, content can all change.

116/ That’s not a rebrand. You’re still you. <3

How to refine your brand.

If you’re in this business for more than a couple of years, you’re going to continuously refine your brand. It’s not a meeting you have to set with yourself, although that’s not a terrible idea.

117/ An afternoon to look over your brand and visuals to update anything that needs it a couple of times a year or so.

A great way to be continuously refining your brand is to create a private Pinterest board of visuals.

118/ Ideas are everywhere in this amazing world and when you find something inspiring, make a note of it in your phone, a notebook, or snap a picture. Pin ideas to a private Pinterest board or if you’re od school a scrapbook or journal like me.

119/ This is a great way to collect inspiration for photoshoots, tweets, and other social media posts. For content. Again this goes right along with my content thread. Because branding and content go hand in hand.

120/ Don’t ever think that a sharp rebrand is necessary, love unless your safety is at stake. In which case, you must do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Gradual evolution is what you want most times. You lose less momentum (and profit) that way.

121/ How to manage your brand if you have several outlets? Is it smarter to make separate accounts?

We’re winding down here, but there is one important thing we need to address. So what if you have multiple projects? You’re a dominatrix and a business coach.

122/ Or you are a FSSW and a cam girl. Is it smarter to make separate accounts social media accounts and websites?

Well, yes and no, in my opinion.

Websites, yes. If you have two or more completely separate SW businesses, having a website for each is smart.

123/ As far as social media, I don’t think it’s as wise. It’s impossible to be social (the most important word in social media) and build a network effectively if you are splitting your time between several accounts.

124/ The exception would be if you had a personal social media and also owned a company that had a different name. I would definitely link that in my bio, though. “Jane Smith cam girl and owner of @ janesayssextoys”

125/ Let your social media be your social media, and if you blog on any of your websites, post it there. If you’re not sure, you can try it for a while and see how it goes.

126/ If it doesn’t work over the period of a few weeks (work = gain traction and increase views/sales) then you have your answer. You can look at another strategy.

In my opinion, I would loosely link all my businesses if it was safe to do so.

127/ If it’s not safe, I completely understand. Don’t do it, then. But if you can, do - Your social influence is stronger that way.

So that’s most of what I know about branding, kids. Tl;dr - it’s a process, like everything.

128/ It’s important but don’t waste a lot of time doing it. Be thoughtful in your presentation and interactions and branding will happen automatically. Branding is at its heart, CONSISTENCY.

Two things as we close.

129/ I made a 181-page branding workbook for my previous escorting persona. If there’s interest, I can format it for distribution and make it available. If there’s interest, let me know.

If there’s anything anyone would like to add to this thread, please comment.

130/ Or add any links to valuable resources. As always, I’m not presenting this as the be-all and end-all. Just my perspective and experience of what works.