Brand Me – Message Architecture for Myself

The fourth semester of my content strategy studies at the FH JOANNEUM is about to begin. Time flies and if everything goes according to my plans, I will hand in my master’s thesis in June and take the final examination in July. And then what? How will it feel to be a content strategist with a master’s degree? Will it make a difference? Will it have consequences on my professional career?

To find out about a bit more about myself, I decided to conduct a self-evaluation by performing a non-traditional card sorting with myself. The aim of this unusual exercise was to analyse

• Who I am
• Who I am not
• Who I would like to be

and to come up with a basis for a personal message architecture.

Card Sorting

To put it in a nutshell: card sorting is a research method used to find out how people understand and categorise information. I used the terms (see screenshot below) to analyse how I do it.  Margot Bloomstein introduces the terms in her book “Content Strategy at Work” which is a good source if you want to learn more about this method.

However, my approach did not strictly follow the instructions. I basically used them for inspiration.

The terms that finally (after a prioritising step) ended up in the three categories are described below.

Who I Am (or May Be Perceived as)

• trusted
• responsible
• reliable
• experienced
• focused
• structured
• detail-oriented
• friendly
• historic
• conservative

Who Am I Not

• cool
• trendy
• sexy
• simple
• technological
• elite
• narrow

Who I Would Like to Be

• efficient
• actionable
• high-quality
• smart
• professional
• progressive
• approachable
• strategic
• international

To this list, I added the items from the Who I Am list which I would want to remain:

• trusted
• responsible
• reliable
• experienced
• focused
• structured
• friendly

Basis for a Personal Message Architecture

Client-focused Delivery

• approachable and professional
• high-quality and efficient
• strategic and international

Collaborative

• actionable
• trusted
• responsible
• reliable
• structured

Expertise

• progressive
• smart
• experienced

Attitude

• focused
• friendly

This could be the basis for a message architecture for me as a content strategist but can only be refined after I finished my studies when I hopefully have a clearer idea where my journey leads me to.

@Photos: Alexandra Wurian