Marketing Mutiny

Join the Conversation!

Claire Paniccia

(3 mins 35 secs read)

Hi there! I’m Claire Paniccia – I’m a content marketing strategist for neurodivergent and spoonie online entrepreneurs.

Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is about being aware of how you think, work, and exist in the world, noticing how that shifts at different times, and keeping it all in mind as you make decisions.

In my marketing (and in how I teach marketing), this is absolutely key. I’m always taking my own energy, capacities, and how I work best into consideration whenever I’m making decisions about marketing.

For example, I know that my brain is very project-oriented. I do much better when I’m focusing entirely on one project, and then moving on to the next project. So for my marketing efforts, instead of constantly trying to maintain a social media presence to grow my audience, while also nurturing and selling to my email list, all on an ongoing basis (which burns me out), I do things in projects. 

I spend a month running my Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit, and that’s how I do my audience growth as one big project. And the rest of the year when I’m not running a summit, I’m nurturing and selling to my email list. Because that’s what works for my brain.

Integrity: Integrity is about your actions lining up with your values. You can say you value xyz all day long, but if your actions don’t back that up, you’re not acting in integrity. For my personal definition, it also includes not trying to deceive or manipulate your audience, and being transparent in your business.

One of the many ways this shows up in my marketing is in how I make my social values explicit, both directly on my sales and work with me pages as value requirements, but also indirectly, via things sprinkled throughout my content marketing.

There’s two reason for this explicitness: 

1. I don’t want to work with people who disagree with my fundamental social values (eg. that Black lives matter or that trans women are women and trans men are men). This is about protecting my energy, protecting myself as a queer and non-binary person, and protecting the ripple effect of my work.
2. I want to do everything I can to protect those in my community who have marginalized identities and who might be harmed by the presence of people with different social values.

Self-Directed Ambition: To me, ambition isn’t about making money or reaching society’s markers of success. It’s about finding your own definition of success, both personally and professionally, and constantly working towards it, while also enjoying the present and the journey. It’s also about trying new things and stretching yourself in new ways.

It also encompasses reaching for your success in a way that honors your capacity and nervous system.

I’m always trying new things and starting new projects, but I do my best to do so at a pace that works for me. If I went too fast towards my goals, I think it would be overwhelming for my nervous system! 

And when I try new things, I’m only stretching just as far outside of my comfort zone as I feel okay with. Sometimes that’s only a little bit of a stretch, like sending an email to my list about something vulnerable. Sometimes that’s a huge stretch, like the first time I ran my summit. The capacity might vary, but it’s all about being self-aware and honoring what I notice about my capacity in that moment. 

One marketing strategy I did a while back that was values-driven and got me clients was back in 2020, a few months into lockdown, I started hosting free weekly coworking sessions for my community.

The decision to start running coworking was less values-driven and more that I just needed some socializing at the time (lol), but it quickly became an absolutely fantastic way to connect with my audience and nurture a real relationship with them.

The way I ran coworking, it also operated as a free office hours with me, so people could ask me questions about content marketing, which gave me loads of ideas for my own content marketing, and I could also tell them about my frameworks and any new offers I was creating as well.

I consider this values-driven because it worked perfectly with how my brain works (self-awareness).

I do really well with small group interactions and with responding to prompts from others, so this form of content (and I absolutely think this counts as content marketing!) worked brilliantly for me.

Through my free coworking sessions, I was able to build a really strong relationship with the people who attended. I was regularly demonstrating my expertise and building a rapport with them — the Know Like Trust factor was strong.

So when I launched a new 1:1 service, it was an absolute no-brainer for my coworking regulars!

Claire's question to you:

Do you feel pressured (by the industry, the world, yourself) to market in a way that doesn’t work for you? What (potentially out-of-the-box) marketing strategies are you using (or could you try) that work super well (like chef’s kiss level) with how you work? 

 Join the conversation!

Find out what today's contribution has sparked and share your own experience, thoughts and questions by heading over here to join in the discussion.

Who is Claire? Claire Paniccia (she/they) is a content marketing strategist who is on a mission to prove that you can build a successful business even if you do things differently than the "gurus" say, in their work with neurodiverse and spoonie online entrepreneurs at her content marketing business Conquer Your Content. With her own ADHD, anxiety, and chronic depression, and a roster of neurodiverse clients, Claire has had to figure out this whole online entrepreneurship and content marketing thing in a way that works for brains that work a little differently.

Find Claire Online: Instagram - Website - Summit website

Catch up with any days you've missed...

If you've missed any emails, or you joined the project late, then click here to catch up.

Copyright © 2023 Sophie Lechner, All rights reserved.