On Personal Branding
Nov 11th, 2007 by msdanielle
I met Neil Patel at BlogWorld Expo — he runs a personal branding blog, and is also the co-founder of CrazyEgg. In this day and age of increasing social media sites and advanced online networking, how does a person stand out?
Neil says, “With a bit of hard work and a few other tricks, you can become a rock star in your industry and get the reputation that makes money.” So I started thinking about what my personal brand would look like. Do I want to be a rock star?
I recalled coming across another personal branding site, which at the time I couldn’t remember. Luckily, I’d saved the site in my RSS reader, and it’s the Personal Branding Blog of Dan Schawbel. He states, “Personal branding and social media is not for everyone. It is geared to those who want to advance and become known in their niche.”
Hmmm… Becoming “known” in my niche. Isn’t this what we bloggers want in the long run? So perhaps many of these bloggers are branding themselves without thinking of themselves as brands. But I have a feeling the next huge wave will be in personal branding. With everyone buying their name URLs and blogging about what they know or what they are good at, it is similar to building a brand site. A lot more personal sites and blogs are popping up this year, which means increased competition in just about every small niche.
Do you have your own name URL or specialty site that you run? Do you consider yourself a brand? What do you think about this trend? What do you do that makes you stand out?
I’m honestly interested in this, and want to see what others think about it, too. I think personal branding is on the brink and is going to blow up big time online.
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I think personal branding is truely going to blow up. This is why I am using Vik Dulat everywhere I comment so people can remember the name and once my blog is established, all you would have to hear is Vik Dulat
This is very true. Personal branding is getting more and more important in the blogosphere and you’re going to need to have a big name in order to be recognized. I think it’s very similar to Hollywood. Movie stars have names that are huge brands that attract massive amounts of sponsors and job opportunities. A guy like Brad Pitt is obviously going to have an advantage over Joe Nobody.
I think branding yourself will be a good idea. I’ve always wanted to do something like that. With my “online” name, browie. It’s a very unique name and think it could work for me.
my goal with the KKBlog was to instill a effect that would be reflected over and over the readers mind throughout his visit and would recognize my logo in a line up!
I’m a big fan of personal branding. The reason I started my site was that I wanted to do something unique and related to the field in which I work (food). I have no interest in blogging full time, but using my blog to leverage myself as an expert in the industry. I say – hey, I have passion – look what I did (blog); I am creative, can come up with new and successful concepts and can follow through on projects.
i agree. blogging doesn’t have to be a “full time” gig for you to be an expert
One thing about getting famous is that it takes a certain personality to be able to handle it . . . if you’re the sensitive type, just remember that criticism. . .very harsh criticism comes with the territory . . . for me . . there’s a fine line to walk when creating your own personal brand . . . study the way NFL quarterbacks Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady brand themselves and then go see who has a better image . . . . you’ll see what i’m talking about there!
Totally agree but the main reason i secured my name a year or so ago was purely so i could do with it what i will, i had no pre-conceived ideas what i’d do with it at the time and still only run it as a personal blog about my life in Japan among other things.
For the minimal outlay in securing your name i think you’d be crazy not too.
I’m very very very into personal branding. My new company, http://www.synchronous.ca, has “A Jeff Kee Company” at the bottom of it along with other copyright/credit notices.
And I will never ever give up my http://www.jeffkee.com domain.
that is interesting bc “JEFF KEE Companies” was one of the first things i saw on your blog when i first visited it. it made me stop and think, hmm who is this jeff kee guy?
i don’t think i’ll ever give up msdanielle.com…
Well now you know who this Jeff Kee guy is..
Asian, nice ass, nice boobs (NOT), great dancer (somewhat), talks dirty (VERY), and is still young (22 on Oct 12th).
I think you must be known after john chow show your pic in his blog…
And I’m one who have been attract about it.. He he he
msdanielle you look great at blog world expo
Ms. Danielle it being all new to us and meeting you I think you are well on your way. Alot of great was said about you. I think that it becomes a requirement in a way to have the branding and isn’t that what everyone wants is the branding recognition! Cheers!
thanks! it was great meeting you ladies too. i’m really looking forward to seeing what you all have in store. i’m sure you girls won’t have any problems branding yourself in the blogosphere!
There are two distinct forces at work here.
#1 – It takes branding to draw the masses.
#2 – It takes the masses to create the traffic numbers and demographics.
#1 will make you a star but not neccessarily rich.
#2 will make you rich but not neccessarily a star.
I wont go into detail on more specifics of those laws but #1 does not always lead to #2 and vice versa. You don’t just need to make a name for yourself, you need to command a targeted demographic in sufficient numbers and its not as obvious as it seems (hint: targeted SEO will draw better demographics than branding in the long run). Keep that in the back of your mind when working on your brand. Great blog btw.
thanks for the input steph. i think i was always thinking a little bit of both when i built this blog. i never really separated the two, but was always more focused on creating quality content in order to bring quality traffic.
That works too
I’m sure you’ve seen blogs that have tons of traffic from linking efforts but the topic is vague and you have no clue who is writing it. On the flip side I see some spectacular branding efforts, everything is done right, but traffic never really increases and the seo is horrid… great brand with no promotion, not even the free kind.
So when are you going to add “not” in front of the “just another ego blog”? The blog has become more than that!
oh you are feeding into the theme of this being an ego blog! (keep it coming)
i’ve seen really awesome sites that have zero seo and no ranking anywhere on the map for anything. these are usually design companies
I thought about this when I came up with my website, because it is all about branding. I realized I had two choices,
1) Personal Brand or
2) Generic Brand
When I thought about Personal Branding, I realized three things about how people react when meeting me for the first time,
1) I want you to meet my friend, Mark, he is deaf but he can lipread so be sure to talk to him face to face.
2) So you are that Mark everyone talks about.
3) You have a famous name.
The #3 is a blessing as well as a curse, my name gained fame when a certain ballplayer broke several homerun records and everyone was talking about it, using his name. So when they found out my name, that’s the comment I get, an immediate recognization.
This immediate recognization leads to # 2. This is what separates me from the ballplayer. Think about it for a minute, if your name was Brad Pitt or Angela Jolie, would you enjoy hearing everyone talk about you even though they are talking about a different “you”?
So when it comes to #2, it is a sense of pride and gratifaction that your name has another “meaning” or identity to it. John Doe must have over 1 million identities, or “meanings”
#3, this is the identity people associate me with when I am introduced to people for the first time. In a way, it is a stigma to my brand, just as the ballplayer has his own stigma to his brand.
Does the ballplayer want to be remembered for the steriod assumptions or his heroics? Do I want to be remembered for my deafness or my heroics?
So just as the ballplayer chose to close the door on the stigma, and be remembered for his heroics, I had to close my door on my stigma and choose a generic name, TheLocoMono for my heroics.
You posed a good question, ms danielle.
[...] Section Two of Dale Carnegie’s timeless classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People” contained six principles to “make people like you.” Out of all four sections, this one seems to have the most application to social media community building, particularly for personal brands. [...]