Rebranding Me
I’m a pretty big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I try to make them every year and have a pretty good track record of keeping them. After last year’s, which involved making the biggest decision of my life, any further should be a piece of cake.
This year I’ve got a couple. One is a little too personal to share, but the other I’m happily launching the beta version of right now: I’m going to spend some time working on my personal brand.
We now live in an age where you’re not just a person anymore, you’re a brand. We’re all living largely in the public eye, and even if most of the public doesn’t care about you specifically they might one day. Everything we do has to be viewed through the lens of a brand ambassador.
As a result I’m going to self-promote more. I’ve always been lazy about this because I’ve always felt results should speak for themselves. But that unfortunately isn’t always the way it works.
So I’m going to focus on that a little. I’m not trying to get a job or become a full-time public speaker, as I’ve got enough going on running my startup to occupy my time. But I am going to try to raise my profile. I realize this is selfish and maybe even a little narcissistic, but it might also be fun and rewarding.
I’m going to start by doing that with this blog. The best way to get a blog really rolling is to focus on a topic and post regularly, so that’s what I’m going to do. It won’t be every day, but it won’t be every few months either.
The topic for this blog will mostly be tech entrepreneurship. I’ll mostly avoid tangents like politics except where they intercept. I really only have maybe three things I have anything interesting to say about these days (the other two being board games and food) and that’s by far the best source of material. I will better maintain my cooking blog too if you’re into that sort of thing and/or just totally want to cyber-stalk me.
I’m debating using Twitter again. I’ve never been able to get into it, but I think that’s also because I’ve never tried the right way. I haven’t made an effort to follow a set of people that would lead to any real discussion. As a result it’s been too easy to dismiss as inane. I’m still not convinced it isn’t, but I might try to find out.
So there you have it. I’m going to try to take a little time to try to turn my personal brand into something. I love the way Fred Wilson has done so, and while I don’t have the time and desire (or at least the incentive) to do so as well as he does, I’m going to do a lot more than the nothing I did last year.
January 10, 2012 at 12:02 am
Thanks for posting this! I’m trying to do the same so as a community let’s keep each other motivated.
January 10, 2012 at 9:43 pm
Sounds great. Let’s do it.
January 11, 2012 at 2:33 am
I have yet to figure out the proper balance between Tumblr and my WordPress blog. That will be the first thing I figure out.
January 11, 2012 at 9:24 am
I’ve been reading your posts since The Poker Chronicles and I’m very glad to hear you will be blogging more; you are a very talented writer. Your opinions are well reasoned and level-headed, which is a rare find on the Internet.
I’ve reached the same conclusion myself about the need to control your message. I recently embarked on my 3rd attempt to use Twitter regularly and this time I’m actually finding value there.
I’d like to eventually blog too, but my current holdup is my unwillingness to put time into producing content when no one is listening at first. It’s a classic chicken and egg problem, you need good content to attract readers but I don’t to spend the time producing good content before I have readers.
January 13, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Thanks Logan. I remember you. I saw that you were running something fantasy sports related, is that still true?