Posted on: May 15th, 2008 When Personal Branding is Spread Too Thin
I’ve recently realized that I’m spread too thin. It’s obvious, actually, but painfully so since I became a father. Family comes first, and that’s not just a cliche to abuse. But in the realm of work and blogging and personal branding, I’ve put myself in the awkward position of owning too many websites and delegating too little.
Some changes are going to be made around here. You can already see this in play if you visit my culture blog, which is my flagship website. The site now sees anywhere from 8-12 contributors each week, and I’m rarely one of them. These writers are contributing some entertaining and thought provoking perspectives on American culture, and it’s a pleasure to work with them.
The next step is build the brand of several other sites without promoting my name at the same time. Each site is a unique brand, and should stand on it’s own merit. This helps keep branding steady when you begin to delegate most of the work to other people.
Whether it’s Twitter, blogging, or social media, I’ve found that it’s too easy to be “branded” one particular thing: i.e. a blogger, an SEO, a copywriter, a social media marketer, a reputation manager, a PR guy, etc. Those are hats I wear, but not who I am. And I’ve fought against being labeled one particular title for the past several years.
It wouldn’t suck to be considered an “expert” in one particular field, except I’ve had a notoriously short attention span and find the switching of hats to be a refreshing way to keep work interesting. Not to mention that some day I will finish writing my first book, and I don’t want to face a crowd of people who refuse to accept me as an artist because I’m a marketer of one fashion or another.
So guarding your reputation is important, though Madonna has taught us how successful a person CAN be at reinventing herself. Still, without global Madonna-like exposure, it is still hard to imagine getting the public to accept a guy who doesn’t have a deeply moody and creative starving artist background. Sue me. I don’t want to starve. Does that make me less poetic? Some say “yes.”
To those people, I say that their version of poetic is pitiful and limited to a selfish, self-serving person who has neglected family and personal maturation in order to excel at a talent/skill. I think a man who has experienced marriage, perseverance, compromise, the birth of his children, and the shiftings/growing pains of fatherhood - this is the kind of man who can speak to the human condition. Maybe he isn’t the one to play on our hidden desires to remain brooding teenagers forever. But he knows love, fear, risk, loss, and satisfaction on a level no isolated artist could imagine.
Here’s hoping that someday someone agrees with me.