I read it all the time: market yourself, develop a personal
branding identity, stand out from the crowd by positioning yourself as a
commodity. Strategy, strategy, strategy.
Yes I get it, being heard above the crowd is valuable in
today’s hypersaturated market where entertainment is comingled with even the
most basic purchases (Since when has beef, or milk, or orange juice needed a
pithy slogan and a jingle? Save your marketing dollars trying to convince me to
buy a device that warms baby wipes)
And naturally we want to save ourselves from the marketing
blunders that allowed this little poor-decision-making gem of marketing dross to
be unleashed on the world.
So I get it, I ought to read up on how to market myself to get and retain readers.
But after about five paragraphs of marketing strategy positioning doublespeak I start wondering if anything exciting is happening on twitter.
Branding is supposed to be creating an identifiable
difference in your “product” that separates it from all the other products out
there. When it comes to personal branding, as it is employed by authors,
songwriters, bloggers, anarchists, talking vegetables, et al, branding is just
having a uniquely distinguishable persona and talent.
How hard is that? We’re all unique snowflakes, right?
Well shoot, it’s hard to think about positioning yourself so
your witticisms and charm bring hordes of readers to your blogs or books. It’s
hard to smile for the virtual camera of interwebiness, which never sleeps and
never forgets.
It’s not really that terribly hard to make up a strategy… I
mean, we can armchair strategies all night long. But it’s the follow-through
and the dedication (or revisifying) which ends up being the toughest part.
What’s a bloke to do?
Usually just do what you do, learn a few tricks along the
way, blog about something that interests you at the time (and in that too-short
free time you would normally reserve for playing video games).
That’s all I got. What about you, oh intrepid reader? Have
you ever wrestled with the “Market Thyself” beast?