Learnings from the 2020 Social workshop on personal branding

Its is great to be a part of an organization that encourages its employees to build a personal brand. And its even great to be a part of an organization and working with people who have successfully implemented this mantra in their life.

I began writing in 2007 as a society humor blog since I thought that as I have nothing else to write that people would like to read and moreover as humor sells, it is a good starting point. Then 2 years later when I started working at 2020 Social and as my worked involved a lot of research in Social Media, I realized that probably I should write about social media too as I have a lot to say about it. Hence started the dilemma between writing what I wanted to write ( Society Humor) and what I was good at ( brands, marketing and social media) because of the obvious reasons of working in a social business strategy firm and having authored a Brand Management Textbook.

Typically I should have chosen one of them long ago because writing about society humor and marketing would be confusing to anybody. It is difficult for anybody to digest, " He is a social media guy writing serious stuff and also a funny guy writing random stuff". But I did not want to part away with making fun of people, one reason also being that any typical funny blog posts on this blog generated much more comments than a social media blog which I wrote then on my company blog. So then I thought of Barista, and the way they sell food ( sandwiches, submarines, lasagnas etc) but effectively branding themselves as a beverage ( and that too coffee) company. The learning was, market your USP and keep the additionals inside the shelf. Hence this blog became a place for "Social Media, Marketing & other random stuff" where essentially the social media part was highlighted and the other funny posts were kept in another category tab.

But then yesterday in the 2020 Social Salon Saturday workshop I learnt that a) I am not Barista and b) One needs to choose a very niche thin segment of workspace and try to build a personal expertise brand there.Also that the best time to develop a personal brand was 20 years ago and the next best time is now!  So it appears that it is time to make a choice whether I want to write the random funny stuff that I like to write or whether I want to write the stuff which actually adds value to me in the domain related to my work.

Moreover over the time I have realized that I always had so much to say about marketing and social media but never really seriously thought about putting anything more than my research on this blog. So as a note to myself, let me remember this day as the day I chose to write about marketing and social media than writing about society humor. Maybe its high time that I grow up!