Attending and participating in many conferences, I find myself dubbed a great personal brander (above, KD Paine’s picture shows me “forced” to bow my head with one of the greatest personal branders, Chris Brogan). People always ask me how I do it, and I always decline to talk about it because of my stance on this matter. Ironically, this energy has only increased since the acquisition of Livingston Communications was announced.
Further if I tweet something even somewhat quirky or edgy – a by product of being Geoff – it creates waves of DMs to the mentioned conversationalist about what I said. Drama vis a vis public and private messaging ensues. Finally, there’s the light contact stalking, which has gotten to the point that I feel uncomfortable Tweeting on the weekends due to strange references that leak out in conversations.
No matter how hard I strategically avoid this movement, the Livingston personal brand has become inescapable. And that scares the living daylights out of me. You may be asking, “Why?”
Because I know how human I am. And I fear that my personality while clearly me and not contrived, will in some way eclipse, or worse, harm a client or my company. Because, yeah, I do screw up just like everyone else. Further, to me the principle of communications is making my clients successful or achieving something online, not nano-fame.
In many ways my efforts to dodge the personal brand conversation really has to do with what is meaningful to my daily life. Let me list my top priorities:
- Providing strategies to successfully adapt organizational social media for the long-term
- Change the world, particularly through social cause activism
- Provide intelligent conversation and challenge the communications industry to evolve and become better
- Teaching individuals in my life how to execute social media rather than doing it for them
- Serve and market my employer through karmic efforts
Once again, I am reminded of Charles Barkley’s Role Model diatribes from the 90s. And I identify.
The personal brand is a Scarlet Letter, an unwanted, unintentional consequence of marketing my or a client’s organization, and wanting to have fantastic conversations about how online media can change the way communications works. If anything, I’ve intentionally tried to sabotage or minimize my personal brand, and yet here I am.
So, yes, maybe I really have a personal brand, but I do not find it admirable as an achievement. Further, I don’t think it’s a good thing for a long-term enterprise social media strategy UNLESS I am committed to playing team ball. That means sacrifice. And personally I find it to be an encumbering burden that prevents me from feeling free online.
I imagine that I will continue online while the above objectives exist. At the same time, there will always be this omnipresent level of discomfort.
A Word About Chris Brogan
I’ve given Chris a lot of grief and hazing about personal branding over the past few months. I want to state that I think Chris Brogan is a good man who wants to do the world and the industry right. He does a lot of great things for people.
For me the conversation has been about enterprise marketing. Chris has some ideas I like and some less so, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. I want to pay respects to Chris and thank him for allowing me to have these conversations with him.
Further, he demonstrates that the personal brand does work for individual consultants. His recent hires also show scale. It will be interesting to see how he does, and I suspect with the right help and strong back-end comms strategy and results, Chris will grow a strong boutique offering.
That’s always been the rub for me. With the emergence of the paparazzi as social media metaphor. It has allowed personal brands to become monolithic in stature because of the stickiness of web 2.0. Then what happens? Some start to believe that they really are “the shit”, when in actuality it couldn’t be further from the truth.
For most of us though, we would prefer to do what we do behind the scenes and under the radar; and as such, hasn’t it always been about putting the client first anyways?
As I told someone earlier this week, remember 3 things as you rise to the top, or as you “believe” you are rising to the top.. 1) Act like you’ve been there before and 2) Don’t forget where you came from, and 3) Everyone is replaceable
Ah, when we discuss this my wife likes to tell me that I’m just a dork. :)
Geoff, I have not yet had the opportunity to meet your wife, so I might confirm her wisdom. ;)
My delineation comes with regards to purpose. I have a personal brand online — rather, I have SEVERAL. Some know me as a snark, some respect me as a thinker, some as a doer, and some have opinions of me that are all over that map and an amalgam of the above.
A personal brand is a way people think about you as a natural byproduct of who you are and what you mean to them.
A Personal Brand™ is an artificial construct that guides and shapes YOUR behavior, so you can seem to be what you want other people to think of you.
I have been very careful with my use of capital letters. Brogan has a personal brand that works for him, because it is a genuine outgrowth of his caring for others, and his willingness to share and help.
He did not start by saying, “How can I manipulate my visible activities to create a version of me that people will react to in a predictable and intentional manner?”
That is the essence of the Personal Brand™ movement. It makes me ill for many reasons, including but not limited to a scary notion that an individual can only be ONE thing. I want to be a human being. One who thinks. One who helps. One who jokes. One who cries, and empathizes, and sympathizes, and kicks butt, and wins, and calls people out for being less than the complete human being his/her Creator destined them to be.
Personal Branding is a reduction of humanity to a simple artifice, a single dimension. And as Heinlein reminds us, Specialization is for insects.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Geoff. I’m not a Brogan fan because he comes off as very self-serving, making it difficult to acknowledge when he has a good idea; the personal brand is a double-edged sword.
IMO, the mark of a real leader is someone who empowers others without feeling the need to share their spotlight, and when it comes to marketing, I definitely think your fourth point nails it. It’s the old fishing proverb.
I really like how you frame the “personal brand” as a burden. It really is. This post comes at a good time since the Houston social media community are meeting on Friday morning to talk about just this issue.
My POV is that reputation is much more important than personal brand. Personal brand is what you say about you, while reputation is what others say about you. The second seems more important, it certainly is to the enterprise.
I will share this post on the Houston Social Media Breakfast Facebook page.
Ike: I like the discussion of artificial construct. I feel like I have artificial perceptions and expectations thrust on me, which is just weird. We should just be us and go do good things. Screw the rest.
Geoff – this post really gives the reader something to chew on, so thanks! As a consultant myself, I think I understand the concern you have. Our primary role should be helping our clients think through, and then solve difficult problems. It shouldn’t be to overshadow them.
However, the idea of “personal brand” seems to be an inevitable byproduct of a sharing environment. When you share content that people find valuable, it is inevitable that they will gravitate to you. Not only that, but they will tell their friends about you. Before you know it, you have a large following of folks who are looking for you to deliver quality content time and again.
You’d like to just be you, but we all look to you (and others like you) to keep us educated. Heavy burden to be sure…
As they say, that’s life in the big city.
Just my $0.02.
Chuck…
When Geoff shares things that interest him and he thinks will help others, he is being a human.
When Geoff cultivates and shares particular items and shuns others because he wants to develop a specific following, that is Personal Branding.
Some people are famous because they are just really cool and interesting.
Some people try to be famous by being something they really aren’t.
Being famous for the sake of being famous is shallow. It is this bass-ackwards approach that Geoff and I (and others) abhor.
Ike – I don’t disagree with your POV, or Geoff’s for that matter. Hope my comment didn’t come across that way. What I was hoping to point out was that the environments created by Twitter (and others) only help to foster this sense of “celebrity.”
The people who are thinking like you and Geoff are thinking about it correctly. However, there will always be the segment fascinated with how many people are following them, or how often they’ve been retweeted, or even their grade on any number of Web sites.
My background is customer service with a little volunteer experience thrown in. I cut my teeth in the customer service trenches and when I fell into social media, I discovered that the same skills apply. Perhaps more importantly the same goals apply – be there for the customer, listen, and help solve their problems. As a customer service rep, this is something you do unselfishly (well, that’s what your paid to do at least).
Personal branding isn’t even in the equation. Its the reputation of the company that you serve.
So perhaps all of this personal branding is simply reputation categorized incorrectly?
Geoff, here’s a perspective from someone who recently discovered you. Of course I’ve heard of you, what you do, and why I should follow you. And though your name may have attracted my immediate attention, it’s the wealth of helpful information you have shared that I find valuable. So your reputation proceeds you. I didn’t hear about you because of your personal brand.
Take that for what its worth.. its late for me and I’ve been drinking some sort of orange beverage that was one Iced Thai Tea, so I may be bit off…
Thanks for this heartfelt post, Geoff. You’ve provided terrific perspective as well as generated some great comments.
In what I see as a central message, I think you’ve captured the essence and value of a personal brand: it is a by product of what you deliver, and the greater the value, the stronger the brand – or reputation. Clearly you have wonderful reputation for delivering great value.
In fact, I think what truly sets you apart on the issue of personal brands, is that you draw a clear line between earned reputation and contrived images. In your own case, as long as that remains crystal clear, I don’t think you’ll ever eclipse or harm a client or your company. You most definitely get that what matters is not personal fame, but the pursuit of value in service to others.
And of course, if you show some personality in the process, it wonderfully underscores your humanity!
Great priorities! Great post!