One attribute of great blogging is the ability to incite a bit of controversy.
A key difference between a blogger and a columnist is that the latter doesn’t traditionally involve reader commentary – at least not in real-time, devoid of editorial filters, and appended for all to see. Blogging proliferated as the first large-scale instance of user-generated content online because self-publication and distribution was suddenly easy and immediate. Three cheers for instant gratification. But the medium is also interactive. Readers can publish just as easily as the blogger.
It is perhaps ironic, then, that the blogger with the largest reported readership, Andrew Sullivan, disabled reader comment capability years ago. Andrew ticks off a lot of blogging boxes, including being something of a provocateur, but without the addition of reader commentary to amplify, deconstruct, cheer and ridicule, I would argue that Andrew is not really a blogger at all. Despite his swagger and self-proclamation as a blogging trailblazer, Andrew is in reality a columnist who publishes at a hyper-blogging pace.
But I digress. The example I wanted to highlight is the great Olivier Blanchard, author of “Social Media R.O.I.” and a prolific blogger in his own right, who yesterday published a post proclaiming “the death of the personal brand” (or at least his fervent hope for its demise). Olivier’s premise is that the recent emergence of a cottage industry devoted to “personal branding,” fueled mainly by the demands of social media, is, in his words, bullshit.
“Don’t be a fake,” he advises. “Drop the personal branding BS. You don’t need it.”
This may not be good advice, but it’s great blogging.
And the nearly 100 comments appended to this article in less than 24 hours is clear proof of that.
For the record, I agree with much of what Olivier advises when he gets down to brass tacks; the article is a very worthy read, but more because it aptly defines what personal branding ought to be, rather than debunking the very notion of personal braining in the first place.
If I were to take his premise seriously, I would argue that the “personal brand” is not an analogue of the corporate brand oriented toward the individual (his central proposition), but a convenient way to describe how individual professionals need to carefully and effectively construct virtual versions of themselves in a digital world. The question of whether this effort is phony depends entirely on how it’s done – not on whether it’s done at all.
In our own work at Arch Digitals we see again and again capable, accomplished, authentic people – people who would cringe at the idea of promoting artificial or exaggerated versions of themselves – who haven’t the first clue of how, for example, to produce an accurate, professional, well-crafted series of online profiles. To those of us like Olivier Blanchard who tend to play on the bleeding edge of the emerging virtual world, these prosaic concerns may seem sophomoric or trivial. But they are in fact precisely what make up the category of personal branding for most business people.
Undoubtedly, Olivier well understands this. What he is doing here is using semantic gymnastics to attract attention, incite controversy, and create discussion and sharing – otherwise known as buzz.
I’d argue that as much can be learned from Olivier’s shrewd blogging technique as from his thoughtful analysis of personal branding.
