Blogging is much more than writing, it’s social media, it’s design, it’s community, and it’s your brand. Following up on how to build a remarkable personal brand, I will teach you how not to build a brand.
While it’s important to follow Mars Dorian’s tips on building a great brand, it is also important to avoid the things that can hurt your personal brand.
If you are doing any of these things… you should stop… right now…
1. Only Promoting Yourself
We all know those annoying people on Twitter, Digg, and Facebook who only promote their own stuff. Some people go as far as to call these people “spammers.”
The point is, it is important for your reputation that you promote other people’s content even more than your own. As it turns out, people then start promoting your own content which develops a positive brand rather than a negative one.
2. Copying Others
A good blogger knows that he can learn from other great bloggers, but the line should stop there. Blatantly copying other bloggers will completely prevent you from developing a personal brand.
The only brand you will develop is a poser (and trust me, people catch on quick), and at best, a much worse version of another blogger.
3. Using Free or Default Themes
I’m sorry to say, Thesis users, that many, many bloggers use the default Thesis layout. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just plain, and way overused. This will do nothing for your brand.
Same thing goes for people using free themes or even untweaked Woothemes. If readers have seen the same design before, you are not doing anything to help your brand.
4. Not Adding Anything New
When people visit a blog, they have visited a great number of other blogs on similar topics. They obviously can’t subscribe or read every single one, so what do they do? The read the most interesting and helpful ones.
You can not afford to be the boring kid on the block. Your blog needs to add something new and fresh to your niche that get’s readers thinking “wow, this is pretty cool” or something along those lines.
This is what develops brands.
5. Not Caring
One of the reasons bloggers are doomed to be unknown is they don’t care about building a personal brand.
My answer to these people is “if you don’t care about making money online, getting traffic, developing a readership, getting subscribers, building trust, or a number of other things, then fine don’t develop a brand.” My question to them is “then why are you blogging?”
Tagged as: Bloggers, blogs, branding, personal branding, reputation
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
(4 comments) June 28, 2010 at 3:14 am
Some good points here. I’ve found from observing others that regular quality content takes the prize. I’ve come across MANY doing the opposite of your points also.
Naturally Jake, every blogger will start at scratch just promoting himself. I would say that it would be very difficult a task to be able to do that at the beginning. Any person with a brand should also have a lot of knowledge in his field right? So this is why I would think that only more established people will actually get this right: Focusing on not them personally or financial needs but at his/her brand.
(7 comments) May 12, 2010 at 7:02 am
This is very tough task for any web promoter to promote other stuffs instant of own. But this is reality, i agree with Jake’s first point.
(13 comments) May 5, 2010 at 7:15 pm
I think most importantly you should avoid being overpromotional and not helping at all. (spamming) I am guilty of this a lot and try to stop. For most people, the hardest part of having a strong personal brand is gaining expertise by writing quality content often.
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(15 comments) May 5, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Great points and insights!
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(10 comments) May 5, 2010 at 9:00 am
Nice article Jake. Your points are good reminders on using common sense when building a personal brand.
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(6 comments) May 5, 2010 at 5:45 am
As a personal branding consultant I have to agree with you points there Jake. Therea are plenty of wannabees and copycats out there. I don’t think they are doing it with malice, they just haven’t found their niche yet.
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(246 comments) May 4, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Excellent tips; couldn’t agree more.
When I recently wrote, “Blog Subscriptions – Methods to my Madness part 2 of 2″, one of the main points follows what you think on “Not Adding Anything New”
Keep it up!
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(1 comments) May 4, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I use a free WordPress theme which is very popular and used around the web but I did put my own stamp on it. I don’t think this affects your success especially if you write great content; people will come back to your blog if their interested. As for a brand, well that’s okay if you want to be recognised, there are plenty of bloggers who have a big following and only write what they want and are not swayed by money, branding or image.
Blogging can be many things and for sure has many uses, it’s not all about brand, sometimes it’s just about being creative for whatever you’re into. A lot of people get sucked into the notion that you have to conform to best practices like branding and image yet sometimes it’s good to be a maverick.
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(246 comments) May 4, 2010 at 6:16 pm
My kinda guy Bill! I dare to be different a lot more often then not…the way to be.
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(162 comments) May 4, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Great post!
Many people believe promoting their own products only will do the trick, I did this when I just started but as I grew to learn more, I knew the only key to success is trying to help others.
Thanks for the great post Jake!
–Onibalusi
(51 comments) May 4, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Very great tips Jake. I think personal blogs would be better off for celebrities. If you are a regular person then a personal blog would be useless to others comparing it to a business blog.
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(38 comments) May 4, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Solid points Jake. I do believe that you can develop a strong brand while using a templated theme. Type in “Personal Development” on twitter. Steve Pavlina dominates the results on a hyper-competitive keyword with an old skool WP theme. Focus on substance before style.
Content, content, and more content is the way of brand building. You become a commodity when the value which you provide skyrockets. Make creation a habit and forget about the competition.
I also agree with the copying point. You might model a successful person but you must put a unique twist on it, to make it your own. You might attract a few people but you can only generate a sizeable following by being wildly unique.
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(1 comments) May 4, 2010 at 10:38 am
I use a free Wordpress Theme on my own Blog – because I like it.
Like most IT bods I really hate working on my own site! Seriously – it works for me and I’m not that bothered about losing folks whose first concern about my blog is not what the article is about but is whether they’ve seen the theme before.
I agree wholeheartedly about the only promoting your self – having said that my blog’s a personal blog, my Twitter account is my personal account, same with facebook – it’s about my thoughts and ideas, and they’re shared with anyone who wants to read. But I re-tweet and link anything that floats my boat or that I think may float the boats of others.
And I don’t care about building a personal brand, I’m afraid. I’m a writer / social entrepeneur and activist, hobbyist, husband, christian and cat lover. I’m not a friggin’ tin of beans.
Or, as Number 6 might today say…
I am not a brand, I am a free man!
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(92 comments) May 4, 2010 at 10:36 am
#2 is a bit shaky, especially if you are a person who is heavily influenced by another in your niche that may be highly successful.
In the blogging community especially, you will find a lot of similar article topics, including this article. Would you call them copycats?
What would be better is to share where your inspiration came from. For example, give some link love out and make sure to to give credit where it is originally due.
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(286 comments) May 4, 2010 at 10:09 am
Once again that someone mentioned about using free theme
I using a theme for free bro, its a prize! lol!
Your article really make sense bro, blogging is not one man show so we need to help other with promotion like RTed, share or mentioned their name on you post.
Thanks for the article, love it!
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(92 comments) May 4, 2010 at 10:40 am
I also disagree with this point on default themes and I am a WordPress rockstar in the community.
Latief, what would probably be a better suggestion is to make sure to customize your default thesis theme or freebie theme so it says more about you rather than look like another’s website.
I like your site design… you are using StudioPress. Very nice. I will be seeing Brian Gardner at WordCamp Chicago… and I have been impressed with how far StudioPress has come with their premium themes.
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(41 comments) May 4, 2010 at 10:03 am
Hey – you misspelled my name – another rule for great personal brands – respect other brands as well.
Point number 1 is essential – I see it all over the web – people only promote their own stuff. Honestly, I did this in the early beginning, but there’s no real value in that – and it tells a lot about you – don’t you have people that promote your stuff ?
And caring is essential too – if there’s no real connection – no emotion behind what you are doing, then why do you even bother ??
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(2694 comments) May 4, 2010 at 10:28 am
Ops! I had to check that typo, it’s fixed now and I added a link to your blog as well
(41 comments) May 4, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Awesome Hesham,
you really take good care of our community, truly appreciate it
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(2694 comments) May 4, 2010 at 4:58 pm
You deserve it buddy
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