MBAB: Your Personal Brand
One of the things I’ve always been fascinated with (for some strange reason) is the entire notion of “branding” a business. Maybe it’s because I grew up during the cowboy movie phase and we ran around shooting and dying in great numbers across countless imaginary plains that never extended beyond the front and back yards.
I’m intrigued with the notion that bloggers (and nurseries, garden centers etc) are their own brand and I think we have a perfect example of that in action over the past week.
I think that branding is one of the most misunderstood concepts on the Net. We all brand ourselves by our writing every day. Your online presence and history creates the image people have of you and that’s your brand. It can be a positive thing or a negative thing but it exists for all of us.
For a commercial nursery, it isn’t solely about tagging and POS posters – it includes that leaky hose lying between the retail benches and the old paint. It’s the late delivery truck and driver who’s not had his “nice” pill. It’s the one flat that doesn’t arrive that’s needed by the store’s most important customer. It’s the entire package that creates the brand in the minds of the customer.
For bloggers, we have our words over time that tell readers who we are and what we stand for. We too, no matter how many readers we have, create our own brands. Susan over at Gardenrant has just outed herself as using language that ranks highly on a cuss-o-meter. “I take full credit responsibility for that, by the way” a “potty mouthed” garden blogger So she’s created her own brand and identified it to the trade and other bloggers. This isn’t up to any of us to decide if it’s good or bad – it’s Susan’s brand and it’s up to her to decide if that’s how she wants editors, readers and other bloggers to see her.
Here’s the implication of branding for any blogger or nursery business.
A good brand buys you a grace period – a mistake or three. A bad brand gets you deleted.
In the publishing business, we’re only as good as our latest book, latest publication, latest issue, latest article or post. And a series of good ones will get you readers and a growing body of folks who will read you and perhaps even reward you for writing (like with cheques) 
If you have a good brand, a good reputation for providing good articles or good information, the odd stinker won’t hurt you with your audience. But if your brand isn’t stellar, then the tolerance level is lower and the delete button is closer. That “about me generation” isn’t as tolerant of mistakes as older readers.
For bloggers, the issue is one of readership. For retail nurseries, the issue is one of customer retention as more and more customers join the “about me mindset”.
It’s about all your words, your entire operation – and it’s all under your control.
As an end note, I understand that personal brands can be changed over time but it’s like steering an iceberg. Slow going and you can get pretty cold while it’s happening.
Wait just a minute there! Colleen called HERSELF as a potty-mouthed blogger, not me. I did take responsibility for the 4 percent of GardenRant’s pages that have a “cuss word” on them, which words I assure you are ones you see in the mainstream media. The occasional “damn” I’m fine with editors seeing me use.
Now have I resuscitated my reputation sufficiently?
Susan – I stand corrected – you didn’t call yourself a potty-mouthed garden ranter – you simply acknowledged you were the one that singlehandedly gave GardenRant a 4.0 score on the amusing test. And I wonder if your favorite acronym might count as well.
And btw, it was clearly all in good fun, so this is kinda surprising.
Your link to my post doesn’t work, so here it is:
http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2008/06/potty-mouthed-g.html
And really, you call 4 out of 100 a high ranking on the cuss-o-meter that will “brand” me with editors, readers and other bloggers?
Let me get this straight. You’re trying to say that Susan has branded herself as a foul-mouthed gardener because she took responsibility, in a clearly joking manner, for the tiny bit of mild cursing that appears on Garden Rant? That’s such a ridiculous observation that I have a hard time believing you actually mean it.
Let me see if I can clarify as I obviously didn’t the first time.
A one time event – such as a joking cuss-o-meter – doesn’t make a brand. It’s a single event.
Susan identified herself as the one who used enough cusswords to bring GardenRant to a 4 when the average garden blog was a 1. And she didn’t do that in a single post, she did it over time, in multiple posts. I didn’t identify her as the one who uses cuss-words on GardenRant – she did.
Is the ranking significant? In the general scheme of things – nope. It’s a blog and will be forgotten in a few weeks. Is the ranking significant relative to other garden blogs? It’s 4x the quoted average. That’s probably a good thing considering the blog in question is called Garden*Rant*.
I actually took it that she was celebrating her edgy garden writer’s voice rather than complaining about it.
Pam J – I said in my post, it wasn’t up to me or anybody else whether this was a good voice or not. It was Susan’s voice. She’s the one who gets to create it, accept it or change it if she’s not happy with it. IMHO – it’s distinctive and a great blogging voice for her blog but that’s only my .02. And she’s the one who identified it – not me.
What is important is that it is her brand – her writing voice – that she created over time. She can change it if she doesn’t like being seen in that edgy garden-world way or she can celebrate it.
Susan – your writer’s voice brands you. It brands all of us in whatever we do. And yes, your posts on GardenRant brand you. If your question is does this cuss-o-meter post brand you negatively – the answer is by itself it does not. It is only one part of your accumulated posts that you’ve accumulated as part of your portfolio. Your voice is a visible one however and each individual editor will decide if that voice fits their editorial needs. As I said earlier in this post, I got the impression you were celebrating it but it’s not up to me to make any decision whether this is good, bad or indifferent to your writerly career. Those are your choices. p.s. thanks for telling me the url wasn’t working – I left off a command ” mark.
For the record, if someone posts every day (and the ranters often post more than that) a ranking of 4% means that they swear approximately 15 times per year. And that includes “damn” and “hell.”
In either case 4% is a ridiculously small number, and I hardly think than any editor or industry insider would worry that they’d be working with some foul-mouthed malcontent based on that. The term “potty mouthed garden blogger” was meant to be facetious, on my part and Susan’s. Or are we not supposed to use humor, either, for fear of sullying our personal brand?
Thanks for the additional input Doug. But I still think you failed to make a meaningful point about branding by using as an example Susan’s cursing (which as a regular reader of GRant is a huge overstatement). There’s something in the tone of your post, and in your additional comment, that makes me wonder if you actually have another agenda. Could be simple jealousy of the popularity of GRant, could be trying to stir up some controversy, could be that you are truly offended by damns and hells. There’s just something faintly mean-spirited about using Susan as an example.
Pam – let me try to respond to your positive post. I’m sorry you see it as “faintly mean-spirited” – something I’ve blogged about before and don’t want to be seen in that iight.
Do I have another agenda? – Jealous of GRant popularity? Ah, actually no. Blogging isn’t my main line of garden writing and my garden list is 5-figures; I expect to serve around 2 million unique visitors to my sites this year so I have no jealousy of the popularity of GRant. I do pretty well on my own. Probably better than most.
Controversy as in linkbait? I long ago figured out that the stuff I thought would be controversial wasn’t and the stuff I thought was pretty clear-cut would be. I no longer even try to write linkbait or be controversial. I know some folks do and some folks may think I am but I don’t even worry about it when I the words start rolling out.
Offended by words – they’re only words.
Relation to GRant – I admire what these folks have done with their blog in a small market. They don’t do it for the money either but each has her own reasons. I simply say good for them and have no problem linking to them. There’s lots of room in the Net for a diversity of opinion.
We come to using Susan as an example. I had half written this branding post in my head and when I saw Susan acknowledge publicly that she had singlehandedly given the GRant folks a score 4x times higher than the average, it spoke to the issue of branding and makes a perfect example of branding yourself in a public way.
Branding is only important to you if what you’re doing is important to you. If you don’t care about blogging or writing, then what you say and how you say it doesn’t matter. In jest or in a serious way, it’s all part of the record in this world of ours now.
Susan said it and I used it as an example of branding. Plain and simple – no intent one way or the other. If I could have found another example so clearly stated, I would have used that instead but the post and the statement coincided perfectly. If you put yourself out on the Net, in a public way, then you have to be prepared for folks to comment. I get ‘em daily from my readers. Both good and bad.
There probably isn’t a politically correct way to say it but any writer who stirs up controversy or is a leading figure in their community is “misunderstood” regularly. Susan feels she was and joins a very long line of horticultural writers and industry folks sharing that sense of injustice. (Some probably at the hands of GRant itself) If you read Victorian or Edwardian garden writing, it is a free-for-all compared to the gentle discourse we now have.
Hope that answers your concerns.
I think that this is one of the most intelligent analysis I’ve read in a long time. And I agree with you, that if one has cultivated a certain kind of reputation over a period of time, that the occasional departure from it will not drive away loyal readers (or customers).
I also think it’s interesting how a person’s image (or brand or reputation) sometimes imposes constraints. People feel pressured to live up to their reputation. Dooce has to be outrageous. The Garden Ranters have to rant. Dave Barry always has to be silly/funny. In other words we tend to play up certain character traits that distinguish us from the rest of the crowd and that appeal to the audience we’ve attracted thus far.
Mss – thanks. Nice comment to end it on.