The long-avoided post on personal branding.

Since my last post I’ve received an enormous amount of support from my readers, both in comments, via email, and offline.

Not only did I not think I even had that many readers left, what you said was somewhat surprising.

Most, if not all, of you insisted that I “just be me” and “write about whatever I want.” I’m not really sure why people kept insisting that I just “be myself” because honestly, that’s all I’ve ever done.

Which brings me to the topic I’ve been avoiding like the plague on this blog, but I feel is in order now: Personal branding.

Many people think that “that damn redhead” is some kind of personal brand that I’ve worked so hard to develop.

That’s complete bulls**t.

I don’t believe in “personal branding.”

I think that’s complete bulls**t, too. (Well, not complete bulls**t. Read on.)

I’m just me, and I always have been. The nickname “that damn redhead” was something that a few certain people started calling me years ago, then it turned into a joke, then it turned into a screen name, etc. It just stuck, so I went with it.

I almost wrote this post in March.

About a month ago, I was super tired but just before I went to bed I clicked on over to one of my favorite bloggers, Melissa at Rock and Drool. She wrote this great post about life in general and being a grown-up called “Is it fun yet?” that was just so real that I couldn’t help myself but just let it rip in the comments and tell her how awesome I think she is, just for being herself. I said:

You know what? I don’t read many blogs that would be considered in your “genre,” per se, but I love yours, and I tell people about it in person a lot. You know why? Not because you’re local (although that does help), but because you’re REAL. You don’t bother with the facetiousness and the bulls**t of “personal branding” and all that crap, you’re just you, and you tell it like it is in your world and how you see the rest of it. And I respect that more than you can imagine. Seriously. I can’t say any more on this post than “keep up the good work” but I thought I’d tell you like it is, like I see it, because you’re one of the most authentic people online I’ve ever “met,” and I thought you should know. One of these days I hope we could have coffee or beers or something. You’re awesome and I love you for being real, for being you.

… and also for leaving the shoulder pads in the ’80s.

Little did I expect her to ping me the next day and tell me that was “the best comment she’d ever received” and that I “made her entire week,” not to mention inspire her to write her next post, entitled “Bloggy Branding Bullsh**t.”

I basically told Melissa, in quite a few more words, what my readers told me in reply to my last post. I think we may be on to something with this whole “be yourself” thing, I’m not sure.

It’s not that I don’t understand the concept of personal branding. I get it. At the risk of retyping myself, I’ll just include a couple pieces of my reply comment to Melissa here:

Truth be told, I actually admire the people that are banking on the “personal branding” thing, like Dan Schwabel. The core of it all, at least what I understand, is to be the best person you can be and to let that be known, let yourself and what you stand for stand out in someone’s mind and I can’t really argue with that. I do know that a lot of people have trouble grasping the concept of “be yourself,” even as adults, and if subscribing to the “personal branding” philosophy helps them, GREAT.

But at the same time, one shouldn’t HAVE to work at it.

It’s when people that strive to let their “personal brand” be something that they’re not that really gets me.

…

As I said in the comments of my own blog recently:

I am not a brand. This is who I am. I don’t try. I’m a real person, not a persona. Michael Jordan is a brand — he has shoes named after him. Vera Wang is a brand — she has dresses and mattresses named after her. I am a regular person who coincidentally (not luckily) was nicknamed after a malediction.

Former fellow Detroiter (and smart cookie) Shannon Paul had a great post back in January entitled “Having a Personal Brand is Fine, but Making an Impact is Better.” I encourage you to go read it, because she’s a lot more articulate than I am when it comes to this stuff, and she nailed it on the head. It’s more important to me that I do my thing and hope that I can make some kind of impact, whether it’s leaving a comment on someone’s blog that “makes their entire week,” write or say something that really resonates with someone and gets them to think more, or even just making somebody laugh with one of my many off-the-cuff wisecracks.

And that’s the truth. So if you feel you need to subscribe to the “personal branding” philosophy, party on with your branding self. But please don’t call me a brand. I don’t work at being “that damn redhead,” I just am, whether you like it or not, and nothing’s going to change that.

On a completely humorous note, I recognize that this post is totally echo-chambery. It’s a post in response to comments on my last post, that reminded me of Melissa’s post she wrote about a comment I wrote on one of her posts. Now Melissa just needs to comment here and the circle will be complete.

Image by Wesley Fryer.

I need to change direction.

I’m having a really hard time writing this blog anymore.

Or, rather, the way it’s been going.

I’m burnt out.

I’m really, really tired of reading about “social media” and everything that goes with it. I’m really tired of hearing about it everywhere I go offline, too. It seems like that’s all anybody ever talks about. People are communicating constantly about this “new” method of communication (metacommunication by its very definition) so much that they lose track of the messages they want to convey behind those methods in the first place.

I know that last paragraph is debatable. (If we debated it, would that be meta-metacommunication?)

My point is that I read and hear so much about the social web that by the time I get around to writing something for my own blog that’s the last thing I want to think about, let alone write about.

It’s only natural for a blog to evolve. I’ve been shying away from “usual” stuff for some time now, although I admit I’ve been anything but prolific. Much of that has to do with my burnout. I rewrote my About page a while ago, and on it I said:

If anything, I like to take an in-depth look at current situations in integrated marketing and communications, technology, and strategy and analyze what went wrong or what people are doing right. Extract the things we can learn and see how we can apply them to our own online practices. Not just plain ol’, run-of-the-mill case studies, but situations that are either overlooked, under analyzed, or perhaps just bizarre.

. . . I still like to do that, but lately, I’m just not feelin’ it.

When I blogged on other domains in the past and got to this point, I’d shut down the blog and start anew on a different domain, with a different focus (or not).

Not only do I not want to do that again, I know now that it’s really bad for SEO and “digital footprint” purposes.

So now I have a dilemma — deciding which direction to take with this blog.

Oddly enough, yesterday I visited Ari Herzog’s blog and found he was in a similar situation so he asked his readers.  I was planning on doing the same, but he beat me to the punch.

Of course, I know ultimately it’s up to me, but I thought I’d toss it out there and ask you, my readers (if I have any left) — what would you like to see here? I’ve heard from a few people that they’d like to see more music-related posts. I wouldn’t mind that, and I have a few in mind, but I’m curious to see what others bring up — there might be something out there I’d love to tackle that I haven’t even thought about.

So, to steal Ari’s question, “If you were doctor knowing what you like to read, what would you prescribe?”

Image by kudumomo.

I’ve been cheating on my blog.

It’s true.

Not that I’ve ever been that prolific here, but lately I’ve been writing somewhere else. While I’m great at promoting and marketing others, I am always reluctant to do so for myself — call it “the cobbler’s kids having no shoes” or what you will, but I suck at self-promotion. Many in my field are the same way.

But at the encouragement of others, I thought I’d let you know where I’ve been. Recently I dusted off my journalist’s hat and have been writing part-time for Detroit Unspun, a new blog that is sponsored by the Detroit Regional News Hub. What is the Detroit Regional News Hub? From their site:

The Detroit Regional News Hub is the collaborative media relations department for the region and is a central communications clearing house for information reporters may need to cover their stories. Our job is to connect reporters with experts who can provide information about the region’s growth, quality of life, education, economic development and government. Our partners include the region’s major businesses as well as economic development, government, community and philanthropic organizations.

The Detroit Unspun blog is an expansion of the News Hub, but rather than connecting reporters to the experts so they can write the stories, they’re using people like me to provide original stories themselves, with the aim that other reporters will pick up on them.

Detroit Unspun is still in its infancy, and recently debuted for a soft-launch at Ignite Detroit, an event that the News Hub sponsored. There I live blogged recaps of the event during intermissions, took photos, and did some interviews of people involved with the event, as well as wrote an overall recap.

My most recent story is a feature on the region’s only hackerspace, i3Detroit, and how they’re expanding. As of right now, all the content on the Detroit Unspun blog is by me, but that will be changing next week.

I’ve also been doing some copywriting for a couple other places that isn’t online yet.

I forget sometimes that most people don’t know I’m a writer “for realz.” I’ve been slacking on compiling my actual portfolio (or updating it, as it’s very outdated), but no, I’m not just a snarky redhead that writes here sometimes when she needs to get something off her chest. While that’s true, I also wear many writing hats — I write (or have written) just about everything but fiction. For realz.

The Best of the Red: Dust Bunny Edition

While doing some recent housekeeping in the back end of this site I uncovered some posts in my archives that many (read: most) of you missed, and I thought they were worthy of having the dust bunnies brushed off them.

I realize that the majority of you are newer readers and/or haven’t known me as long, so here are a few of that damn redhead you’ve likely never read:

• What my small town dentist can teach us about social media
• The internet is one big expo – what is your booth like?
• The high school notebook – social media casualty?
• How I accidentally started #ThankYouThursday
• Social media lessons from water skiing (and vice versa)
• Social media is like plastic baggies
• Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter are NOT the Holy Trinity

You can’t see it yet but I’ll be doing some restructuring of the direction of this blog in the near future. Everybody’s blog evolves over time, and this one is no exception. For details, visit my new “About” page.

Enjoy and thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

I am not dead – I’m just too busy driving lately to blog for realz.

I’m not sure why it took me four months of working at the chamber to realize that although I didn’t have any time or energy to blog because I was busy driving and being tired and exhausted, I could easily video blog while driving.

(It takes me a while sometimes.)

So this morning, even though I’m relocating very soon, I decided to do a video blog, and I’m not sure why because I HATE to be on camera. And then I did one on the way home, because I apparently like to be thorough. (OK, well I actually did three, but the first one was long and I wasn’t sure I recorded it, and the third one I’d prefer to use but I’m not sure what happened to it.)

I posed the idea on Twitter, and although I hate seeing myself on camera, the demand was enough either publicly or in direct messages I decided to give it the ol’ “what the hell,” so here ya go, morning and night driving vlogs (DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any boredom that may ensue.):

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