Branding. Every social media yahoo will use the term, replacing it for just about every word from “style” to “reputation” to “logo” to “colour scheme” or whatever else. It is vague, but every business type needs to pretend they understand the term.
I learned a little about branding while partnering with folks from Revolve.ca. Part of the process was them building a the podcamp logo for us. But it was also thinking what message we (the collective partners involved in Podcamp Halifax planning) wanted to put out to the public, and how that message would carry to the people who would eventually hear it — the current podcamp plus the many podcamps that would happen in the future. To me, that logo speaks to the marriage of ideas, art (text, sound, images and video), technology, enthusiasm (the colours are very flame-like) in a way (and this is very important) that no one else speaks to it. It does this also without me imagining that it would be the wood panelling of the 2010s. We were doing something that was done before, but in our own way with our own messages. That’s what the long tail is all about. Many voices coordinated through technology.
Anyway, after this experience, I’ve been thinking about this blog in the context of branding – not because I am a slave to the whole “branding” idea, but because I think this matters to me and this blog right now.
My last post about Podcamp Halifax annoyed me because it spoke to the brand of this blog — that of a librarian, still stuck in the mindset of a service provider, trying to help an audience of service providers find out how they can be successful doing the “community development” thing. That post outright sucked when I read it just now – but I’m not about to make apologies for it.
The post sucked because the audience of this blog is primarily an international network of librarians trying to work their way of the ladders of librarianship. Recently I’ve engaged a broader group of people, and now I worry that the two cultures will clash. These days, my interest lies in the broader group of people. This is not a slight to librarians at all. I just do not want to write for you and I do not want to write what I think about podcamp from a librarian perspective.
What I am trying to say is that I have to find a brand that lets me continue to be the librarian I am and share what I know with my professional community, while at the same time continuing to participate in the broader world of IT, blogging, local networks and so on. In this sense, I need to think about the brand for this blog and re-think where I’m going to go with this space.
Anyone have any ideas on this? How can I continue to highlight my local interests while at the same time engage the wider librarian community? What messages would you put out if you were in my situation?
What am I doing now?- RyanDeschamps: RT @ChangeCampHFX How can we improve #Halifax? Join the conversation of change on December 5 at http://bit.ly/1au6gZ #ChangeCamp
- RyanDeschamps: @DanORourke Thanks for the #followfriday and Two if By Sea is a pretty good spot! http://bit.ly/25XgZN
- RyanDeschamps: Can't wait to show off my latest knitted hat. Hint I think @msauers and @doctorow will like the idea.
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January 27, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Hi Ryan,
You pose yet another interesting question. I’m having a similar, if less consciously articulated, problem with my own blog. I started out simply documenting cases and sharing some of the challenges I faced developing my health information service, but more and more I find myself wanting to write about ideas that are relevant to what I do. This change, what I choose to write about, is happening intuitively and hopefully it makes sense to the handful of people who read my posts!
Branding seems to be about audience. But I wonder which comes first? Does who reads it depend on how you brand it, or the other way around? In any case blogging is fluid. It needs to evolve, and to shift focus periodically, in order to remain vital and relevant.
I wouldn’t worry too much about your cultures clashing. As long as what you write makes sense to you- a librarian who “participate[s] in the broader world of IT, blogging, local networks and so on,” then what you write will probably be relevant to both camps. Maybe not every post will appeal to both groups, but that’s ok.
FF
January 27, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Good question, Ryan. I have been thinking the same thing about my blog, where I’m posting library-related things a few times a month, but might post more frequently if I gave myself permission to write about other things.
It’s likely that we are overthinking this. I look at Dorothea Salo’s Caveat Lector, which is a very important blog to read if you are interested in Open Access, but the “brand” is “stuff Dorothea Salo cares about.” She writes about her cat, her choir, whatever, but since she does it with a distinctive voice, it works. Author John Scalzi’s Whatever is similar. Read it for a month and you know the kind of thing he’s likely to write about, but it’s not any one thing.
In short, the brand is you (how is that for social media yahoo-speak?). If you bring the same smarts and voice to Halifax stuff that you do to library stuff, I’ll still read it (or at least skim it).
January 27, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Interesting timing. Two days before flying off to Denver, I sent in my May 2009 “disContent” column for EContent Magazine–with the title “I am not a brand, I am a free man” (with explicit apologies to Patrick McGoohan).
I guess you need to decide whether being a brand is important to you, or whether it’s more important to be able to be flexible and growing. The same goes for the blog. Fortunately, I never had to make that choice–by the time “the brand of Me” became a popular (if, in my opinion, meretricious) theme, I’d already changed directions (in my life, in Cites & Insights, in my other writing) too often to even *contemplate* branding.
So, you know, I guess I’m agreeing with Francesca. If you’re a person with a growing and changing set of personal and professional interests, this blog could usefully reflect that shifting persona. That way lies vitality and humanity, if perhaps not Brand Success.
January 27, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Hi Ryan, thanks for the Twitter add.
The way I balance writing for libraries and writing for a larger audience is to write about tech in a general way, and how I use that particular bit of tech to support what I do in the library.
For example, I wrote a post a while back installing Ubuntu on a Mac using the VMWare Fusion Windows emulator software. I wrote it with librarians who are a little afraid of tech in mind, but it is written in such a way that anyone who is interested in the subject will find it useful.
Another way I’ve built my “brand” (although I’m reluctant to think of it as such) is to participate in larger discussions on social media websites. Friendfeed is a good source for that, because the techy folks get to see a techy librarian who can speak their language, while the librarians can see how easy it can be to interact with techy people.
Francesca is right on the money when she says branding depends on your audience. If you know you want to attract a more general audience, write more generally. Good luck!
January 27, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Thanks for the comments. I think also I am challenge by the presumption that people in marketing etc. might be thinking about this blog in the context of “brand” versus other things.
Another thing I notice is that I want to blog less because I am Twittering more. Twitter is my opportunity to “get real” a little more and I’m finding it now more difficult to actually think about a topic and blog it in a way that’s meaningful.
January 27, 2009 at 4:39 pm
“These days, my interest lies in the broader group of people.”
You know, it’s interesting. I was feeling the exact same way after my experiences with Podcamp Ohio. But I lost interest in what one might call the cult of social media very quickly. It’s like a larger version of the same kind of echo chamber, but with less direct importance to my life. So I’m back to hiding in my little librarian shell, for the most part.