Reclaim Blogging – On Why Your Blog Still Is Your Best Personal Branding Social Tool

24 thoughts on “Reclaim Blogging – On Why Your Blog Still Is Your Best Personal Branding Social Tool”

  1. “Personal sovereignity.” I love it. My sentiments, exactly, and I’ve recently taken steps to use my personal blog more like home base than ever before.

    I see the larger social networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ – like parties. We go there and we participate because that’s where everyone congregates; that’s where we discover new ideas, make new connections, and build relationships.

    When all is said and done, most of us need to find personal space, away from the din, where we can collect our thoughts, adjust our perspectives, and stand on our own.

    Google does lend itself to a greater sense of stability and longevity than, say, MySpace or FriendFace, but while I plan on spending a great deal more time socializing in their living room, I think I’ll hold off on moving in for a while longer.

    Cheers, Luis.

    1. Hi Brian! Thanks a lot for the feedback comments and for dropping by! Indeed, and that’s where I think the main issue lays ahead for most of us… That plenty of us would want to stick around at the party, and have all the fun, and by the time we realise it’s just far too late to make it back and make some sense into it, because we are no longer used to those periods of reflection and solitude reflecting on what we learned while at the party… hehe

      That’s why I wanted to get this blog post out, so that it would help me get a reminder, or two, and, hopefully, other folks on working your magic away from the party by making what you learned much better for everyone else to enjoy!

      Thanks again for the feedback and look forward to catching up with your blog posts! 🙂

      1. You are exactly right, Luis. It’s fun to go to the party, to meet all the people, to have a few drinks, and to enjoy the conversations, but what happens when most of the attendees pack up and move on to another party? Now you’ve got to decide to go along with them, or stay put. In the end, you’re left with little to call your own.

        Such is why my Facebook profile merely tells people I’ve moved on to G+ and will be more actively sharing on my own sites. Could it be the personification of push vs. pull? Hmmm…

        Buenos noches, amigo.

        1. Ha! Interesting follow-up, Brian, and I have got another one for you along those very same lines… What will happen, and what would folks do, when all parties are gone, done, deal with? And there aren’t any more planned for the next while? That does sound scary, huh?

          I guess it’s all in finding and striking a balance, as usual, as to when to party and when to withdraw from the party to reflect on new ideas learned and make them better hehe

          Good stuff!

          1. Ha, indeed! I am right there with you, Luis! To me, it makes no sense for anyone – individual or corporate – to invest heavily in building a presence on third party social networks. Setup an outpost to help passersby find what they need and get to know you, but direct them back to your home base on your own digital property. So many businesses miss the whole point. You want to show up to the party, make an appearance, contribute to the good time and atmosphere, but you don’t want to relocate to the kegger.

            I don’t think there will ever be a shortage of parties, but we’ll never put down deep roots and grow if we keep early adopting a digital gypsy life.

  2. Agreed. Although I have tended to blog a lot less frequently since using Twitter, I still value my blog as the place where I can set out my thoughts on any topic of interest.

    I use Twitter – and have only ever used a single identity – as my main “gateway” to other social media tools, feeding all my tweets to LinkedIn and Facebook. I can then engage in discussions on all three platforms. I now use Instagram for photos, which feeds into Twitter – and to Flickr.

    I also tweet every blog post, and (someday) will add a Twitter feed plug-in to my blog.

    Google seems to be a great platform – but I have not seen any easy way to connect it in to everything else that I do, so I am just not actively using it. I don’t want to spend time hopping from one platform to the next (except when actively engaging, as above).

    Social media – the way I want it to work – is all about simple connection and integration, not about creating more islands.

    1. Absolutely spot on comments, Keith! And I don’t think that Google Plus plans on fostering and encouraging more islands… Quite the opposite! I am starting to think that its main aim is to become the continent within the Social Web that helps connect, and stay connected with the various other islands. It’s probably just a bit too early to see that long term vision, but no doubt I am sure that integration will come along at some point, perhaps as soon as the API opens up a bit for developers to start hacking some pretty cool integration points! A matter of time, I am sure.

      By the way, really enjoyed the description you shared above about your social flow and how you share and reshare content across to match your needs and those who may be following your various social interactions. Way cool!! Thanks for sharing it across and much appreciated, once again, all of the feedback!

      1. 🙂

        No problem! Thanks for the feedback.

        Some have pointed to all of Google’s “failures” in social media – Wave, etc – but it could also be said that they are taking the appropriate approach to complexity: safe-fail (cf Cynefin). Although I’m not sure how cheap some of those failures have been. In the overall scope of Google’s investments, probably cheap enough!

        However, until there is a bit more obvious integration available with Google+, my time investment there will probably be minimal.

        1. @Keith, and that’s just fine! I think that experimentation phase of trial and error that Google has experienced has served them well to come up with a good solid entry point with G+, that, although may be lacking a bit more integration with things, there is no doubt that it will eventually be coming along and perhaps we will see the true final potential being reached when G+ integrates fully with Google Search, something that most other social networking sites haven’t done properly just yet. That, to me, is going to be G+’s competitive advantage and why I think it would be rather interesting to see how things would pave out eventually…

          And not to worry, take your time, we will still be here, I am sure, whenever you would be ready to make the move! 😉 hehe

  3. Luis, While I have not gone all in to G+ as you have and in fact don’t find the pull of it that others do but maybe in time I will.
    The blog survives because it is the owner’s. For better or worse, we have something to say and maybe it’s to be heard, maybe to remember, maybe to impress or maybe just to do something different.
    Twitter did not diminish my blogging efforts, in fact I now have 3 others plus a guest blog site or 2.
    As I explain to my kids, almost daily now, most people are sheep, be the shepherd or the Lion, lead, don’t wait for someone to tell you what you should do.
    Doesn’t always mean jump first but it means take action, blogging is action. If I put as much in to my unfinished novels as my blogs, I’d be done already.

    1. @Keith, great follow-up and glad you have shared these thoughts over here on why blogging still makes sense for you and your community of folks around them! Exactly! It’s a journey, not a final destination, it’s that time of reflection about the things that matter that Euan Semple blogged about earlier on this morning over here. It may not have the lowest common denominator, but it surely has got one of the most powerful and influential to date!

  4. Thanks @Brian for the follow-up! Good stuff!! Indeed, I think you described it quite nicely and I am surely hoping folks would shift gears and realize about it, before it is just too late to come back! Yes, indeed, there will always be parties and all, but it would be a matter of picking up the better ones, stay for a while and … leave :-)) hehe

    1. Hiya, Samuel! Thanks a bunch for dropping by and for sharing across that comment on G+! Right back at ya! Left a follow-up to your commentary as well. Thanks for keeping the conversation going! 🙂 hehe

  5. Fabulous insights Luis; many thanks for sharing. I so value your opinion and G+ is a topic that I had previously been on the fence with…no longer now.
    Hope all is well Luis!

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