Corporate Brand = Corporate Identity
Tim Ferriss aired a Q&A with Seth Godin on a recent podcast, and one of the messages that stood out was the importance of brand building. It's obvious that a corporation needs to spend a lot of time and energy to build and maintain a brand, and any "pivot" in the company's strategy needs to stay in line with that brand or their will be consequences. If Apple decides they want to get into the lingerie business, they could probably make some money given their size and economic clout, but they are unlikely to be successful in the long run because women's apparel is far from their core brand identity. Consumers maintain a relationship with a brand as long as their expectations from the brand continue to be met.
Not Just For Corporations!
What wasn't obvious to me is how important a personal brand is, and how I need to spend more time building and maintaining that brand, both in my corporate life and on the steemit platform. I'm a developer and project manager by trade, and my colleagues and clients have certain expectations that need to be met in order to maintain a productive professional relationship. As a bare minimum of corporate decency, I need to be in the office at expected "office hours", keep track of relevant meetings and appointments, and write professional emails. To have an effective relationship, I need to accurately estimate the amount of time required to complete projects and deftly manage expectations when problems start to arise. And to really stand out, I need to find creative solutions or start completely new business lines, above and beyond what is requested.
I also need to be wary of anything that can damage my personal brand. Missed appointments, missed deadlines, delayed responses, and buggy products can quickly relegate a personal brand to irrelevance. This is particularly dangerous because the psychological impression caused by this experience will stick, and rebuilding the brand will be much more difficult than it was the first time around.
What does this have to do with steemit?
I spent the weekend in curation-only mode and realized that the pattern amongst my favorite steem contributors is that there is a pattern. The material is posted at a regular interval and covers a particular range of topics within their area of expertise. They keep it simple and straightforward, always writing from the same point of view and the same verb tense. All of the markdown and pictures are expertly chosen to reinforce the core thesis of the post. In short, they know who they are, they know who their audience expects them to be, and they give them exactly what they want when they want it.
Taking a Step Back
I'm gonna hold off on posting new content for a while until I have a better idea of what my steemit brand should be. It will likely be only a few days, since the itch to write will hit me again and I'll want to post SOMETHING just to feel like I'm still part of the community. But in the future I'll be more mindful of actually contributing something unique and hopefully useful to at least some small fraction of the community. And then I can work on building that important relationship.