How niche, how personal and how spiritual should a blog intended to brand me be.

July 26, 2009 2:33 PM

How niche, how personal and how spiritual should a blog be that's intent is to brand myself as a unique, and creative professional of distinction.

I am working on some ebooks and other internet business projects. My current website www.jeffreyclong.com is currently too broad and includes personal and spiritual writings that I don't think contribute to me marketing myself as a creative professional. I'm going to change it into a static "about me" page that will be an advertisement for my skills, projects and services and link to blogs or static pages that are more niche, including a revamped version of my current blog. I'm still a bit vague on what those are services are, so I'm not able to be specific as I describe what I'm trying to accomplish with my blog.

I am looking to repurpose many of my old posts into different blogs or sites devoted to different markets. And I'm going to delete some that I think were too personal and probably post them in a vox blog that only my closest friends and family can see.

Seth Godin calls a blog that is about personal interests is a "cat blog." See the ebook at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/09/whos_there_the_.html

I want to keep my blog, but tune it up so that it expresses the multiple sides of my skills, projects and services so that people see me as a creative multi-dimensional contractor. While not being a "cat blog" it seems that _some_ personal things humanize a blog like this.

So the question is, how personal should a blog-for-the-purpose-of-branding be. I also have posted sermons and spiritual content on that site. I plan to move those off to a different blog. But assumed I would link to it from my landing page. Do you think that people who are looking at hiring my services would look askance at me linking to the spiritual writings that describe who I am spiritually?

Thanks

posted by jeffreyclong to Work & Money (12 answers total)

I'm going to go in a different direction and suggest that you instead create a corporate website. Build yourself a separate identity as a business person. (You can still delete things from your personal blog, if you think they will harm your reputation.) But you may save yourself a lot of grief by building your business as a separate business, rather than an extension of yourself. That way, you can compartmentalize your business, rather than having it be "you".

I was formerly a fan of making yourself into a brand. (And it worked for me at the time.) But, over the years, I've come to appreciate the value of a business that is an "other". In fact, after 12 years under my own name, I'm relaunching in August as a new branded company.
posted by acoutu at 2:37 PM on July 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

Can you define what you mean by spiritual? And "creative multi-dimensional contractor"?
posted by craven_morhead at 3:33 PM on July 26, 2009

From an HR/hiring standpoint, I would absolutely keep your spiritual/religious leanings out of a website unless they are irrevocably part of your business offerings.

I'm in early, but I agree w/ acoutu with regards to keeping a business life and a personal life. Most people find it very hard to keep the two separate even when they are part of a 9-5 office job; something nebulous like working from home, I expect, will create more emotional demands and wear on personality and the very concept of a personal life, private and not able to be audited. Secondarily, if Eva the Entrepreneur is all she is, the business side has the potential to eradicate other positive personality traits she had before.
posted by cobaltnine at 3:35 PM on July 26, 2009

Do you think that people who are looking at hiring my services would look askance at me linking to the spiritual writings that describe who I am spiritually?

Yes. The times I've been in a hiring/interviewing position, I've had people point me to their personal websites. If their websites had lots of spiritual writings, I passed them up. I'm a Christian, but I'm a firm believer in Matthew 6:6: "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father...."

My assumption is that if someone is pointing me (as a person hiring or interviewing) to a website that preaches to me, then they will do that in the workplace as well. I don't like that, and don't feel that it makes us more productive or better at our jobs.

When I am looking for someone to do work, my only concern is that they can do the work, do it well, and do it without disturbing others from doing their work well.
posted by Houstonian at 3:49 PM on July 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: re: spiritual. I'm a christian. I have been a pastor. I've grown up in evangelical chruches but I generally frustrate them to no end. I'm conservative in my beliefs about the authority of the Bible, but I believe that lots of Christian beliefs are too divisive and are based on culture and tradition.

by multi-faceted creative I mean that I am a musician and have a very creative mind. I am able to think outside of the box and see solutions to problems that others don't see.
posted by jeffreyclong at 4:14 PM on July 26, 2009

I would agree to get s separate website for Jeffrey Long the business man from Jeffrey C Long the person. First, I read your web url as Jeffrey Clong which is not a bad name, but not your name. If JeffreyLong.com is not taken, use that.

I would not be opposed to branding myself per se, but know that when your name is "on the door" so to speak, you can never really get away from it. Even after you sell.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 4:16 PM on July 26, 2009

This is actually a question I've been wrestling with a lot lately. For a long time, I wrote a personal blog on various topics that interested me, including politics and spirituality (and cats and comic books).

Then, through a series of wonderful events, a niche personal finance blog I created took off and sort of became my main site. Inadvertently, my personal brand has become "personal finance guy". I knew that it was inappropriate to share things about politics and religion at my money site, so I avoided the subjects. (Though I do mention cats and comic books from time-to-time.)

But by cutting these topics out of my writing repertoire, I was left feeling unfulfilled. Sure, I could have written about them at my old personal site, but that wasn't really satisfying because it didn't address the fact that I'd created a sort of personal brand.

My solution was to create a new web site, one with a vanity URL. I can use this for the more personal side of my "personal brand", and leave the finance stuff at my finance blog. It's almost like I have multiple brands: the money me and the other me.

Anyhow, that's a long way of saying: Maintain two blogs. Use one to build your personal brand in the niche you're looking to fill. You can be personal there to an extent, but save the bulk of your personal stuff -- especially the things that might make readers angry -- for your "cat blog".
posted by jdroth at 4:24 PM on July 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

I have passed up products from people whose politics differ from mine, and that's what I would do in your case because of your comment about Pres. Bush. Totally okay to have different viewpoints, but if you express that in a business marketing setting it goes from, "I am buying a product or service from you" to "I am supporting a soapbox which directly contradicts my own view". I would also refrain from blogging about things that you do not have at least some subject matter expertise or personal experience in.

But stuff like re-inventing yourself? That's something that almost everyone can relate to...even if they don't read it, it's not likely to offend them, and it adds some personality to your blog.

About religion - you are a minister and I think it's asking a lot to not mention that at all. If you do link to your religious writing, don't put it on your sidebar blogroll, which for a business-marketing blog is expected to be more related to whatever your market is. I would mention it in a well-balanced "About" page and link from there. That way anyone who wants to explore can do so and you are not hiding your core beliefs.
posted by txvtchick at 4:25 PM on July 26, 2009

You mentioned wanting to express "the multiple sides of my skills, projects and services." If you want to sell services, your blog would probably be most successful if it were focused on one service and on meeting the needs of the people you want to sell that service to.

For example, if you want people to hire you for mediation, then your blog would have useful how-to articles on how to communicate non-violently, how to resolve certain types of conflict, etc. I have this kind of how-to blog and it's worked very well for me. I use it in conjunction with a standard business site.

You could include just enough of yourself to show your personality, but it would be best to put the religious and other content on a separate, personal site, possibly linked through the "About" page.
posted by PatoPata at 4:32 PM on July 26, 2009

if it is to be truly unique then the niche would have to be quite small, I'd say
posted by Salvatorparadise at 8:16 PM on July 26, 2009

Response by poster: Everyone's suggestions were very good.

@txtchick I am going through every post I've written since 2004 and deciding what to get rid of. The Pres. Bush stuff was one of them. Thank you for pointing that out. I'm going to take politics out of it. And it's a good idea to put the link to spiritual stuff in my about page instead of in the blogroll

Thanks to everyone.
posted by jeffreyclong at 8:29 PM on July 26, 2009

Make more than one blog. Mark them appropriately.
posted by mezamashii at 6:45 AM on July 27, 2009