Today, I Googled a phrase I use often and up popped an interview I recorded for the Bluewire Media podcast back in 2014.
I checked out the show notes from the interview and was interested to see that while some of the ideas I talked about had come and gone – real moment-in-time stuff! – there were several concepts and philosophies that have remained with me to this day, albeit my thinking has sharpened and evolved over time in order to ensure message relevance.
I provide a couple of examples below to illustrate what I’m talking about, but the key thing to highlight from a professional personal branding perspective is:
Develop your unique ideas, lexicon and philosophies over time – in aggregate, they will become part of your story and your message; make them part of your communications overall, and then sharpen them as you go, and evolve as required.
Put another way, the philosophies you develop around your work, your profession, the industry in which you operate – these should become pretty steadfast over the years, but the examples and tactics and stories that bring those philosophies to life can/will/should change with time, and that’s okay. Indeed, it’s encouraged 🙂
Okay, here are the two examples I was talking about:
EXAMPLE 1 – The importance of building a ‘body of work’ (something I discussed in the aforementioned podcast interview)
This has been a favourite concept and message of mine for well over a decade, and it’s something I have always encouraged business owners and thought leaders to bear in mind as they write articles, produce videos, deliver presentations, and give interviews for podcasts and the media.
In short, your body of work is your legacy, and something that helps underpin your reputation in the marketplace.
Rather than relying on one-off marketing tactics, I’m a big advocate for an ongoing commitment to producing valuable content and sparking interesting public conversations over time. This collection of work becomes a tangible representation of your expertise and experience, serving as an asset that continues to provide value long after it’s created.
This message around building a body of work is a drum I continue to bang over 10 years later, and is as relevant today than ever, maybe even more so!
EXAMPLE 2 – I was asked “What would you do if you were starting from scratch?”
Aside from creating a body of work as per above, I said I would start a blog to bring clarity, focus and form to my insights and ideas.
Today, conceptually, I still believe that: blogging is a great place to start your authority-building efforts. BUT, today it’s less about the platform you use (i.e. a blog) but more important is to embrace the process of writing to expand, and then sharpen, your thinking and ideas.
Yes, this could be a blog that sits on your website, but it could just as easily be an email newsletter (think: Substack, or Beehiiv), a regular series of posts for LinkedIn (and/or a LinkedIn newsletter), or you could use a platform such as Medium.
So you can see, my thinking hasn’t changed in a philosophical sense over a 10-year period, but the execution around that thinking has evolved to stay in lockstep with today’s fast-moving, digital-first world.
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