Showing posts with label self-branding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-branding. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Is Content King on the 'Net?

After surfing around lately, I’m beginning to wonder if folks who write don’t get that what they write will be read by others. It’s as if the basic ideas in their heads never gets past their own “take” on something. Even worse, the writer has attempted to “build” an article that’s “keyword optimized” in a way that smacks of pandering. It’s one thing to try to get a keyword-rich article published – quite another to try to stuff your keywords into the reader’s gullet.
    I’m all for monetizing your writing. That’s what I’m about. I’m also willing to write about something without worrying if it’s going to make me a dime. I write because I write. I think, therefore I think (apologies to Descartes). I think.
    If what you write embodies a willingness to achieve something resembling “good”, then you’ve done the job properly. Never mind “excellent”, that’s in the eye of the beholder. Doing a good job means you’ve taken what you know, crafted it with purpose and checked for errors in your grammar and spellinx.
    I’ve been a member of the Grammar and Spelling Police, but I’m retiring from that post. The raft of incomprehensible, misspelled and generally crappy stuff I’m seeing every day means I’d have to give up making good writing. Policing the Internet’s illiterati is a full-time job.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Book of the Day Club

Now that I’m a publisher, I can actually fulfill an idea I had years ago: use my knowledge of typesetting and layout to produce sellable information at a very low cost. Not only am I producing self-help material based on my research and experience, I’m getting out Literature that’s in the Public Domain! I can bang out a well-edited book, complete with cover art, in about two hours. That includes listing it on eBay!
         Current titles include THE ART OF WAR, THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, DRACULA and A STUDY IN SCARLET, the very first Sherlock Holmes adventure. I’m already working on a list of authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Jane Austen to start (in no particular order), along with more by Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
         Any suggestions are welcome as to classics you’d like to see made available as finely wrought .PDF files. Yeah, I forgot – FANNY HILL is on the to-do list, too~!

Monday, January 1, 2007

The "Theory of Everything" T-Shirt slogan.

Physicists are striving to quantify the four forces of physics, a "Theory of Everything". Without boring you to tears, they want a single equation to explain gravity, electromagnetism, and a couple of subatomic forces you can look up yourself: Strong & Weak. One noted scientist explained that it would be an equation you could fit on a t-shirt.

Self-branding is about the same thing, without the clipboard and lab coat. One strives to sum up everything in a pithy, well written sentence. Or two. The trick is to understand what the strongest brands have that I don't - yet. And, no, it ain't a slogan. It's congruency.

Coming up with that slogan means you are committing to it. Choose wisely - the less congruent you are with it (and it with you), the weaker your brand will be. Contrariwise, selecting the perfect slogan in advance (cart-before-the-horse methodology) means you will grow towards each other in an organic, meaningful way. There's no guaranteeing you won't outgrow each other. Hope that it's you that's doing the outgrowing!

Already tried and rejected by me, as Vince Runza Online:

It's the customer, stupid.
I'm not for everyone, but that can be good!
Always Busy (saw this one chiseled into the facade of a building in Downtown Scranton)
Good Products, Good Service
Bootstrap entrepreneurship
It's not work if you love doing it. It's even better if you get paid for it!

Okay, it's a work in progress. Feedback? Smart-alecky responses welcome!