Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! COVID cases decreased over the weekend and the UNH President announced a return to classroom instruction as of Wednesday of this week. So I was back in the classroom for the second half of the week, still trying to give lectures through a mask, to a mostly empty classroom as most students opted to stay remote. We also had an unseasonably warm few days, so I was able to take the The Lady in Red out for a paddle on the Oyster River on Wednesday afternoon (pic above). Only a little ice.
On Monday my lecture for my pre-practicum (i.e., pre-internship) class is going to be about personal branding. As I started looking for short articles to share with my students (this is a one-credit colloquium, not a heavy duty course like Finance), I was struck by all the videos and articles that made the same kind of promises that multilevel marketing firms (e.g., Amway) use to suck in unhappy people who want their own business, but don’t know how to start them on their own. The advice seemed to be particularly pernicious as it made promises that you, too, could become a career or life coach. Those articles and videos were in full Ponzi scheme mode - building a following of people who want to learn to teach other people how to build a following. Following to where? Ick.
What’s ick about these sorts of hucksters is the promise of success without substance. They don’t really promise success without hard work - they have all kinds of advice about getting yourself out there, writing a blog or newsletter (hmmm... ), Instagramming and YouTubing, of course.
I actually think curating a public presence (like writing a newsletter) is appropriate and even potentially important in a connected world. There is something particularly gross about social media done inappropriately, but long before social media, we were curating our brands by joining professional societies like ACHE and HFMA, and participating in community organizations like the Rotary Club. Curating your personal brand is perfectly acceptable and appropriate when you are doing it to enhance your reputation and presence in your field. In other words, there is something there beneath the burnish. You have work that exists outside of the social media presence. There is a there there. You’re a really an objectively good analyst, administrator, nurse manager, pharmacist, or physician - then all this personal branding work is just to get people to see just how good you actually are. If you don’t let people know how good you are, they may never just find out if you just keep your head down and keep doing great work day to day. But there has to be great work there to begin with, otherwise you’re just a used car salesman trying to sell a car that was caught in a flood and looks fine, but the electrical system is going to melt down as soon as the buyer takes the car off the lot.
So below are some good pieces about branding that I came across in my research. Enjoy! And as always, stay well and stay safe!
Read
What: CapitalOneCareers, How to Create Your Personal Brand
https://www.capitalonecareers.com/how-to-create-your-personal-brand-divi-cdev
Why: This is the article I settled on for my students. Here is a succinct argument for engaging in personal branding:
If you don’t control your narrative and the story of who you are, you leave it up for interpretation. Regardless of your age or career stage, someone is always screening you online. And what they find can have major implications for your professional life. Creating this snapshot of who you are is a proactive way of controlling your personal and career development. And remember, personal branding isn’t just self-promotion—it’s an exercise in getting clear about who you are, what you stand for and how you present yourself to the world.
The key point is you can’t opt out of personal branding. You are going to have a personal brand, whether you nurture it or not, so you are better off paying some attention to your professional brand than not. The article has a few good points worth exploring.
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What: The New Yorker, “Fake Famous” and the Tedium of Influencer Culture
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/fake-famous-and-the-tedium-of-influencer-culture
Why: I haven’t seen the documentary described in this article because I don’t have HBO, but I suspect there isn’t much left to say after reading the review. From the article/documentary:
And so it seemed like an odd swerve when “Fake Famous,” as it proceeded, increasingly reverted to overt hand-wringing about the lust for social-media fame and what it’s doing to our culture. Influencers “don’t make you feel better about yourself,” Bilton says, toward the end of the documentary. “The entire concept of influencing is to make you feel worse.”
I think that’s the ick factor kicking in. Fake famous social media doesn’t the observer with admiration or a desire to push oneself harder to be a better person. Fake famous has no there there. It is all form and no substance. It is as if these fake famous people simply emerged and had life dropped in their laps. Seeing that fills us with envy, resentment, and maybe even self-loathing.
I think this article is useful to identify what good personal branding is not. When we are doing personal branding the right way, we are not seeking to be fake famous, or famous, necessarily at all. What we want is for people to see the value we really bring.
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Watch
What: Kevin Kelly on London Real, HOW TO GAIN 1000 TRUE FANS (8 minutes)
Why: Kevin Kelly was the founding editor of Wired Magazine, an article about technology and culture (I link to them fairly often here). He published a short article called 1,000 True Fans back in 2008, just as social media was getting going. It turned out to be quite prescient. In this video he is interviewed about the impact of the article and his thinking eight years later (the video is from 2016).
The gist is technology allows creators to interact with possible users/the audience directly. A creator can make a decent living if s/he can accumulate “1,000 true fans” who are willing to pay for the creator’s work. If you can find 1,000 people who are willing to give you $100/year, you can make a pretty tidy living. The way a creator can do that is by making something 1,000 people value at (more than) $100 per year. (I say more than because people will voluntarily give a part of their consumer surplus if they feel like they are getting a lot of consumer surplus.)
Most of us, including me, are employees. We’re never going to try to monetize our “fans”. But we do want people to feel like they get value from knowing us. This is one of the things I tell my students to think about as they go out into the world as professionals: do people come away from having met you feeling like they have been improved in some way? How do you create value for the people in your network? Do you have 1,000 people who get excited to talk about you when your name comes up? Unless you’re going to become a consultant, you don’t need to monetize your network, but you do need to have those fans. The way to create them is to think about how you are adding value to the people you encounter, whether that’s by sharing cool articles on LinkedIn (like this newsletter!), or by offering to be a connector to help people find the people they need. Having 1,000 True Fans in your network will mean you will never be without a job opportunity.
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What: Chase Jarvis Raw, Why You MUST Show Your Work (4 min)
Why: I am a huge fan of Austin Kleon. I think his book Share Your Work is a fabulous personal branding guide. Like the Kelly video above, Kleon is focused on helping artists and creatives. But I would argue that we can all engage in a bit of showing your work, particularly with, but not only through, social media. Obviously with social media, particularly LinkedIn and (grudgingly, I admit) Twitter, you can share your thoughts on professional topics in a way that could potentially be useful to others in your field. This creates value for other people and you start to create those 1,000 True Fans. You can also show your work by volunteering for a professional organization, like your local chapter of ACHE. This allows people to see your skills in action. It’s not quite like an artist taking a picture of their work in progress - in the sense that the artist is going to have work in progress whether s/he takes a picture or not - but if you are going to be involved in your professional organization, why not take that next step of volunteering?
Kleon’s main point is to use things you are already doing and take them one step farther. Sharing things you are reading, watching, or listening to (you know, RWL-style), is taking that one more step that allows the creation of value for others. Helping your professional organization run an event that you were going to be at anyway is that one more step that allows the creation of value for others.
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Listen
What: Masters of Scale, Brian Chesky, Co-founder & CEO of Airbnb
https://mastersofscale.com/brian-chesky-handcrafted/
Why: This isn’t really a personal branding podcast. It was when I went digging for a podcast in the personal branding category that I really found myself going, “Ick!” There are so many hucksters using the podcast format to sell their Ponzi schemes I mentioned above. But along the same lines as the Kelly video, this is the story of how AirBnB built its brand. The secret of their success was to delight a few customers first, and then build the rest of the business around that delight. The focus was on making something really good first - to have a there there - literally there, as in geographically, in the case of AirBnB.
It’s easy to extend these lessons to a personal brand. First, you have to be good at what you do. You have to delight your boss, colleagues, and customers. Then you build your personal brand around that.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next Friday!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)