Blogging Tip: How To Build Your Personal Brand

Image by bdgamer via Flickr

If you suppress your inner snark in your own blog in a noble attempt to be the voice of reason, calm, poise, and what-not there’s a danger this two-headed beast might surface elsewhere. This is what happened to me two days ago

First, let me start by summing up how I think I conduct myself in this blog. As your host, I strive hard to write in a friendly tone. I believe setting the right tone in your blog encourages the readers to leave helpful comments. In instances when they are critical of your views, the tone of your post generally influences readers to temper their objections with reason and fairness.

Value of Blog Commenting in Personal Branding

It’s been said too that once you go out and participate in other blogs’ discussion you strengthen or sully your personal brand the way you write your comments. I forget this great lady blogger who said this, but it was she coined this phrase: your comments are your little passports. What you dropped as comments can reinforce what you’ve carefully built as your personal brand or destroy it in a flash.

Now back to the story. You might have heard about the venerable Hongkong journalist Chip Tsao who summarily insulted the Philippines as a nation of servants in an article he passed as off as satire. Online buddy Mizdi sent me a tweet about her post tackling the slight against overseas Filipino workers.

Danger: Tangent Ahead

I was passing my time in Twitter during that time, building up my followers list. Which meant I was trying hard to keep up with internet marketers who followed me. In real life, these are people who knock on your door and try to sell you something. In real life, of course you can slam the door in their face and feel better for it. Today, they are in Twitter and other social media in full force.

They are the good guys now, doing their legwork in the internet. Usually, they have dollar signs as user names so you will not miss the message. They are dying to make you filthy rich. You only have to watch this video, or read that sales pitch in their blogs. And you’re all set to help unlock the secrets in getting your first million.

And then there are internet marketers who will make you a renaissance man if you so much as let them breathe down your neck. You know the type – the ones who will make you reach your full potentiality as a human being.

This is my frame of mind when I arrived at Mizdi’s blog – excited to get my millions and almost sold on making myself a better man. And then I read Mizdi’s post on Mr. Chip Tsao’s tirades against overseas Filipino workers . Pfft goes my dream. Come to think of it, just throw in a little pompadour and I may have blossomed to be Donald Trump in a few months. I might have also achieved the stature of Steven Spielberg, but alas to an Asian brother named Chip Tsao I’m just a bloke from a long illustrious line of nannies. The Philippines is a nation of servants, he said.

Here comes Mr. Snark

Naturally, I wrote my comments on Mizdi’s post with righteous indignation and solemnly advised Mr. Tsao to stick his satire in a place where the sun never shines.

And this is not the first time. Previously, I had brandished a palapa (dried coconut frond) in the air and warned Mr. Tsao not to come within spitting distance of this blogger or else I’d flog him with it. You can find my comments against Mr. Tsao’s racist remarks in Elmot’s post on the apology issued by the Hong Kong magazine which published Mr. Tsao’s article. It had also taken down the article.

Mr. Chip Tsao had since apologized. I wish there’s a metric for this but I’d like to know which tipped the balance for this development. Is it the threat to Mr. Tsao’s pale little ass or is it the imagined whack from a lowly palapa that did the trick? I will never know, but I can live with that.

So, you see, dear Petit, I’m not exactly a nice person. I can also be snarky and can be counted upon to parade around the blogosphere with something sticking up my ass, if that’s not too gross a description for you.

Be True to Yourself

In balance, I may have soiled my little passport with my candid but unfortunate comments, but hey, read my lips: so what!

Truth to tell, however, I feel I’m just being true to myself. If there’s one thing to take away from this post it is to embrace your authentic self. I have vague feelings about this, but since discovering Terry Heath I have since felt braver in being foolish. Terry says:

Embrace all the varied and wonderful things that make you unique and unleash that on the world, even if you feel foolish. Your right people will find you if you’re not hiding behind something else, something that isn’t really you. Then sit back and don’t worry about what will come; the right things will come along with the right people. Just let your creative spirit go skipping down the halls, if that’s what it needs to do.

This will serve me well in my writing and blog commenting. Conventional wisdom has it I put my best foot forward. Up to a point. To show your vulnerability as a human being is not so bad. And that includes baring your fangs when the occasion calls for it.

But since you’re here in my esteemed presence, notwithstanding my Mr. Goody Two-Shoes airs, I urge you to be your usual agreeable self. Biting each others head off here is still not allowed. Of course I can be arbitrary about this as this is my blog. If you feel much put upon and need to vent please go satisfy your blood lust in some dark alley, okay?

Now, over to you, guys. Two questions for you: How do strengthen your personal brand? And how do you rein in your inner snark to keep your online reputation intact?

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