People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you’re doing it.
Getting started on your brand
If you haven’t established a strong Web presence yet, it’s a great time to get started. So many tools are available now to make it easy to establish your digital brand and identity. In addition, there’s a community of helpful people on the Web to assist. The biggest challenges these days for building your digital brand and identity as a journalist is doing the work upfront to identify your brand attributes — the kind of journalism you want to be known for, your beat and niche as well as the audience for your niche.
Your brand is about what the audience thinks. Writes Nick Bilton in his book, “I live in the future & here’s how it works”
“It’s an editors job to reduce what a readers brain has to wrestle with.”
That’s the work of your brand. It’s a short cut to the identity that you are co-creating with your audience.
A cautionary tale
Andrew Sullivan is an early blogger, a former New Republic editor – who started his blog, the Dish in 2000. Because his brand as a political commentator had earned him a following at an existing platform, The New Republic, Sullivan’s persona was solidly established when the Dish was hosted by TIME, The Atlantic and finally, The Daily Beast.