I wanted to take a break from my branding exercise to discuss SOBCon08 and why I need to be there. Blog Catalog, SOBCon and Authority Blogger are providing a wealth of rewards to the blogger who can best convince the judges that they are the best candidate to be the next Authority Blogger. That candidate, my friends, is me. Here’s why:
My experiences, vision, voice and brand are valuable assets to the blogosphere. I have run a small business, gone back to school for my Master’s degree, left a well-paying corporate career to follow my dreams and have provided a comfortable living for my family for five years with my Internet writing. These experiences and the lessons that have gone along with them are valuable to other Internet writers. These are the tools I can use, and have used, to help new Internet writers to achieve their own dreams and goals. Being an Authority Blogger provides me with the medium necessary to reach even more Internet writers to learn from my mistakes and to help them on their path to success.
I’m also the best candidate to be the next Authority blogger, in part, because I don’t need to be an authority blogger to be a success. I am already a successful Internet writer. Whether or not the Writing Journey succeeds has less of an impact on me than it does on the people I could help. I know very well what it takes to succeed in the freelance side of Internet writing, and many of those principles apply to the blogging side of Internet writing, as well. As the next authority blogger, I can bring a unique perspective of success to the blogosphere: I genuinely want to help other Internet writers, but don’t have to have a successful blog to be a successful Internet writer myself.
My presence at SOBCon would also add something to that event. I offer a unique perspective as a seasoned Internet writer who is relatively new to writing his own blog. The freshness of this perspective provides the ability to look at the state of the blogosphere in ways that more experienced bloggers cannot. I can add the writer’s perspective to the event. I can speak to concerns that professional bloggers don’t think about, or haven’t thought about in a long time. I can bang my gong and remind folks that blogging and writing are not the same thing, but better writing ultimately means better blogging. My voice needs to be heard.
I am also very much interested in hearing the voices of others. Each of the experts at SOBCon has something that I need. Brian Clark’s business ideas, Dave Bullock’s sales models, Liz Strauss’ perspective on being irresistible, and Wendy Piersall’s thoughts on success are all valuable commodities that I would very much like to have, and that will help me to achieve my goals. On top of this, I’ve followed many of these individuals for months and relish the opportunity to meet them face-to-face as peers.
The consultation with Chris would also be amazing. It would provide me with the expert perspective that I need on my blog. It would allow me to have access to a respected and trusted blogging expert, and to help me develop The Writing Journey into the Authority Blog that it can, and should, be.
Is all of this enough to convince Chris and Liz? I believe it is. I also believe that, regardless of the outcome of the contest, I will be an Authority Blogger one day; the contest just speeds up my timetable.
It seems I’m going to have to continue spending some time talking about myself. Honestly, its one of my least favorite subjects. I’d rather talk about all of you, and what you are all up to. Twitter has been helping me with that in the last few days, so I suppose I can continue banging my gong for a little while.
So, where did I leave off?
Ah, yes. I’d just arrived in Marion, Indiana, with the intention of studying for the ministry. But, what does that have to do with branding, and with my journey as a writer?
Well, like a lot of kids, I went through several different branding attempts over the first couple of years I was in college. I was the super-devout mystic, the carefree surfer dude, the professionally-groomed and dressed megachurch minister type, the cool youth pastor, the music devotee, and others. I finally settled in on being the “academic.” I spent most of my college career debating and discussing the big picture ideas with folks. I decided that I’d rather help folks by educating them than pastoring them, so I switched from Christian Ministries to History and Philosophy.
In college, I worked a bunch of different jobs. I did work study in the library’s media center, where I was first exposed to PCs. I worked as a Youth Pastor in a small church where the Pastor sold snake oil on the side. I worked for a small manufacturing company called American Mobile Power driving their truck to Ohio to pick up inventory.
American Mobile Power was a neat experience. The owner had invented a particular type of plastic polymer to use for hydraulic oil tanks on Semis. Apparently this polymer was much better than steel and much cheaper than other plastics. He was making a killing. It was there I first got a taste for entrepreneurship.
In terms of college and my eventual writing career, there’s not a whole lot more to say except for this: if I hadn’t been a decent writer, I never would have met my wife. We met via Prodigy in 1995. This was back when the online services were still big, and few folks had a direct Internet connection. I placed an ad on the Prodigy Personals area entitled, “Philosopher/Poet.”
Somehow, she fell for it.
Prodigy Personals would eventually evolve into Yahoo! Personals. There’s a brand I’d support today, even though the product looks nothing like the one that meant so much to me all of those years ago. The quality outcome of that experience has created a customer for life.
After college, I tried a semester of grad school. I wasn’t really ready to be there; I was more interested in other things. I wandered around from one customer-service type job to another for a while. I worked for a bank (NBD), the Avon-equivalent of women’s fashion (The Worth Collection), and Hellyer Communications.
Hellyer was a voicemail company. We don’t have too many of those today, but back then they were quite common. At any rate, Hellyer Communications was the one job I ever quit based purely on principle. To make a long story short, the terms of my employment required that I do my best to mislead (not lie to, but distract and misdirect) an 80 year-old woman named Pulaski into agreeing to keep voicemail service she had been subscribing to for five years but never used and would never use. I refused, and quit that moment. I didn’t even bother to put in a letter of resignation. Hell, I didn’t even tell my boss. I didn’t feel like these morally bankrupt people deserved that common courtesy. I got up, walked out, and never went back.
My branding, in my early 20s, was very unsettled. I suppose it is that way for a lot of folks. It wasn’t until 1996 when I would settle into a brand. By 1996, I was a family man working for Charles Schwab doing Windows NT Administration. Thus began my career in the IT field that spanned the better part of the next 8 years.
Over the past few days I’ve spent a lot of time writing about myself and about my blog. I’m not entirely comfortable with this sort of introspection, to be honest with you. I feel that I am much to young to genuflect. Still, I think this has been a necessary exercise for me. I stated that this sort of thing was imperative for the blogosphere right now, and I believe that the best way to lead is by example. To that end, I’ve tried to articulate my vision and I’ve explored my voice. But where do I go now? How do I translate that into a brand?
I think branding flows, naturally, from vision and voice. My vision is to help other Internet writers get where they want to be. My voice works to accomplish my vision by sharing my own experiences with you, and interacting with you. The natural outcome of this is my brand. So, where do I start? I guess I should start by telling you my story.
My Early Writing Career
I grew up in a middle-class family in Linwood, Michigan. You probably haven’t heard of Linwood; we have one stoplight, two churches, six bars, and a post office. Oh, and a bait shop.
Linwood is just outside of Bay City. If you’re old enough, you might remember the Bay City Rollers, an English band in the early 1970s. The legend goes that the Bay City Rollers got their name by tossing a dart at a map of the U.S. The dart landed on Bay City, and the name stuck:
(How’s that for branding?)
If you haven’t heard of Bay City, you might have heard of Saginaw, which is another twenty miles or so to the South. You may remember the Simon and Garfunkel song, America, in which the duo sing the line, “It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.” If you’re into old-time classic country music fan, its possible you know Lefty Frizell’s last #1 hit, “Saginaw, Michigan”:
(I can personally tell you, the Saginaw that Lefty sang about is vastly different from today’s Saginaw. Not better, not worse, just different. So much for that branding exercise.)
If you haven’t heard of Saginaw, I guess I can tell you that I was born an hour South of Saginaw in Flint, Michigan. You might remember Flint as the setting for Michael Moore’s Roger & Me. I’ll spare you my thoughts on Moore, other than to say he didn’t grow up on the rough streets of Flint, like he claims; he grew up in the white, upper-middle class suburb of Davison. Davison is where I lived until I was seven, when we moved to Linwood.
(Moore, regardless of whether you like him or not, knows how to brand himself.)
From an early age, I enjoyed writing. In the fifth grade, I won the school-wide creative writing contest with a poem I wrote. The poem is long gone, but as I recall it was something about writing music with words. I’ve often wondered if there is a copy of it somewhere in my folks’ basement, but I’ve never taken the time to check. When they are gone, I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity; I think it will be fitting in some ways. I can still see how proud Mom and Dad were of me on that day. I can see myself holding my poem up, surrounded by my folks.
In High School, my experiences weren’t as grand. I took a single creative writing course with a large fellow by the name of Larry who collected Coca-Cola paraphernalia. In retrospect, I think Larry was probably a great teacher. I just didn’t like him. Frankly, I didn’t pick up a pen with any serious ideas of being a writer for another decade. Besides, I developed other interests in High School. I decided that I would, after High School, go to Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana, and enter the ministerial training program.
It has been well said that a writer’s voice is only truly heard through the ink and paper on which he writes. For the Internet writer, that voice is heard via the ones and zeroes inside his CPU, but the idea is the same: To really know what a writer is all about, you have to read his writing. If his voice isn’t unique, it will be drowned out in the comforting yet forgettable chorus of other writers.
So, what exactly is my writing voice? How do I use the medium of writing to effectively portray a unique personality and position? How is my writing different from others? How does my voice complement the Great Song of the Internet? Or is my voice too soft or too shrill, too blustery or too grating?
Simply put, my voice is me. In this blog, I write as if I were writing to a friend. In some ways, I do write to friends; I engage in discussions with many of my regular readers that are deeper and more significant than discussions I have with my “real-world” friends. But if I had to sum up my voice in a single word, it would be this: conversational.
I want to provoke conversation. I want to participate in conversation. I want to interact with my readers and with the whole blogosphere. Like I said yesterday, I want to share my failures as well as my triumphs. I want you to know me.
Why?
That’s a silly question, isn’t it? Who doesn’t want to know and be known? Who doesn’t, deep down, want to learn from other human beings, to help them when they need it, to share their experiences, to help shape their lives and be shaped by them. That’s what being human is all about. Apart from how we relate one to another, there isn’t much separating us from the rest of existence.
At any rate, I could add other words to describe my voice. I’d add words like honest, vulnerable, confident, experienced, articulate, helpful, generous, fun. These are all tones of conversation, little individual modes of my voice. These are the building blocks on which I build my writing. These tones complement my vision. In the same way, there are descriptive words I’d prefer to avoid, like staid, formulaic, monotonous, boring, didactic, academic. These tones work against my vision. I have used these voices at other times, like when I was in grad school or when I’m writing SEO content as a pen-for-hire. But not here. Not if I can help it, anyways.
Is all of this gong-banging a bit self-indulgent? Maybe. But, to some degree, that’s the point of this blog, isn’t it? Like I said yesterday: I want to share my journey as a writer with you. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t. Maybe you can learn something from it, maybe not. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I get that. But it’s right here, regardless.
Yesterday’s post and the ensuing discussion have had me thinking more and more about what it is that I am doing right here with my blog. When I pointed the finger at the Internet writing community, there were still three other fingers pointing right back at me. I knew this when I wrote it, and I knew that it would be something of a revolution for me personally, and for how I approach this site. I knew that I would have to set an example and follow my own advice.
I also knew that I intended to take you along with me on my journey of (re)discovery. After all, that’s what this blog is about, and always has been: My journey as an Internet writer, and how my journey can help others.
My vision for this blog is to help other Internet writers improve their craft and, in doing so, become more successful. I hope to do this by offering useful, practical and timely advice on areas such as grammar, style, voice, format, SEO and many other areas. From time to time, it means that I’ll dip into topics like article writing, blogging, marketing, and all sorts of side dishes. Ultimately, though, I want to share my experiences in these areas - my writing journey – with my readers. I want to talk about my successes, about my mistakes, and about my goals. I hope to inspire other writers with my successes, warn them of the dangers of my mistakes, and motivate them with my goals.
In short: This blog exists to help other Internet writers get from where they are to where they want to be. It is about the Writing Journey.
That is my vision. While the vision it isn’t unique in itself, the experiences that I bring to that vision make the final product plenty unique.
Tomorrow, I’m going to explore voice, and how I use voice on this blog in order to reinforce, promote, and accentuate my vision.
My experiences, vision, voice and brand are valuable assets to the blogosphere. I have run a small business, gone back to school for my Master’s degree, left a well-paying corporate career to follow my dreams and have provided a comfortable living for my family for five years with my Internet writing. These experiences and the lessons that have gone along with them are valuable to other Internet writers. These are the tools I can use, and have used, to help new Internet writers to achieve their own dreams and goals. Being an Authority Blogger provides me with the medium necessary to reach even more Internet writers to learn from my mistakes and to help them on their path to success.
My presence at SOBCon would also add something to that event. I offer a unique perspective as a seasoned Internet writer who is relatively new to writing his own blog. The freshness of this perspective provides the ability to look at the state of the blogosphere in ways that more experienced bloggers cannot. I can add the writer’s perspective to the event. I can speak to concerns that professional bloggers don’t think about, or haven’t thought about in a long time. I can bang my gong and remind folks that blogging and writing are not the same thing, but better writing ultimately means better blogging. My voice needs to be heard.
