#363 / Building Your Brand?

I received some advice the other day from another guy named Gary. For some reason (I subscribe to a lot of listserves), a blog posting from Gary Vaynerchuk popped into my email inbox, and let me know how to "build my brand." Vaynerchuk, whom I think is pictured below, is some kind of a business development guru, from what I can tell. 

If you envision yourself as a social media "creator," and want to hear from Vaynerchuk, just click the link. If I can recharacterize Vaynerchuk's advice, which he headlines, "Document, Don't Create," the essence seems to be "quantity, not quality." Vaynerchuk wants you to be publishing "6-7 meaningful pieces of content a day," and if you are actually trying to make those pieces of content "high quality," there is obviously going to be some difficulty. 

Here is Vaynerchuk's prescription:

When I say to put out those 6–7 meaningful pieces of content a day, just pick up your smartphone, open Facebook Live, and just start talking about the things most important to you. Because in the end, the creative (or how “beautiful” someone thinks your content is) is going to be subjective. What’s not subjective is the fact that you need to start putting yourself out there and keep swinging.

If you are trying to sell a product, Vaynerchuk's advice may be worth taking. However, it seems to me that his blog piece on "Document, Don't Create" is actually addressed simply to individual people, as individuals, and the implicit idea is that each one of us has a "brand" that we should be constantly trying to burnish and advance. 

May I please quarrel with this proposition?  

People are not "products." Our objective in life should not center on making other people take positive note of our personal existence. We should not be trying to turn ourselves into a "brand." 

OK, OK! I know that some people have approached life in just that way, with some pretty amazing results. For instance, one of those people has just been elected President of the United States. And that guy (Donald Trump, if you forgot the name) has definitely used social media to help "build that brand." Twitter, specifically. 

When politics has been turned into brand-building, we are definitely leaving "quality" behind. 

Gary Patton has a different kind of advice from Gary Vaynerchuk. He recommends real, high quality conversations, with real people, followed by real action.

Forget about building a personal "brand." Let's try to (re)build a community!

Image Credit:

(1) - http://www.marketingxlerator.com/2011/09/10/how-to-build-your-brand-on-social-media/

(2) - https://medium.com/@garyvee/document-dont-create-creating-content-that-builds-your-personal-brand-c2957c8c813a#.lnyhxrjte